George was speaking now, almost as if to himself. “I loved her. No-body will ever know how much I loved her.”
Malone cleared his throat. “George, isn’t it about time we called the police?”
George nodded. “Yes, I guess so, Malone.” His eyes were sick. “This was our anniversary. It was fifteen years today.”
Malone felt an utter helplessness that was alien to him. In most situations, he knew what to do, and how to do it. But not this time. His grief was not as great as George’s, of course, but it was profound.
“I hate to ask this, George,” he said gently. “But have you got any ideas? It had to be one of your guests. You know that.”
George was silent a long moment. Then, “No, Malone. It couldn’t have been. Everybody loved her. There’s never been anybody like her, Malone. Everybody...”
Malone tried to get a stern tone into his voice, but he failed. His words came out as gently as before. “You found her without any clothes on? Where are they?”
“Under the bed,” George said. “They were in a heap beside her, but I pushed them under the bed. I don’t know why. I guess I just didn’t want anybody to know what had happened to her.”
Quickly then, Malone went around the bed once more and bent down. The dress Kathy had worn earlier was in tatters, and her underclothing had obviously been ripped from her body. Malone dropped them to the floor and went back to lean against the wall near George Weston.
“Killing her wasn’t enough,” George said. “They had to do that, too.”
For the first time in several minutes, Malone felt as if he was capable of coherent thought.
“George,” he said, “I’ll promise you something. Except for you, no one thought more of Kathy than I did. I’m going to find out who killed her, George — if it takes me the rest of my life.”
“You can’t bring her back,” George said dully. “Nobody can do that.”
“No. But we can find out who did it. It had to be somebody downstairs, George. Now, can you think of anyone who might have any reason at all to want to...” He paused. “Think hard, George.”
George shook his head. “No. Nobody.” His face was very white. “I can’t stay in here any longer, Malone. I... I’ve got to have some air. I feel sick.”
“Sure,” Malone said. “We’ll go down the back stairs.”
As they walked between the trees in the huge back lawn, John J. Malone, for once, kept his silence. He was thinking back a good many years, back to the first time he had seen George and Kathy Weston.
There had been a carnival on the outskirts of Chicago that year, and one of the feature attractions was the Cage of Death. Malone had watched two young daredevils wheel a pair of motorcycles into a giant globe fashioned of steel mesh. He had been across the midway at the time, and it was not until he got much closer that he discovered one of the riders was a girl. Her companion had ridden his motorcycle in small circles around the bottom of the cage, until he had gained sufficient momentum to suspend him and his vehicle horizontally. And then, defying gravity, he had increased the speed and looped-the-loop a dozen times.
Then the girl had done the same thing. And, at the climax, both riders were at the top of the mesh sphere one moment, and at the bottom the next, both of them looping-the-loop at the same time, and in opposite directions.
Malone had never seen anything like it. He waited around, and when the young riders came out, he told them so. That was the beginning, and Malone haunted the carny lot and the Cage of Death every night thereafter, until the carnival moved to the next town. He and the two young riders — George and Kathy — had become friends instantly. The next year, Malone had renewed the friendship. He had been watching them the night they collided head-on at the very top of the cage...
Kathy had suffered a broken arm and severe bruises, and that was all. But George had been badly mangled. During the four days when his chance of life was fifty-fifty, after the long sessions of surgery, Malone had haunted the hospital just as he had the carny lot.
He remembered the way George had tried to smile when he told him he was all right now, but that he could never ride again, and the way Kathy had cried when George said that.
But they had saved a good deal of money, and George had started dabbling in Chicago real estate. Now, on their fifteenth wedding anniversary, they were in the upper income bracket.
They’d been one of the happiest, most devoted couples Malone had ever known. They’d kept close touch with him, and he with them, and his one sure cure for the blues was an evening with George and Kathy.
Malone glanced sideways at George. “You feel like going back now?”
“In a minute,” George said.
“We’ve got to call the police.”
“Yes, I know. In just a minute.”
“About these guests of yours,” Malone said. “I got their first names when you introduced me, and that’s about all. Give me a quick rundown on them.”
George stopped walking. He sat down on a stone bench and shook a cigarette out of a crumpled pack. He rolled it around in his fingers absently, then suddenly broke it in two and flicked it away.
“There are four guys and three women in there,” Malone said. “Who are they, and what are they?”
“None of them did it,” George said.
“Never mind. What about them?”
“There’s Eddie Marcheck. He’s the short one with the crew cut. He was a talker with the carny at the same time we were with it. His wife is the tall blonde. The guy with the freckles is Del Esterly. He’s in insurance. He and his wife — that’s the girl with the glasses — have an agency.” He shook his head. “But there’s no point in this, Malone. None of them—”
“Go on,” Malone told him.
“I don’t feel much like talking.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. But this is important. What about the others?”
“Well, the other couple are Mark and Jen Stevens. They’re neighbors, and Mark is sales manager for a sporting goods firm down near the Loop.”
George’s voice was thin and tired, and Malone was beginning to dislike himself a little for putting him through the paces at a time like this. But — it had to be.
“And the solo guy?” he asked. “Who’s he?”
George hesitated a moment. When he spoke, his voice was scarcely audible. “His name’s Mc-Janet,” he said. “Les McJanet. He’s a guy I used to know — from school.”
Malone took a fresh cigar from his pocket and began, very slowly, to unwrap it, his eyes on George Weston. There had been a subtle change in George’s voice when he spoke of McJanet, something quite apart from its sudden softness. Malone put the cigar in his mouth, unlit. Around it, he said, “Is there something special about this guy McJanet?”
“No, Why?”
“I think there is,” Malone said. “I think there’s something special about him. What is it?”
George looked up at Malone, and then moved away again hesitantly.
“He’s an ex-con. He’s out on parole now. I hadn’t seen him in years, and then, this afternoon, I ran into him on State Street. I invited him to our anniversary party. He said he’d come, but that there was something he wanted me to know first.”
Malone bit the tip from his cigar and spat it out and glanced toward the house. “And that’s when he told you about the parole?”
George nodded. “I told him it didn’t make any difference. And it didn’t.”
Malone stared up at the window of the bedroom where Kathy Weston lay with her neck broken and a sheet across her naked body.