“I don’t know. You got any other suspects?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Okay. Get on it. And get the dope on the girl. Find out if she really saw her uncle. Find out when she left. Trace the cab that took her back to her apartment. Get the driver to identify her. Pin him down on the time. Then dig into her personal life and give me everything you can. I want to know where she buys her food, who fixes her teeth, what kind of toilet paper she uses.”
“It’s already being done. Just routine.”
“Yeah,” Dirkson said. “Just like checking out that letter.”
Farron looked at him. “All right. Tell me something. If that girl walked into your office with that letter, and told you what she told me, what would you do about it?”
Dirkson considered. “Off the record?”
“Of course.”
Dirkson smiled and shook his head. “I’d say, ‘Fuck her,’ and forget about it.”
8
Sheila Benton rode uptown in the taxi and assessed her performance, which wasn’t easy to do, seeing as how she was a nervous wreck.
Well, she’d gotten through it. That was the best she could say about it. That damn district attorney, with his oily, ingratiating manner. He hadn’t believed a word she said, she was sure of it. Particularly the window-shopping part. That was so feeble. But she’d had to say something. She couldn’t have said, “No, I was out buying cocaine, so I couldn’t possibly have committed the murder.”
Shit. The cocaine. They hadn’t arrested her. They hadn’t searched her. She could have had it on her all the time. She hadn’t had to mail it to herself after all. And she really could have used it now. Christ, how long did the mails take, anyway? Forever, probably. But, hell, it wasn’t like she’d sent it to Alaska. The mailbox was half a block from her house. The post office was two blocks from that. So how long could it possibly take?
The answer was, no time at all. But that didn’t matter. Because there were no more mail deliveries today. And tomorrow seemed an eternity away.
The cab pulled up in front of her building. Sheila paid it off and noted with regret that after paying a hundred for the elusive gram, she now had only twelve dollars left. Well, that was the least of her worries.
Sheila looked at her mailbox on the way in. She couldn’t help doing it, though she knew nothing could be there. She went up the stairs, unlocked the door and went in.
Christ. What a nightmare. But it was real. The body was, of course, gone, but there was a chalk outline on the floor around where it had lain, just like in the movies.
Sheila stood, looking down at it, and shuddered.
Then it all came apart for her. She’d held herself together for too long, and now it all let go. She went over and threw herself on the couch, weeping uncontrollably.
She cried for several minutes. Finally she managed to stop. She went in the bathroom and splashed water on her face. She looked at herself in the mirror. God! She looked awful. Well, why not? Who wouldn’t, after all that?
She went back and sat down on the couch.
She reached an immediate decision. It was too much to take alone. She needed help. She needed reassurance. She needed Johnny.
He’d told her he was staying at the Wilshire. She called information, got the phone number and dialed.
There was no John Dutton registered there.
Sheila hung up the phone in a cold sweat. Jesus Christ, hadn’t he said the Wilshire? She was sure he had. So why the hell wasn’t he there? And where the hell was he?
She called information again, and told them to give her the phone numbers of all the hotels in Reno. The woman at information couldn’t believe it. Was she crazy? There were three whole pages of ’em. Sheila told her to forget it and hung up the phone.
Sheila thought fleetingly of calling Johnny’s wife. Her name was Inez. Inez Dutton. She’d probably be listed. But Inez wasn’t supposed to know about her, of course. Well, Sheila could pretend she was a secretary or something, pretend it was a business call, couldn’t she?
No, she realized, she couldn’t. She could never pull it off. Not in the shape she was in. She’d break down. She’d blow it. Inez would know she wasn’t a secretary. In fact, Inez might even know Johnny’s secretary.
Shit. Of course. She was being stupid. Johnny’s secretary. Sheila didn’t know her name, but that didn’t matter.
She picked up the phone, called the investment firm and spoke to a secretary who informed her that John Dutton was out of town and would be back tomorrow. She said it was urgent, and asked if there was any place he could be reached. The secretary said, sure, in Reno at the Hotel Wilshire.
Sheila hung up the phone as if in a fog. What was happening? Was it a conspiracy? Was everyone against her?
She shook her head to clear it, and got control of herself. Okay, she had to think. Her biggest problem right now was, sooner or later she was going to be arrested for murder. She was sure of it. The D.A. hadn’t bought her story, there were no other candidates and they were going to get her. She couldn’t reach Johnny, and she needed help.
A certain kind of help was immediately available, Sheila knew. All she had to do was call Uncle Max, and he’d take care of everything. He’d swing into action, hire teams of lawyers, call the commissioner, maybe even buy the cops off, if such a thing were possible in a murder case.
But that was just the trouble. He’d take care of everything. He’d be in complete control, doing everything, telling everyone what to do. She’d have no say in anything. In fact, he probably wouldn’t even let her know what he was doing. He’d keep her in the dark, treat her like a child. And his stranglehold over her life would tighten and tighten.
Even so, this was murder, and she was so scared she probably would have called him if it hadn’t been for one thing. The coke. If Max hired lawyers for her, she’d have to tell them about the coke. Or even if she didn’t tell them, they’d find out. They’d question her, and she’d have to pretend to be cooperating with them, so she’d have to answer, and eventually they’d catch her in a lie and break her, and they’d find out.
And then Uncle Max would know. Sheila shuddered at the thought. Uncle Max. Her trustee. Uncle Max would know.
And that would cost her her inheritance.
No, damn it. Bad as the situation was, scared as Sheila was, Uncle Max was out. If anything was going to be done, she would have to do it.
Sheila got up, went in the kitchen alcove, and got out the Yellow Pages. Hell, which was it? Lawyers or attorneys? A damn stupid way to go about it, but at the moment she couldn’t think of anything else to do.
9
Steve Winslow was dreaming.
He was in a play, but the thing was, he hadn’t rehearsed it. He hadn’t rehearsed it, and he didn’t know the lines. He wasn’t even sure what the play was. It seemed to be a Chekhov, but he didn’t know which one. Uncle Vanya? The Cherry Orchard? The Sea Gull? No. Damn.
He wasn’t on stage. He was in the wings, waiting to go on. Waiting and watching the action. There was a girl on stage, and he was listening to her dialogue, trying to get a clue. Christ, if she’d just say she wanted to go to Moscow, she’d be Irina, and the play would be Three Sisters. But she wasn’t saying that.
But what she was saying was right there in the script he was holding, the script he had now, but could not take on stage. And there, just a page later, was his entrance. For a long, long scene. Lines and lines and lines, more than he could ever learn in time.
The odd thing was, the script in his hand didn’t tell him the name of the play, didn’t even give him a clue. But he didn’t even think of that. That didn’t even bother him. That wasn’t part of the dream. In the dream it never occurred to him that the play’s title should be on the script, that all he had to do was look at the cover. In the dream the script only told him the lines, the lines that he didn’t know. That and how soon it would be that he would have to say them.