"I don't give a damn about his bimbos, I wish someone had killed them both a long time ago. But if you want my opinion ..."
Which they truly didn't.
"... this person is after the whole family. The bimbos were a smoke screen ..."
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Which theory they had considered, too. And rejected.
". . .to hide the real targets, who were my mother and father. And that means maybe Lois and I are next." She hesitated for just an instant and then said, "While you do nothing."
"We're doing all we can," Carella said.
"No, I don't think so. Not if four people can get killed in the space of two weeks, three weeks, whatever the hell it is."
"It's exactly two weeks today," Brown said.
"So, sure, that's doing something. That's doing nothing is what it's doing. Where the hell were you last night when my mother was getting killed?"
The detectives said nothing.
"You can see there's a goddamn pattern, can't you?"
"What pattern do you see, Miss Schumacher?" Carella asked patiently.
"I see Daddy's bimbo getting killed, and then Daddy himself. So we'll think this is something that has to do exclusively with him and her. But then the other bimbo gets killed..."
"By the other bimbo ..."
"Mrs Schumacher, his beloved wife," she said mockingly. "Margaret, the very first bimbo. Come September, they'd have been married for two years. But isn't the irony wonderful? By last June - even before the wedding meats were cold - he'd already found himself another girlfriend. The point is. . ."
No, your timing is off, Brown thought.
". . . this person, whoever he is, first kills the new bimbo and then my father ..."
He didn't start with the Brauer girl till this year.
"... in an attempt to make it seem as if there's a link between them ..."
"Well, there was a link," Carella said. "Your father was having an ..."
"I know what he was doing, I can read the papers, thank you. My point is the killer goes after Margaret next, so we'll think he's after all my father's little dollies when instead what he's going after is the whole damn Schumacher family. It doesn't take a genius to recognize that. I thought you were
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supposed to be policemen. Who would you like to see killed next? My sister? Me?"
"You've got that wrong, by the way," Brown said.
"Oh, have I?" she said, turning to him. "Then how do you see it? The first three murders were ..."
"I mean about when he started with the Brauer girl."
"I don't know when he started with her, whatever that means, but I know he was intimately involved with her last June."
"Couldn't have been."
"I'm telling you ..."
"Miss, we've got a letter from your father saying he met her on New Year's Day ..."
"Her letter is dated last June."
Both detectives looked at her.
"Whose letter?" Carella said.
"Well, who do you think? The woman he was keeping, the woman who was all over the newspapers, Little Suzie Sunshine."
"You have a letter Susan Brauer wrote to your father?"
"Yes."
"How'd you get it?"
"I found it."
"Where?"
"In Vermont."
"In the house your father gave you?"
"Not the house, the garage. A shoe box in the garage. I was cleaning out the garage when I moved in, and I..."
"Just that one letter in the box?"
"Yes."
"What kind of letter?" Brown asked.
"Hi!" she said, and put her hands alongside her face, and spread her fingers like fans. Blue eyes wide, smiling like Shirley Temple, she chirped in a tiny little voice, "I sure would love to suck your cock, baby!" and then snapped her hands shut and said in the same little voice, "Bye\"
Brown nodded.
"That kind of letter," she said.
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"And you found this when?" Carella asked.
"Last July. When I moved into the house up there."
"Can't be," Brown said again. "Him and Susan . . ."
"Don't tell me what can't be!" Betsy said. "I know damn well when it was! It was the most important day of my life!"
"We have his letters to her," Carella said, "all dated this year ..."
". . . and hers to him," Brown said.
"Well, I found that letter a year ago," Betsy insisted, "and it's dated Friday, June thirtieth."
"Has to be this year," Brown said.
"Are you telling me I don't know when I ... look, where's a calendar?"
Carella looked at Brown, stifled a sigh, and reached into his desk drawer. He took out his appointment book, flipped through the pages till he came to the calendar for June of this year, glanced at it briefly, looked up, and said, "The thirtieth fell on a Saturday."
"See what you got for last year," Brown said softly.
At the back of the book, facing a map showing time zones and postal area codes for the entire United States, Carella found three reduced calendars printed on the same page, the current calendar flanked above and below by calendars for the preceding year and the one following. Squinting at the smaller numerals, he studied last year's calendar, looked up, and said to Brown, "She's right, June thirtieth fell on a Friday."
Brown nodded.
"You still got that letter?" he asked.
Friday, June 30 Hi!
I like this game. I'm only sorry you didn't think of it sooner. But the next time I see you, you'll have to explain the rules again. Am I allowed to write whatever comes into my mind? Oh dear, I'll be so naughty, you won't be able to stand it.
It's raining today. Want to go splash in the
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rain with me? Want me to play with you in the rain?
You always ask me what I'm wearing. Right now I have on a push-up black lace bra, cut so low it exposes my nipples. Black silk stockings, held up by a garter belt. Black crotch-less panties. Black spiked heels. These silk stockings feel so smooth. I think you'd like to run your hand over them, run your hand up along my thigh until you reach the rim of the hose. Maybe then you'd like to move your hand over to my moist, eager cunt. My legs are spread so wide for you. But maybe, since you know I'm ready and aching for you, you'd just like to slide your cock inside me and start fucking me right this minute.
Do you think of me when you're fucking your wife?
I'm getting so hot sitting here, thinking of you and your big hard cock. Why aren't you here with me? What am I supposed to do without you here? Maybe I'11 just put my own hand between my legs, do you think I should do that? Start rubbing my middle finger against my clitoris? Yes, that's what I'll do, I think that's just what I'll do. Just touch myself and think of you and think of your cock in my mouth. Close my eyes and see that cock in my mouth, feel it in my cunt, hear you say all those things to me, oh God I wish it was your mouth down here between my legs, wish it was your tongue licking me, licking me, licking me, this can't be me talking. I would never say to you that thinking of you makes my breasts swell and grow and ache with desire, that thinking of you fucking me makes my cunt drool a river. I love the way you caress my breasts, it makes them feel red hot with desire. My wet cunt is more than ready for you, come to me, come slip your cock inside me. Fuck me real slow at first — it's so sexy to feel a cock almost pull all the way out, and then go in again as deep as it can — faster and faster, fuck me, come fuck me, I love it, I love it, oh Jesus I'm coming and you're not even here.
What an evil man you are to make me do such things.
Stop by and I'll give you a new toy. Bye!
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The same typewriter had been used on this letter as on the letters they'd found in Arthur Schumacher's safe-deposit box; the typeface was unmistakably identical. Like the seventeen other letters, this one began with first the typewritten day of the week ...
Friday.
Then the month . . .