I drove down Lombard, straight up Laguna. Predictably, the closest parking space to my building turned out to be two blocks away. My joints ached even more now and I had developed a scratchy throat; the two-block walk in the cold did me no good at all.
I gathered up my mail and let myself in. When I got up to my door I felt a twinge of apprehension, remembering what I had found at my office on Friday. But both locks were secure and nothing had been disturbed inside: the pulps were still on their shelves, the bachelor’s mess on the furniture and floor was just as I had left it.
Brew up some tea, I thought, take another cold pill, and get into bed. So I threw Muhlheim’s coat on the couch-I would have to remember to get the coat and the rest of his clothing cleaned and shipped back to him pretty soon-and headed toward the kitchen.
On the way I shuffled through the mail. And one of the envelopes made me stop in the doorway. It was plain-white and business-sized, with no return address. And the “r” in my name was chipped, the “a” in the street address tilted.
Christ. I tore it open, pulled out a single sheet of white paper, and unfolded it. My name was typed there, too, and below it three lines:
You’d better leave me alone. If you don’t, I’ll do something to YOU next time, not just your office. I mean that. Leave me ALONE.
I held up the envelope and looked at the postmark. Mailed Saturday night. Sure, that figured. She must have written it right after my call Somebody knocked on the door.
Frowning, I turned to look over there. Dennis Litchak, probably, because the downstairs door buzzer had not sounded; he must have seen or heard me enter and come up to talk. Well, I was in no mood or condition for company right now. I went to the door, thinking that I would get rid of old Dennis in five seconds flat, and opened up.
Karen Nichols stood in the hallway outside.
“I’ve been waiting for you all day,” she said. “Waiting and waiting for you. I thought you’d never come home.”
In her right hand was a. 32 caliber revolver.
The muscles in my stomach and groin contracted; I could feel heat come into my cheeks and a shaking start up inside. This was the second time in eighteen hours that a gun had been pointed at me, that I had tasted sudden fear and come up against sudden death. It had been bad enough with Greene, but this was worse because I was sick and exhausted and because it meant coping all over again, trying to beat the odds twice in a row.
I still had hold of the door and I considered throwing it shut, diving out of the way. But I would have had to step back to do that, to get the door in front of my body and my reflexes were shaky and not to be trusted. She had already moved forward to the threshold, too, and her finger was tight against the trigger. Too risky. Stay calm, I told myself, find another way. Don’t do anything to make her shoot.
“Back up and let me in,” she said. “Somebody might come.”
I let go of the door, retreated in slow careful steps. She came inside and pushed the door almost shut behind her with her free hand. Her face was so pale that I could see the fine tracery of veins beneath the skin, but there was nothing in her expression or in the wide amber eyes to indicate how unbalanced she was. She looked normal, in full control of herself, and that scared me even more than if she’d been wild-eyed and gibbering. She could errupt into violence at any second, on the slightest provocation-the way she must have when she destroyed my office.
She said, “You got my letter,” and I realized I still had it and the envelope and the rest of the mail in my left hand.
“Yes. I got it.”
“I shouldn’t have sent it. I shouldn’t have sent any of the letters to that Webster bitch either. They didn’t do any good. Nothing does any good. Except this.” She raised the gun slightly and looked at it as if it were a new-found friend, an ally. “This is the only way.”
“You don’t want to shoot me, Karen,” I said.
“Yes I do. I have to. You won’t leave me alone. I thought if I went to your office last week and talked to you… but you weren’t there, and I thought if I went in and did things to it, it would hurt you enough to make you go away. But you didn’t, you just kept on and on. When you asked me about Bobbie on Saturday night I knew what I had to do. I knew this was the only way. I waited for you all afternoon and all evening. And all day today. Why didn’t you come home?”
Without moving my head much I looked left, right-but I was standing in the middle of the carpet and there was nothing in a five-foot radius that I could use to disarm her. The nearest piece of furniture was the couch, three paces to my right. And nothing on it except the overcoat, a pulp magazine, a couple of throw pillows.
“Karen, listen to me-”
“No. I don’t want to listen. I just want to do what I have to before it’s too late.”
Throw pillows. Throw pillow?
“It’s already too late,” I said. “The police know the truth.”
Her forehead puckered; she bit her lip. “I don’t believe you.”
Long odds. Even if I could get over to the couch, pick up one of the pillows, it would take a perfect toss to hit the gun before she fired, throw her off-balance long enough for me to rush her. But what other choice did I have? It seemed to be either that or try to jump her cold.
I said, “It’s true, Karen. The police have been out to your house today, they’ve matched the typing on the letters with the typewriter in your living room; they know you wrote them to Christine.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said again.
“Why would I lie to you?”
“Because you want to hurt me. Along with my mother and that Webster bitch. Won’t go away, won’t stop hurting me…”
Her jaw trembled a little and her eyes were brighter; you could see the violence rippling like a dark current just beneath the surface of her face. The knotted feeling in my groin intensified. Keep her talking, for God’s sake, I thought. But don’t say anything to provoke her.
“I never wanted to hurt you, Karen. I only wanted to help your uncle.”
“No. You were working for Webster all along.”
“But I wasn’t,” I said, and took a careful sidestep toward the couch. The gun did not move in her hand. “Christine never contacted me. I never met her or talked to her.”
“You’re lying again. She had your business card. And she told me she’d hired you, just before I did it to her.”
That did not surprise me. The reason why Christine had lied was obvious: she had been trying desperately to save her life. And the lie explained how Karen had known I was a detective when I arrived at her house on Wednesday morning. I had only given her my name at the door, not my occupation, and by their own testimony Laura Nichols had not told her daughter of her plans to hire an investigator. Yet the first thing Karen had said to me was, “You’re that private detective.”
“Working for Webster,” she said now, “and then right away going to work for my mother. Don’t you think I know the real reason she hired you?”
“I don’t know what you mean. Your mother hired me to watch over your uncle.”
“That was just a lie for my benefit. She hired you to investigate me.
“Why would she do that?”
“She hates me, that’s why. She suspected I was gay. She suspected I was in love with Bobbie and wanted to hurt the bitch who killed her. She hired you so you could both work against me.”
Paranoid psychosis, I thought. Everybody out to harm her, including her mother. Especially her mother. She was the one with all the hatred, not Laura Nichols; and those feelings had to be at the root of her persecution complex and her need to strike back.
I took another step toward the couch. My nose was running again, dripping down over my upper lip; I sniffled and just let it drip. No use pressing my luck by reaching into the back pocket where my handkerchief was.