Sondgard and Harry got into the Mercury, Harry driving, and as they moved on down the road Sondgard pointed at the telephone. “Some gadget.”
“Direct connection with the house. It’s a walkie-talkie, fancied up. So they can call us if we’re out on patrol and something goes wrong. Somebody tries to break in or something.”
“What was it Mr. Lowndes found?”
“Some sort of writing, down by the lake.”
“Writing?”
But Harry didn’t know any more, and they drove the rest of the way in silence. Harry stopped the car at the end of the road, in front of the garage, and the two men walked around the garage and down toward the lake.
Everett Lowndes was standing down there at the water’s edge. A tall spare old man, he was wearing corduroy trousers and a bulky gray knit sweater. His full mane of white hair shone in the sun from across the lake. He started up the slope when he saw them coming.
“Eric Sondgard! Good to see you again.”
“How do you do, Mr. Lowndes.”
They shook hands, and Lowndes said, “The wrong circumstances for a reunion, though. Come along.”
They followed him back down to the water’s edge. The lawn petered out a few feet from the lake, and the ground from there on was dark moist soil. Lowndes said, “You’ve got to get just the right angle on it to be able to see it at all. It’s scratched into the ground. I just happened to see it, coming down here. There. Can you see it?”
Sondgard could see it. Three words, one beneath the other, scrawled repetitiously in the dirt, the letters wavy and uneven, not all of them complete:
Robert
Robert
Robert
“So he did come to the house,” said Sondgard.
“But not inside,” said Lowndes. “Of that we are quite sure.”
“He leaves notes,” Sondgard said thoughtfully. “This is the second one.”
“You think it’s the same man? The one who killed that girl yesterday?”
“I’m almost sure of it.”
“And you say he’s left another note? But this is hardly a note, is it?”
“The first one was a note. In soap, on a mirror. I’m sorry.’ ”
Harry said, “You think he’s one of these types really wants to get caught? You know, ‘Stop me before I kill again.’ ”
“Maybe. He isn’t sane, that’s all I know for sure. So I don’t know how to guess at his meanings.”
Lowndes said, “Do you suppose that’s his own name?”
“I guess it probably is. The dead man was named Eddie, wasn’t he?”
Harry nodded. “Right.”
Lowndes said, “And there’s no one named Robert in our household.”
Sondgard looked back away from the lake, toward the road. He frowned, trying to think it through. “He came over the gate,” he said. “I don’t suppose he came over to kill Eddie. He wouldn’t even have known Eddie was there. Not without seeing him. And if he’d seen Eddie, then Eddie would have had to see him.”
Harry said, “And Eddie wouldn’t have let him get all the way over the gate. You don’t just jump over that thing.”
“That’s right. So he climbed over, and started along the road, and that’s when Eddie found him. They fought, he killed Eddie, and then he kept on down here. He didn’t try to get into the house, or the— What about the garage? The boathouse?”
“We checked them,” said Harry. “Locked last night, both of them. Still locked this morning.”
“All right. So he came down here, all the way down to the edge of the lake. Then he sat down, I guess, or knelt down. And he wrote that name on the ground. Probably his own name. But, maybe not. Anyway, then he got to his feet and turned around and left.”
Lowndes said, “You know, this may seem an odd thing to say, with poor Eddie Cranshaw hardly cold, but I think I feel sorry for that man. I could almost see him just now, as you were describing his movements, and he’s really a sad and forlorn figure.”
“He’s also pretty dangerous,” said Harry.
“I grant that.”
“I know what you mean,” Sondgard told him. “I’ve felt the same way about him.” He looked back toward the road again, and saw the blue-and-white patrol car coming toward the house. “What’s this?” He started up the slope, the other two following him.
Sondgard got to the edge of the blacktop just as Larry braked the Ford to a stop. His face was paler than before, his eyes larger. He leaned over to call through the farther window, “Dr. Sondgard! They want you right away.”
“Who? Is Dr. Walsh there?”
“Yes, sir, but this is something else. Something else has happened out at the theater.”
Mel couldn’t sleep any more.
Wakefulness came to him, and he opened heavy eyelids and stared blearily at his room, and by the quality of the light he knew it was far too early for him to be awake. It had been way past one o’clock when he’d gotten to sleep last night. If he wanted to be any good to anybody today, he had to get back to sleep.
But it was no good. First, curiosity forced him to open his eyes again, to find out exactly what time it was. Then he had to poke around on the night table to find his watch, and then he was even more awake. His eyes hurt from the daylight, but still his lids had snapped open and didn’t seem to want to close again. He found his watch at last, and it was twenty minutes past six.
Five hours sleep. Impossible.
He fell back on the bed with a groan. He had to get back to sleep.
But then last night’s beer caught up with him, and he had to get up and relieve himself. The floor was icy cold on his bare feet, and the key didn’t want to unlock the door, and then the tile floor in the bathroom was even colder. By the time he got back to bed he knew it was hopeless, but still he kept trying.
And then he couldn’t get comfortable. He twisted and turned, and mashed the sheet and blanket down under his chin, and curled his knees up, and nothing did any good. The bottom sheet kept bunching into hard ridges beneath his ribs, and the top sheet and blanket were always hanging off the bed to one side or another, and didn’t reach up far enough, and pressed down on his toes.
And he was hungry.
He finally had to give up. He pushed the offending sheet and blanket away and sat up. He picked up his watch again and strapped it to his wrist and looked at it, fully believing that he had been awake half an hour or more, trying to get back to sleep, and it was now only six twenty-five. Five minutes.
So he got out of bed. He dressed, and reached for his cigarettes, and put one between his lips. But even before lighting it he got a presentiment of what the taste would be like, and he put it back in the pack. He grabbed a towel and went across the hall to the bathroom and washed his face and hands, and then went back and finished dressing, putting a clean shirt on that immediately started to itch across the shoulder blades.
He went downstairs, intending to go out to the kitchen and make himself a cup of coffee, but by the time he got to the first floor he’d thought better of it. The shape he was in, he shouldn’t mess around with stoves and breakable dishes. Maybe the Lounge would be open across the way, or maybe at least there’d be an employee around who could be talked into letting him have a cup of coffee.
He unlocked the front door and went outside to chill damp air and a yellow-orange sun six feet up from the horizon, right at eye level where it could do the most bad. He squinted away from it, and glanced off to the right, and saw three cars parked in front of the theater. There was the white Continental, which he now knew belonged to Loueen Campbell, who acted for the joy of it and not the money, and the red MG, which belonged to Bob Haldemann. But the little old dusty Dodge was there too, and that belonged to Mary Ann McKendrick. What the dickens was she doing here this early in the morning?