‘Get the hell out of here or you’re going down to the station with this guy Mittle.’
‘Mit la,’ Feeney said, and slunk unwillingly toward the door to the hallway, casting glances back at the kitchen as he went.
O’Bannion had sent Feeney back mostly because he didn’t want Feeney to see how nervous he was. The mess in the kitchen was one thing. The way the place smelled was another — some sort of chemistry-lab stink on top, some other smell underneath it. He was afraid the underneath smell might be blood.
He glanced behind him to make sure that Feeney had gone back all the way — that he was not lingering in the foyer where the coats were hung — and then he advanced slowly across the living room. When he was beyond the view of the onlookers, he unsnapped the strap across the butt of his pistol and drew it. He went to the kitchen and looked all the way in. Empty. A mess, but empty. And . . . what was that splattered across the cabinets? He wasn’t sure, but judging by the smell —
A noise from behind him, a little shuffling sound, broke the thought off and he turned quickly, bringing his gun up.
‘Mr. Mitla?’
There was no answer, but the little shuffling sound came again. From down the hall. That meant the bathroom or the bedroom. Officer O’Bannion advanced in that direction, raising his gun and pointing its muzzle at the ceiling. He was now carrying it in much the same way Howard had carried the hedge-clippers.
The bathroom door was ajar. O’Bannion was quite sure this was where the sound had come from, and he knew it was where the worst of the smell was coming from. He crouched, and then pushed the door open with the muzzle of his gun.
‘Oh my God,’ he said softly.
The bathroom looked like a slaughterhouse after a busy day. Blood sprayed the walls and ceiling in scarlet bouquets of spatter. There were puddles of blood on the floor, and more blood had run down the inside and outside curves of the bathroom basin in thick trails; that was where the worst of it appeared to be. He could see a broken window, a discarded bottle of what appeared to be drain-cleaner (which would explain the awful smell in here), and a pair of men’s loafers lying quite a distance apart from each other. One of them was quite badly scuffed.
And, as the door swung wider, he saw the man.
Howard Mitla had crammed himself as far into the space between the bathtub and the wall as he could get when he had finished his disposal operation. He held the electric hedge-clippers on his lap, but the batteries were flat; bone was a little tougher than branches after all, it seemed. His hair still stood up in its wild spikes. His cheeks and brow were smeared with bright streaks of blood. His eyes were wide but almost totally empty — it was an expression Officer O’Bannion associated with speed-freaks and crackheads.
Holy Jesus, he thought. The guy was right — he DID kill his wife. He killed somebody, at least.
So where’s the body?
He glanced toward the tub but couldn’t see in. It was the most likely place, but it also seemed to be the one object in the room which wasn’t streaked and splattered with gore.
‘Mr. Mitla?’ he asked. He wasn’t pointing his gun directly at Howard, but the muzzle was most certainly in the neighborhood.
‘Yes, that’s my name,’ Howard said in a hollow, courteous voice. ‘Howard Mitla, CPA, at your service. Did you come to use the toilet? Go right ahead. There’s nothing to disturb you now. I think that problem’s been taken care of. At least for the time being.’
‘Uh, would you mind getting rid of the weapon, sir?’
‘Weapon?’ Howard looked at him vacantly for a moment, and then seemed to understand.
‘These?’ He raised the hedge-clippers, and the muzzle of Officer O’Bannion’s gun for the first time came to rest on Howard himself.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Sure,’ Howard said. He tossed the clippers indifferently into the bathtub. There was a clatter as the battery-hatch popped out.
‘Doesn’t matter. The batteries are flat, anyway. But . . . what I said about using the toilet? On more mature consideration, I guess I’d advise against it.’
‘You would?’ Now that the man was disarmed, O’Bannion wasn’t sure exactly how to proceed.
It would have been a lot easier if the victim were on view. He supposed he’d better cuff the guy and then call for backup. All he knew for sure was that he wanted to get out of this smelly, creepy bathroom.
‘Yes,’ Howard said. ‘After all, consider this, Officer: there are five fingers on a hand . . . just one hand, mind you . . . and . . . have you ever thought about how many holes to the underworld there are in an ordinary bathroom? Counting the holes in the faucets, that is? I make it seven.’
Howard paused and then added, ‘Seven is a prime — which is to say, a number divisible only by one and itself.’
‘Would you want to hold out your hands for me, sir?’ Officer O’Bannion said, taking his handcuffs from his belt.
‘Vi says I know all the answers,’ Howard said, ‘but Vi’s wrong.’ He slowly held out his hands.
O’Bannion knelt before him and quickly snapped a cuff on Howard’s right wrist. ‘Who’s Vi?’
‘My wife,’ Howard said. His blank, shining eyes looked directly into Officer O’Bannion’s.
‘She’s never had any problem going to the bathroom while someone else is in the room, you know. She could probably go while you were in the room.’
Officer O’Bannion began to have a terrible yet weirdly plausible idea: that this strange little man had killed his wife with a pair of hedge-clippers and then somehow dissolved her body with drain-cleaner — and all because she wouldn’t get the hell out of the bathroom while he was trying to drain the dragon.
He snapped the other cuff on.
‘Did you kill your wife, Mr. Mitla?’
For a moment Howard looked almost surprised. Then he lapsed back into that queer, plastic state of apathy again. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Vi’s at Dr. Stone’s. They’re pulling a complete set of uppers.
Vi says it’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. Why would I kill Vi?’
Now that he had the cuffs on the guy, O’Bannion felt a little better, a little more in control of the situation. ‘Well, it looks like you offed someone.’
‘It was just a finger,’ Howard said. He was still holding his hands out in front of him. Light twinkled and ran along the chain between the handcuffs like liquid silver. ‘But there are more fingers than one on a hand. And what about the hand’s owner?’ Howard’s eyes shifted around the bathroom, which had now gone well beyond gloom; it was filling up with shadows again. ‘I told it to come back anytime,’ Howard whispered, ‘but I was hysterical. I have decided I . . . I am not capable. It grew, you see. It grew when it hit the air.’
Something suddenly splashed inside the closed toilet. Howard’s eyes shifted in that direction.
So did Officer O’Bannion’s. The splash came again. It sounded as if a trout had jumped in there.
‘No, I most definitely wouldn’t use the toilet,’ Howard said. ‘I’d hold it, if I were you, Officer.
I’d hold it just as long as I possibly could, and then use the alley beside the building.’
O’Bannion shivered.
Get hold of yourself, boyo, he told himself sternly. You get hold of yourself, or you’ll wind up as nutty as this guy.
He got up to check the toilet.
‘Bad idea,’ Howard said. ‘A really bad idea.’
‘What exactly happened in here, Mr. Mitla?’ O’Bannion asked. ‘And what have you stored in the toilet?’
‘What happened? It was like . . . like . . . ‘ Howard trailed off, and then began to smile. It was a relieved smile . . . but his eyes kept creeping back to the closed lid of the toilet. ‘It was like Jeopardy,’ he said. ‘In fact, it was like Final Jeopardy. The category is The Inexplicable. The Final Jeopardy answer is, “Because they can.” Do you know what the Final Jeopardy question is, Officer?’
Fascinated, unable to take his eyes from Howard’s, Officer O’Bannion shook his head.
‘The Final Jeopardy question,’ Howard said in a voice that was cracked and roughened from screaming, ‘is: “Why do terrible things sometimes happen to the nicest people?” That’s the Final Jeopardy question. It’s all going to take a lot of thought. But I have plenty of time. As long as I stay away from the . . . the holes.’
The splash came again. It was heavier this time. The vomitous toilet seat bumped sharply up and down. Officer O’Bannion got up, walked over, and bent down. Howard looked at him with some interest.