Palliser took him over it again, but nothing else emerged. Miguel couldn't say what kind of face, thin or round, long nose or short, anything definite. The man had had a hat on, he hadn't seen his hair. "It was just a minute, see-and it was nearly dark-"
It was the most definite information in yet, and what did it amount to? A tall thin man with a red face. And considering Miguel's size, a medium-sized man might look tall to him. And come to think, in the dusk how had the boy seen the red face?
He thanked Miguel and went back to his car. Get a formal statement from the boy tomorrow. Report in, see if they wanted him to stay overtime-if not, might go to see Roberta, if she wasn't busy correcting her fourth-graders' papers. He yawned. He wondered if Hackett had got anything on that chiropractor.
This Slasher. Hell of a thing… "Manners maketh man," he thought. If that Reyes kid hadn't been so well brought up, to stop and answer the stranger on the street, he might have been as alive as Miguel Garcia, who had providentially got scared and run.
But this was a little something, from Miguel. Piece by piece you built it up.
He drove back down Vignes to First Street, up to Los Angeles Street, and parked in the big lot behind the solid looming rectangle of the Police Facilities Building. He realized he was hungry. He took the elevator up to the homicide office and asked Lake if Hackett was in.
"No, he just called in. Said for you to call him at home."
"O.K.” Palliser passed on Miguel's story. "Not much, but more than we had before. You might circulate that very vague description around." That was easily said; it would entail a lot of work. Every patrolman had to be briefed, and because you couldn't confine it to just the one area-the Slasher might turn up anywhere next time, God forbid-every precinct station, the sheriff's' boys, and suburban forces. Just in case. They were running an extra car tonight, around that downtown area.
Higgins was on night tour this month; he lounged up to hear about it, and said start the phoning. "Hackett turn up anything definite on that new case?" asked Palliser.
"I don't think so," said Lake. "But he said he doesn't like the way it smells. Could be he's pinch-hitting for our Luis, havin' hunches."
Palliser yawned. "In Bermuda about now, I understand," he said. "I wish I was in Bermuda. Listening to some nice calypso over, say, a Cuba Libre… ”
F0UR
"You will," said Angel, standing on tiptoe to kiss him at the door, "have to learn to curb your language, Art."
"What? What have I been saying wrong?"
She laughed. "I scolded Mark for pulling the cat's tail a while ago and he distinctly said, ‘Damn.' "
Hackett grinned. "Starting young. You all right? You left those trash cans for me to bring in, I trust."
"I did. Of course I'm all right. Once you get past the morning-sickness bit-I never felt better."
"Well," said Hackett doubtfully. It seemed quite an undertaking to him.
"Silly," said Angel, and her mountain-pool eyes that shaded from green to brown were smiling at him.
Mark Christopher, who would celebrate his second birthday two months from now, fastened like a leech on Hackett's left leg and demanded imperatively, "Kitty-kitty!"
"How the hell did we get into all this?" asked Hackett plaintively. "We said two, but if this isn't a girl-I know you-and I'm not a millionaire like Luis, just remember."
"I don't mind if it's not a girl," said Angel. They wouldn't know about that for five months. "We can always try again."
"That's just what I said. Nothing doing. These days, they all expect college-”
"The more we have," said Angel logically, "the better chance that one of them will make a lot of money and support us in our old age. And there's a sort of exotic new French casserole for dinner. Yes, I remembered about calories-though I think the doctor's silly about that, you're a big man, you need lots of good food. You're not really too fat."
"Not yet," said Hackett gloomily. Ten pounds off, the doctor had said firmly.
"And you don't have to go out again, do you?"
"Well, there's a new one come up, on top of this damned Slasher thing. I'd better call in, anyway, and if anything new has turned up-"
Angel made a face at him. "Why did I ever marry a cop?"
"You want to be reminded?" He reached for her again but she laughed and backed off.
"Fifteen minutes-I'll just get it out of the oven."
"Daddy get kitty-kitty!" said Mark Christopher. Hackett looked around and pointed out kitty-kitty: the big smoke-silver Persian curled in his basket by the hearth. "Kitty won't play!" said Mark tearfully.
"Well, old boy, I can't do anything about that," said Hackett, who had learned this and that about cats in the time since Mendoza had wished Silver Boy on them. He sat down in the big armchair.
That Nestor. The outside thing, or the personal, private kill? Something a little funny there, anyway. Those files…
Something nagging at him-some little thing.
Chiropractors. A four-year-course now.
The evening paper, the Herald, was unopened there on the ottoman. He didn't pick it up.
The Slasher. Quite the hell of a thing. The sooner they picked that one up…
Some little thing he'd noticed, there. And for some reason he didn't much like that Corliss woman. There was also the wife.
And…
"A sterilizer," he said aloud suddenly. "A sterilizer."
"Well, I try to keep the place reasonably clean," said Angel amusedly from the dining-room door. "Need we go quite that far?"
Alone out there in the night, a man walked a dark street. His mind was a confused jumble of thoughts, and all the thoughts were full of hate.
As long as he could remember, he had hated, and envied, and resented. He had learned to hate early, and learned why afterward.
He had hated the unknown mother who had left a baby to the orphanage. He had hated the unknown father who had begotten the baby. He had hated all the other children who laughed at him and called him names, and hated the women at the orphanage who called him stupid and punished him for breaking silly rules.
Other people had things, incomprehensibly and unfairly. Things he had never had and didn't know how to get-things he realized only dimly were good to have.
Other people concerned about them, and homes, and settled existences. He didn't know why. He didn't know why about anything, except that he hated.
He walked the dark street, an entity full of vague undirected hatred against the entire world, and his hand closed over the knife in its sheath, hard.
They had called him names, the other children. Laughed at him. People didn't like to look at him, you could see it in their eyes. As if he was a monster or something. Ever since the fire that time in the school, and the pain-the awful pain…
Nobody, he thought. Nobody. Everybody but him. Everybody against him. Bosses, calling him dumb. Girls… Everybody hating him. He could hate right back, harder.
But there was always the blood; He liked seeing the blood. Things felt better then. He got back at them then. For a little while.
He came to an open door, hesitated, went in. It was a bar, dark and noisy and crowded. He shouldered up to the bar and found a stool, ordered whiskey straight. He felt the weight of the knife in the sheath on his belt. The man on the stool next to him, raising an arm to light a cigarette, jostled him; instant red fury flowed through him like an electric current, but the bartender had put the shot glass in front of him and he picked it up with a shaking hand..