"Excuse me, sir, would you care for another drink?"
"Yes," said Landers. "Now look, Phil-"
On Monday morning, his day off, Palliser got up and discovered that it had stopped raining. He reread some of the dog book over breakfast. "It sounds perfectly simple," he said to Roberta. "It shouldn’t be very hard with an intelligent dog."
"I’l1 reserve judgment," said Roberta. The baby began to yell and she added, "Damn," abandoned the dishes and headed for the nursery. Palliser said to Trina, "You’re going to be a smart girl and learn all the lessons, aren’t you?"
Her eyes and tongue assured him earnestly that she would. He took her leash and put it on; Trina, thinking they were going for a walk, leaped joyfully in circles and got the leash wound around his legs. "No! Come on now."
He took her out into the drive, shortened the leash, got her on his left side and said hopefully, "Now heel! Heel, Trina!" He took a few steps forward. Trina stayed where she was. "Come! Come on now, heel."’ She suddenly noticed the neighbors’ Siamese on the fence along the driveway and lunged forward, taking Palliser unaware and nearly pulling him off his feet. "No! Down! Come, Trina-heel!"
Ten minutes later, as he urged her patiently to Come and Heel, Trina was lying flat begging to know what she’d done wrong. Roberta said from the kitchen window, "Perfectly simple."
"It takes time and practice, damn it,” said Palliser. "You can’t expect her to learn all at once, Robin. The book said-"
"Look out!" said Roberta, too late. The Siamese floated down into the driveway with a contemptuous look for a dog on a leash, and Trina took off. Not expecting it, Palliser was yanked off balance and sprawled flat, losing the leash. The Siamese swarmed up the tree in front and Trina began jumping up and down barking.
"You know, John," said Roberta, watching him pick himself up, "I think it might be simpler in the long run if you just asked for Saturdays off so you could take her to that obedience class."
Landers wanted to discuss Rank with Mendoza; he thought Palliser was reaching on this one, when they had Rank under their noses. But the inquest on Sandra was called for this morning, and he’d have to cover that. At least it wasn’t raining, and the night watch hadn’t left them anything new.
Conway went out to finish talking to the witnesses on Ames, and Hackett and Higgins were still doggedly working through the list from Pendleton. Grace and Glasser started out again hunting the other possibles on Sandra. Galeano hadn’t come in yet.
He came in about eight-thirty; he hadn’t been able to get to sleep and then when he did overslept. He’d had a funny dream, of Marta driving that old Dodge up a snaky winding mountain road, and always somebody with her, but continually changing to different people: Rappaport, Jim Newton, Offerdahl, little bent-over Mr. Dixon, Conway, Carey, Mendoza. He got up feeling stale and unhappy, and when he got to the office he wanted to talk over this new idea with Mendoza, about the possible boyfriend but no involvement with the disappearance. Whatever else, Mendoza was always acute at diagnosing human emotions. But Mendoza had already gone out somewhere.
"I don’t know where," said Sergeant Lake. "The autopsies are in on that bum on the Row and somebody named Altmeyer. And we just had a new one go down-you can take it."
"Oh, hell," said Galeano. But the habit of routine was strong in him, after fifteen years on this force, and he took down the address and went.
It was an apartment over on Commonwealth, and there was a red truck outside: the paramedics from the Fire Department. They were both leaning on the truck, one smoking, waiting for him. "She was D.O.A. when we got here," said one of them, "but we went through the gestures. O.D. of some kind, just at a guess sleeping tablets-the mother had some, and says the bottle was nearly full. She left a suicide note, the girl." He spat aside. "Makes you wonder, only twenty. Life can be trouble and worry and work, but never a bore, hah?"
"You’ve got a point," said Galeano. "Where is it?"
"Upstairs, right."
It was a nice apartment, old but good furniture, everything neat except in the bedroom where the body was. There, the paramedics had created disorder, getting her off the bed to work on her. Galeano was gentle with the silent gray-haired little woman who said stiffly she was Mrs. Olson, it was her daughter Nella.
He looked at the body and like the paramedic he wondered. Nella Olson had been twenty, and pretty: a true blonde, neat small features, a nice figure. She’d put on a fancy pink nylon nightgown to die in. There was the suicide note, in a finicky small handwriting in green ink. Dear Mama, please don’t think I am not aware of what I’m doing. It’s just that when I know how much more beautiful it is over on the other side, I would rather be there than here. Daddy and I, and Grandma and all of them will eagerly await your coming. Your loving Nella.
Galeano said, "I’ll have to take this for the inquest, Mrs. Olson. Do you know what she meant by this? About the other side, and-"
Mrs. Olson said fiercely, "It’s all them wicked books she was always reading! There oughta be a law against people writing such awful books! Always bringin’ home another one from the public liberry, and even bought ’em she did, good money spent on all them wicked books!" She pointed with a trembling finger. "As the Lord’s my judge, if she hadn’t read all them awful books, she’d be alive this minute. They oughta put all them writers in jail."
Galeano looked. There was a bookcase under the window, with a good many books in it. Pornography? He bent to look. Hidden Channels of the Mind, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, Noted Witnesses for Psychic Occurrences, Life After Death, You Do Survive Death, a lot of paperbacks, True Experiences with Ghosts, Communications with the Dead, Telephone Between Worlds, Strange Spirits, Voices From Beyond. Galeano didn’t know much about this kind of thing, but he recognized one name on several books: Rhine. Respected scientist, he remembered from an article somewhere, not a crackpot.
"All them stories about dead people!" said Mrs. Olson with a sob.
"You don’t believe in any, er, afterlife?" asked Galeano, somewhat at a loss.
"Don’t you call me no heathen! Good people get to heaven and the rest go to the bad place, but if the Lord’d wanted us to know what heaven was like He’d have put it in the Bible," she said loudly. "Al1 that about dead people talking and it don’t make any difference what church you go to and all-it’s-it’s unsettling, that’s what, and if she’d never read all them books-"
Galeano might have found it funny, some other day; as it was, he got down names and facts for a formal report, and went back to base to type it up.
Mendoza attended the requiem Mass for O’Brien. He was feeling unaccountably annoyed at Carey, who had foreseen everything. That idle thought about Rappaport as Marta Fleming’s hypothetical boyfriend had now been squashed. Looking back through Carey’s voluminous reports, he had found that Carey had already thought of it. Rappaport had a good-looking wife he seemed to be crazy about, and a new house with somewhat astronomical payments. He hadn’t been straying from home.
And Marta Fleming was really no femme fatale. A boyfriend there very likely was, but where was he? Mendoza had also looked at Jack Frost, and discovered that Frost had for six months been working such odd hours at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital that it was unlikely he had time to be anybody’s boyfriend.
He went up to Federico’s for lunch and got back to the office about one-thirty. "Tom wants to see you," said Lake. "He just came in."
"About Sandra," said Landers, hearing him and coming out of the communal office. "I think John’s woolgathering. We’ve got this perfectly good hot suspect, this Rank-the Peacock girl picked him, and he’s got the right record. It’s a waste of time to-"