“They can, but it is doubtful that they will. We will all have to answer their questions.”
“Don’t worry, Fan. I can take care of myself.”
They sat side by side on the bed. Ben’s grip had relaxed, and her hand was comfortably, in his, at home. She felt alarmingly warm and susceptible, and she had a strong notion that it would be wiser and safer, if less interesting, to devise a distraction. After all, if she was beginning to think along certain lines, it was more than likely that he was already ahead of her.
“Have you had dinner?” she said. “I have some tenderloin left. Would you like some?”
“No, thanks. I’m not hungry.”
They continued to sit, undistracted.
Damn it, she thought, what has become of Jay and Farley? What could be keeping them?
12
Trouble was keeping them.
Jay had had little or no experience with police stations, and he was not sure of the protocol in the present case. There was, however, a man in uniform on duty behind a high counter, and it was apparent that he was expected to appeal here if he hoped to proceed at all. He had an idea that there must be a Bureau of Missing Persons somewhere that specialized in finding folk who were lost, strayed, or stolen; the most that would be done at present, he suspected, was the recording of a few statistics, vital and otherwise, and the phony reassurance of some cynical bureaucrat who would assume at once that Terry, of the three alternatives, was a stray of the voluntary type.
“Good evening,” said the uniformed man across the high counter. “May I help you?”
This was certainly a favorable beginning, courteous if not deferential, and Jay was, sure enough, reassured.
“I want to report a missing person,” he said.
“Name?”
“Jay Miles. This is Farley Moran, a neighbor.”
“Where do you live?”
“I live at The Cornish Arms — I’m a professor at Handclasp University. You must have misunderstood me, though. I’m not missing. It’s my wife.”
The policeman permitted himself a slight smile. “And what is your wife’s name?”
“Terry. Miles, of course.”
“How long has she been missing?”
“About forty-eight hours. Since Friday afternoon.”
The policeman had been making notes on a pad. Now he threw the pencil aside and tore the top page from the pad. “Wait here a minute....”
He left the door open behind him, and Jay and Farley could see him retreating down a hall. A few minutes later he reappeared and beckoned.
“In here. Captain Bartholdi will talk to you.”
Jay was surprised; he had hardly expected, on the strength of a mere report, to draw the attention of a captain. He was no less surprised by the appearance of the man who had risen from behind the desk. Captain Bartholdi was slim, gray, handsome, urbane, and Gallic. He looked as if he would have been far more at home with an épée than a police positive.
“Sit down, gentlemen.” Captain Bartholdi indicated chairs. “Which one is Mr. Miles?”
“Jay Miles,” said Jay.
“Farley Moran,” said Farley.
Bartholdi nodded to Farley, but he directed his attention to Jay. That is, he looked at Jay, and spoke to him. But he seemed abstracted. His gray eyes had a distant expression, as if he were hearing a faint snatch of music or listening to a faraway voice.
“I understand your wife has disappeared, Professor Miles?”
“That’s right.”
“She has been gone for two days?”
“Yes. Since Friday afternoon.”
“Have you any reason to believe that the police should be interested?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I want the police to find out.”
“May I ask you why you’ve waited two days before coming to us?”
“This isn’t the first time my wife has gone off unexpectedly. I kept thinking that she would be back.”
Captain Bartholdi said, “I see,” as if he really did. “But now you’ve become anxious. Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any knowledge at all of where your wife might have gone? Did she leave home with a specific destination? Did she have an appointment with someone, for example?”
“She said something about an appointment, but I don’t believe she said whom it was with. Mr. Moran can tell you about that.”
Farley, thus cued, opened his mouth to speak. He was prevented by an arresting gesture from Bartholdi. The captain pushed his swivel chair back.
“Later, Mr. Moran. Right now, would you mind coming with me?”
“Where?” Jay, rising, had a paradoxical sensation of sinking. “Why?”
“Just follow me, please.”
He came around the desk and went out of the room. Following, followed in turn by Farley, Jay was aware of the grace of Bartholdi’s movements. (His feet, like his hands, were small and slender.) They went down the hall to the elevator. Captain Bartholdi punched a button with a delicate thumb, and the car descended. They came out in a basement corridor. It was chilly here; lights burned with a tinted pallor, as if the naked electric bulbs had been blued by the chill. Jay knew with dreadful certainty where they were bound, and what, when they got there, he would have to see. Bartholdi had paused in the corridor and was watching him.
“Professor Miles,” he began.
“It’s Terry, isn’t it? She’s dead, isn’t she?”
Jay’s voice was washed of life and luster. Bartholdi answered as if he were dictating mortuary statistics for the record.
“It’s a body. There was no identification on it. You can tell me if it’s your wife.”
They went into the morgue, and saw, and it was. It was Terry, or what was left of her. In spite of the anguish and terror of violent death, she seemed at peace in this bleak depository. Perhaps it was only that she was empty. Her throat was clawed by her own nails, where she had dug futilely at whatever had strangled her; it was a miracle that any loveliness had survived. She had clearly been dead for some time. Jay’s mind caught and clung to an ugly thought.
Thank God, the weather has been cold.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s Terry.”
He spoke with a brittle brusqueness, as if impatient with the unpleasant task that fate had imposed upon him and wishing to be done with it. Bartholdi, watching him closely, recognized the last thin defense against hysteria. He took Jay by the arm and steered him away, jerking his head toward the door as his glance slid across the white mask of Farley’s face beyond Jay’s shoulder. In the hall, the three men stopped. A long sigh, like an escape valve, came from Jay.
“Are you all right, Professor Miles?” Captain Bartholdi asked.
“Where did you find her?”
“We’d better go back to my office.”
“Poor Terry. Poor Terry.”
“I’m sorry this was necessary.”
They took the elevator back to Bartholdi’s office. Jay had a peculiar gassy sensation, as though he were in danger of violating the law of gravity with every step; he kept lifting his feet, one after the other, with exorbitant care. He felt a great relief at reaching the security of a chair. He suddenly became aware that in the chair beside him sat Farley. He had forgotten Farley. He had no such positive feeling about Bartholdi, across the desk. Although the captain seemed kind and sympathetic, he was an unpleasant factor, brimming with painful questions demanding answers.
“Would you like a glass of water?” Bartholdi asked.
“No, thanks.”
“A cigarette?”
Bartholdi passed them, and Jay and Farley accepted. The business of supplying lights accomplished, Bartholdi leaned back-behind a stratum of smoke. “Late this morning, shortly before noon, we received a call from a man who lives on the east edge of town, on Wildwood Road. This man has a son, a kid named Charles. It seems that Charles and a friend named Vernon decided on Sunday to investigate an empty old house in the neighborhood. Known as the Skully place. It seems this kid Charles was curious because he claims he saw a mysterious light moving in an upstairs window last Friday night. Or early Saturday morning, to be exact. The two boys got into the house through a basement window. Upstairs, in the same room where Charles claims to have seen the light, they found the body of your wife, Professor Miles. It. scared the daylights out of them, of course, and they ran home to spill everything to Charles’s father, who called us in, as I said. A couple of patrolmen were sent out to investigate, and there was the body, just as the kids reported.”