That was an idea that just came to me while I was there.
I planned all the rest except that.
Lieutenant Byrnes put his copy of the confession on the desk and very softly said, “All right, Mr. Leyden, would you please sign all three copies?”
Leyden nodded. He took the pen Carella offered, turned the original copy so that he could sign it where a space had been left on the last page, and then suddenly shook his head.
“What’s the matter?” Byrnes asked.
“There’s more,” Leyden said. “I killed someone else.”
“What?” Byrnes said.
“I met a woman... I... when I was roaming around... before... before I went to the apartment. I met a woman in a bar and... and later... I... I realized I’d... I’d told her my name and... and told her my wife was cheating on me. We were... we were talking, you know, and I was upset, and I said too much. So... I... I... after I did the others, I... I went looking for her. I couldn’t remember her name, you see, in all the excitement her name had gone out of my head, but I knew I had to find her to... to make sure she... So I went back to the bar, and the bartender wouldn’t tell me what her name was, this must’ve been close to four o’clock in the morning, and I left there and was walking along wondering what to do when it came to me, all at once I remembered her name. I looked up her address in a phone book—”
“What was her name, Mr. Leyden?”
“Ryder. Marguerite Ryder.”
“Go on.”
“You getting this, Danny?” Carella asked the stenographer.
“Yo.”
“I went up there, and she said, ‘Who is it?’ and I said, ‘This is the fellow you met in the bar,’ thinking if she didn’t remember who I was I would leave her alone, there’d be no danger to me, do you understand? But she said, ‘Mr. Leyden?’ and I said, ‘Yes, Mr. Leyden,’ and she opened the door and said, ‘What is it?’ I said I had to talk to her. She said it was very late, but I guess I looked desperate, she was a nice person, you see, she never once thought I would harm her. She was... putting some dishes away or something, I don’t even remember. We went straight into the kitchen, and the first thing I saw was a knife on the drainboard, and I picked it up and stabbed her without saying a word to her. I didn’t want to but... she knew my name, you see. She knew I was Andrew Leyden who was having trouble with his wife.”
The squadroom was silent again.
“Danny, you want to get this new stuff typed?” Byrnes said.
“Yo,” the stenographer said.
Carella and Kling came down the squadroom steps with their topcoats open, the afternoon breeze coming in off the park across the street, carrying with it the late-autumn aroma of woodsmoke. The November sky behind the city’s spires looked too uniform, a placid blue that had to be false, a backdrop created by scenic designers. Even the sounds of traffic were muted now that the frantic activity of the world’s longest lunch hour had subsided; twilight seemed in gestation; the city already awaited the full onslaught of night.
They were both ravenously hungry. They had wanted to send out for sandwiches, so that they could finish the paperwork in the squadroom, but Byrnes had insisted that they take a break. Now, in the waning sunlight of the afternoon, they felt the sudden chill of night, and quickened their pace, walking rapidly to the corner, turning it, and heading for the luncheonette in the middle of the block.
“Who’s going to tell Meyer the Ryder case is closed?” Kling asked.
“We’d better break it gently,” Carella said.
“He’ll have a coronary.”
“You know something?” Carella said. “The fingerprints didn’t even belong to him.”
“To who?”
“Damascus.”
“What fingerprints?”
“The ones on the razor, the ones on the shotgun, the ones all over the goddamn apartment. They were Leyden’s all along.”
“Well, you can’t blame the lab for that,” Kling said. “They thought the dead man was Leyden. The wild prints—”
“I know, I was only saying. It can get pretty mixed up sometimes.”
“Yeah,” Kling said.
They walked silently and swiftly, their hands in their pockets. They were just outside the door to the luncheonette when Kling stopped and put his hand on Carella’s arm, and earnestly said, “Steve, would you have done it? If it had been Teddy with some guy, would you have done it?”
“No,” Carella answered.