“I’ll tell you, Harrison,” he said on his way out. “You’re the only thing in this that doesn’t make sense. Everything else is pretty open and shut. But you don’t figure.”
“Why?”
“You swear it’s not a business thing with the girl. That she’s a friend. And then you tell us you’ve known her for a month and you weren’t balling her.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You a faggot?”
“No.”
“Everybody knows those hippie chicks go like rabbits. It’s what you call common knowledge. But you knew her for a month without getting in her pants. It don’t add up.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Number two. You go to her apartment and find her dead with a needle in her arm.” The needle was not in her arm, but I let it pass. “And what do you do? You call the cops.”
“Isn’t that what a person is supposed to do?”
“Of course it’s what a person is supposed to do. Nobody in this fucking city does what he’s supposed to do. Nobody wants to get involved. Nobody wants to call himself to the attention of the police, especially in a drug-related homicide, especially when the person in question is a hippie punk that probably uses drugs himself.”
“I don’t.”
“Yeah, you don’t. And you’re not a hippie punk either, are you? You’re some kind of a cop.”
“I work—”
“Yeah, I know. You work for this Haig, who’s some kind of private cop that I never heard of. You’re his assistant. What do you assist him with?”
“Cases.”
“Uh-huh. I’ll tell you one thing, Harrison. I hope this Haig character looks more like a cop than you do. Because you just don’t fit the image of a cop, Harrison. Private or otherwise, you’re not my idea of a cop.”
I pictured Leo Haig and tried to decide which of the two of us looked more like a cop. I gave up thinking about it because it made me feel like giggling and I didn’t want to giggle. I had the feeling that one giggle from me was all Seidenwall would need.
I wasn’t sleeping with Melanie, I had done my civic duty and called the police, and I didn’t look like any kind of a cop. Those were the three things about me that made Gregorio and Seidenwall suspicious. I couldn’t quite follow their reasoning on this, but then again I didn’t have to.
Suspicious or not, they walked out my door and down the stairs without even telling me not to leave town. So: their suspicion was evidently just on general principles, coupled with instinctive dislike.
I suppose they would have given me a much worse time if they’d had the brains to realize Melanie had been: murdered.
Three
“It was definitely murder,” I said. “First of all, Melanie would never give herself a shot of heroin. She told me she tried heroin once, she snorted it, and it made her nauseous without giving her any kind of a high at all.”
“She might try it a second time.”
“She might, but there were too many other things she liked better. And if she did try it again, it wouldn’t be with a needle. She’s terrified of needles. Some nurse had to give her an injection once and botched it, kept stabbing around trying to find the vein, and she still has nightmares about it. Still had nightmares about it. Oh, shit.”
“Settle yourself, Chip.”
I nodded across the desk at him. It’s what they call a partners’ desk, with drawers and stuff on both sides so two people can use it. I was on my side of the desk. I was very flattered to have a whole side of a desk to myself, but I really didn’t have much of anything to keep in the drawers.
Haig took a pipe out of a little wooden rack on his side of the desk. This was during his pipe period. He had trouble keeping them lit, and they kept burning his mouth. He was convinced that he would sooner or later break a pipe in, and sooner or later find a mild enough tobacco, but in the meantime he was doing his best. He thought pipe-smoking might be good for the image. He took the pipe apart and cleaned it while I settled myself. He never did get around to smoking it that night.
I said, “Another thing. Melanie was extremely careful about that air mattress. You had to take your shoes off before you sat on it, and she would make me check to see if I had anything sharp in my pockets. She was very nervous, about puncturing the thing.”
Haig nodded. “The syringe.”
“Right. Even assuming she decides to take heroin, and even assuming she’s going to shoot it, the last place in that apartment she’d pick to use a hypodermic needle is the air mattress.”
“You didn’t point this out to the police.”
“No. I didn’t point out anything to them, like telling them how she was afraid she was going to die.”
“Perfectly within your rights.” He touched his beard, stroked it with love and affection. “A citizen is under no compulsion to volunteer unrequested information to the police. He is merely obliged to answer their questions honestly and completely, and make no false statements.”
“Well, I fell down there.”
“The lock.”
“Right. They asked how I got in and I told them the lock was wrecked a couple of weeks ago in a burglary and she hadn’t got around to replacing it yet.”
“And of course you didn’t tell them you had been there once before.”
“No. I, uh, more or less gave them the impression I spent the past four hours with you.”
“I think that was wise,” he said. “They should have noticed the syringe and the air mattress. That should have been as obvious as a third nostril.” He closed his eyes for a moment and his hand worked on his beard. “You should have told me of Miss Trelawney’s fear of death.”
“What could you have done?”
“Probably nothing. Hmmm. There were five girls altogether, I understand. Five Misses Trelawney.”
“That’s right. And now three of them are dead.”
“And two alive. Are the survivors living here in New York?”
“I don’t know. I don’t really know anything about them.”
“Hmmmm. Perhaps you know more than you think. Melanie must have talked about them.”
“Actually, she didn’t talk too much about anything. She wasn’t very verbal.”
He nodded approvingly. “I’ve never felt loquacity is a mark of excellence in a woman. Nevertheless, she no doubt mentioned something about the girls who died. Their names, if nothing else.”
“Robin and Jessica.”
“One died in an auto wreck and the other fell from a window?”
“Yes. Let me think. Jessica went out the window and Robin died in the car accident.”
He pursed his lips. At least he did something weird with his lips, and I have never quite known what it is that you do when you purse your lips, but this was probably it. “Let’s not call it an accident, Chip,” he said. “Let’s merely call it a wreck, just as we’ll say that Jessica fell from a window, not that she threw herself out.”
“You think they were both murdered?”
“I think we ought to take it as a postulate for the time being. And we have to assume that whoever had a motive for murdering three of five sisters is not going to discontinue his activities before he has done for the remaining two into the bargain. Which of the sisters was the first to die?”
I had to think. “Robin first, then Jessica. I don’t know about the timing, though. All of this happened before I met Melanie. I have the impression that Jessica died two or three months ago, but I really don’t know how long before then Robin died.”