“You’ll be reading it in the papers, if they let you have the papers in your cell.”
She got up unsteadily, looking at me with fear and loathing. “Nobody’sh gonna put me away. You get out of here.”
“You invited me in.”
“That wash the mistake of the week. Get out.”
She pushed her hands against my chest. I caught her wrists and held her:
“Did you have something to do with Merriman’s death?”
“I didn’t know he was dead. Let me go.”
“In a minute. I want you to tell me where Phoebe is.”
“Phoebe?” The sly dull look came back into her eyes. “What about Phoebe?”
“Your husband Homer employed me to look for her. Your daughter’s been missing for over two months. You probably know all this. I’m telling you anyway.”
“Who are you?”
“A private detective. That’s why I carry a gun.”
I let go of her wrists. She slumped onto the bed, digging her fingers into her hair as if she could hold her thoughts steady:
“Why do you come sneaking around me? I never see Phoebe. I haven’t seen her since the divorce.”
“You’re lying. Don’t you care what’s happened to her?”
“I don’t even care what’s happened to me.”
“I think you care. You wrote her name on the window of your room.”
She looked up in dull surprise. “What room?”
“In the Champion Hotel.”
“Did I do that? I must have been crazy.”
“I think you were lonely for your daughter. Where is she, Mrs. Wycherly? Is she dead?”
“How do I know? We haven’t seen each other since the divorce.”
“You have, though. On November second, the day your husband sailed, you left the ship with Phoebe–”
“Don’t call him my husband. He ishn’t – isn’t my husband.”
“Your ex-husband, then. The day he sailed, you drove away in a taxi with your daughter. Where did you go?”
She was a long time answering. Her face changed as she thought about the question. Her mouth moved, trying out words.
“I want the truth,” I said. “If you ever cared for your daughter, or care for her now, you’ll give it to me.”
“I went to the station. I took the train home.”
“To Atherton?”
She nodded.
“Did Phoebe go along with you?”
“No. I dropped her off at the St. Francis on the way to the station. She never came anywhere near the Atherton house.”
“Why did you sell that house and hide out here in Sacramento?”
“That’s my own business.”
“Business with Ben Merriman?”
She kept her head down and her eyes hidden. “Ill take the Fifth on that.” More than the cold water, the strain of the interview was sobering her.
“On grounds of self-incrimination?”
“If that’s the way you want it.”
“It isn’t. I want Phoebe.”
“I can’t give her to you. I haven’t seen her since that day in Union Square.” She couldn’t keep the feeling out of her voice, the sense of loss.
“You knew she was missing, didn’t you?”
There was another long silence. At last she said:
“I knew she planned to go away somewhere. She told me in the taxi that she didn’t want to return to Boulder Beach. She had a boy friend there, she wanted to get away from him. And other things,” she concluded vaguely.
“What other things?”
“I don’t remember. She wasn’t happy at college. She wanted to go away somewhere and live by herself and work out her own salvation.” She spoke in a steady monotone like a sleeptalker or a liar, yet there seemed to be truth in what she was saying, the truth of feeling. “That’s what Phoebe said.”
“What did you say?”
“Go ahead, I told her. People have a right to live their lives.” She raised her eyes to mine. “So why don’t you go out and leave me alone?”
“In a minute.”
“That’s what you said before. It’s a long minute, and my head hurts.”
“Too bad. Did she say where she was going?”
“No. Maybe she didn’t know.”
“She must have given you some indication.”
“She didn’t. She was going a long way, that’s all I know.” She might have been talking about her own long journey down. Grief pulled like wires at the corners of her mouth.
“All the way out of life?”
She shuddered. “Don’t say that.”
“I have to. She’s long gone, and people are dying.”
“You really believe Phoebe is dead?”
“It’s possible. It’s also possible that you know who killed her. I think you do, if she’s dead.”
“Think away, sonny boy. You’re away off orbiting by yourself, in an eccentric orbit. Why don’t you go away now, and be the first man in space?”
Her broken wit, her rapid shifts in mood and temper, disturbed me and made me angry. I said:
“You’re a strange mother, Mrs. Wycherly. You don’t seem to give a damn if your girl is dead or alive.”
She laughed in my face. I almost hit her. The horror in her was infecting me. I turned on my heel and crossed the room to the door, followed by girlish laughter.
A man was waiting for me on the other side of the door. His face was like a shiny, lumpy sausage, bulbous and queer under a silk-stocking mask. He swung a tire-iron in his hand. It came over in a looping arc and reached the side of my head before my fingers touched my gun butt. I fell backwards into the room and darkness.
Chapter 12
Ben Merriman’s head hung like a ruined planet in the darkness. I crawled away from it and woke up scrabbling at the door of the room. The room was empty. It was after three by my wrist watch, which I saw double. I had been out for some time.
My gun was still in its holster. I fingered the side of my head. It was wet and numb. My fingers got blood on them, dark as axle grease. I tried standing up. It worked.
The room was clean. The woman and her protector, if that is what he was, had left nothing but the empty bottle and my half-finished drink. I finished it.
I washed my cut head in the bathroom sink and improvised a bandage out of a clean towel. In the bathroom mirror, I looked like an Indian holy man who had run out of holiness and just about everything else.
“What happened to you?” the night clerk said when I walked into the Hacienda lobby.
“I had a little run-in with a friend of Miss Smith’s.”
“I see.” His expression combined sympathy and a hotelman’s allergy to trouble. “Who did you say you had a run-in with?”
“Miss Smith’s friend. Have they checked out?”
“Miss Smith has checked out,” he said with great distinctness, as if I might have difficulty hearing him. “There was nobody with her when she checked out or when she checked in.”
“Who carried her bags?”
“I did.”
“How did she leave?”
“By car.”
“What kind of a car?”
“I didn’t notice.”
Now I knew he was lying.
“How much did they pay you?”
He flushed up to the eyes, as if his trouble-allergy had brought on a sudden rash. “Listen, fellow, I don’t like your allegations. I gave you civil answers. Now beat it, or I’ll call the sheriff’s office.”
I was feeling weak. I beat it, on my fine new imitation rubber legs. He forgot to ask me for the towel.
I made my way to my car and drove on instruments into the city. The towers of the capital loomed in the pre-dawn sky. Guided by some perverted homing instinct I found myself going the wrong way on the one-way street that led past the parking lot of the Champion Hotel. I drove in.