He left her in the elevator and walked along the corridor to his office. Hicks was already there, talking on the telephone. Hicks jabbed his finger toward the waiting room. Through the glass division Decker could see Eunice Plummer and Sandra sitting side by side. Eunice was reading an old copy of The Carytown Guide while Sandra was playing some sort of game with her fingers.
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Decker took off his sandy-colored coat and dropped it over the back of his chair. His desk was heaped with papers ° and files and scribbled memos, as well as crumpled-up paper napkins and three Styrofoam cups of cold coffee. But there was also a brass-framed photograph of Cathy. He had taken it the day before she was killed, in a corn field out on Route 5, in Charles County. She was wearing a frayed straw hat that cast a ragged shadow over her face, and she was chewing a stalk of grass. My beautiful hayseed.
"What were you doing in my nightmares last night?" he asked her, out loud.
Hicks put down the phone and said, "You okay, Lieutenant?"
"Sure, I'm fine. Didn't sleep too good, that's all." "Your face is all scratched up."
Decker touched the scab on his nose. "Yeah . . . kind of an altercation with the neighbor's pet cat."
"You should get shots for that. You don't want to get, what is it, rabies?"
Decker didn't answer. He didn't want to have to tell Hicks that it hadn't been a cat, but a briar, and not only that, an imaginary briar.
Hicks said, "I was just talking to the ME. She's pretty sure that Mrs. Maitland's injuries were caused by a double-edged swordlike weapon, approximately two and a half feet long. She suggested a bayonet, something like that."
"A bayonet? Jesus."
"I was thinking of drawing up a list of all the places in Richmond that sell bayonets. Like gun shops and military curio stores. Antique markets, too. If we can establish that Maitland actually owned a bayonet, then it won't matter so much that we haven't been able to find it."
"That's good thinking, Hicks. Why don't you start with Billy Joe Bennett at the Rebel Yell on West Cary Street? Be‑
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lieve me—if Robert E. Lee had ever had half as much ordnance as Billy Joe Bennett, he would have won the Civil War in a week."
"Okay, Lieutenant. Right on it." Hicks lifted his coat off the peg beside his desk and picked up his notebook.
"Hey, hey, slow down, sport," Decker said. "You don't need to take this weapon thing so personal. You conducted a thorough search, you couldn't find it, ergo it wasn't there. Obviously it's going to help us if we can produce the weapon in court, and prove that Maitland used it to kill his wife, but it's not the end of the world if we can't."
"I just like to have things neatly wrapped up," Hicks admitted. "I mean—how could a two-foot bayonet totally disappear? It isn't logical."
"All right, Mr. Spock," Decker said. But even as he said it, he thought about the face carved out of slices of raw chicken and banana, lying on his chopping board, and what was logical about that, or even sane?
He ran his hand through his hair, prinking up his pompadour. "I guess I'd best go see what my visitors want. By the way, how's your wife liking it here in the city?"
"Good, fine. She's okay."
"She doesn't miss Fredericksburg?"
"Some. I think she misses her friends most."
"Well, that's natural. You ought to bring her out one evening. . . . I know a couple of girls she'll really get on with. Does she like Mexican food? We could go to La Siesta."
Hicks shrugged. "I'll ask her. She's never been much for socializing."
"In that case, I insist that she comes. I can't have my partner's wife feeling lost and abandoned in the big city."
Hicks gave him a tight, unappreciative smile. "I guess not. Thanks. I'll talk to her about it."
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* * *
He rapped loose-knuckled on the door of the waiting room. Eunice Plummer looked up and beamed at him, and so did Sandra.
"Sorry I kept you waiting so long."
"That's quite all right. Sandra finished her drawing at seven o'clock last night and she's been dying to show it to you ever since. She was up at six, all dressed up in her best frock and ready to go."
"I could have sent somebody to collect it. Saved you a journey."
"I wanted to show you myself," put in Sandra.
"Well, Sandra, I really appreciate that. It's people like you who make our job a whole lot more satisfying."
"I want to help you find that So-Scary Man. He looked like this." With that, Sandra lowered her chin and frowned, and then she made her eyes roll up into her head, so that only the whites showed.
"Sandra!" Eunice Plummer protested. "You mustn't make faces! If the wind changes, you'll stay like that!"
Sandra clapped her hands in excitement. "He looked just like that! Look at my drawing—look!"
She handed Decker a rolled-up piece of art paper. Decker sat down next to her and unrolled it. He had expected a stick person in a hat. What she had actually drawn was a highly detailed pencil rendition of the front of 4140 Davis Street, with its iron railings and its Doric-pillared porch and even its carriage lamp. She had included every single brick, and shaded everything. She had even included the decorative lace curtains behind the front parlor window.
"She has a wonderful memory," Eunice Plummer said, proudly.
Decker shook his head in admiration. "Not just that, she's
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very talented. I know some professional artists who can't draw anything like as good as this."
Sandra pointed to the tall figure standing on the porch. "That's him. That's the scary man."
Her impersonation of the So-Scary Man's face had been disturbingly close to the face she had drawn. He was very tall. He was wearing what looked like a wide-brimmed slouch hat, with straggly black feathers around it, and his beard was black and wild. But it was his eyes that made him look so terrifying. They had no pupils, only whites, like the eyes of a boiled codfish, and yet they had a stare of concentrated fury, as if he were calling down every curse in the world on whoever he was looking at.
"You're right." Decker nodded. "He is pretty scary, isn't he?"
The So-Scary Man was wearing a long gray overcoat with a cape, and now Decker understood what Sandra had meant by "wings." The overcoat was unbuttoned at the front to reveal a long scabbard hanging from the man's belt. He wore dark britches and knee-length leather boots.
Decker studied the drawing for a long time. Then he asked Sandra, "You saw the So-Scary Man—but do you think he saw you?"
Sandra thought about that and then said, "Yes . . . I think so. He was looking right at me."
"Could that be dangerous?" Eunice Plummer asked, realizing what Decker was asking.
"I don't know. This is a very weird situation. This drawing—this likeness—it's totally amazing. I wish all of our witnesses could draw like this, we wouldn't need computer composites. But the fact remains that Sandra was the only person who saw this guy, nobody else. We've interviewed over thirty people who were walking along Davis Street at the same time you were, and not one of them reported see‑
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ing anybody who looked like this ... and, let's face it, he's pretty darn distinctive, isn't he?"
Eunice Plummer took hold of Sandra's hand and gave it a protective squeeze. "What are you going to do?" she asked, worriedly.
"I'm going to assume for now that he was real. I have to say that it's very unlikely that anybody was able to walk out of the Maitland house without being seen by any other passersby, but it's not one hundred percent impossible. I'm going to assign an officer to keep an eye on Sandra for the next few days, just to be on the safe side."
"You don't think that this man would try to hurt her?"