I got in my car and squealed out, burning rubber as I skidded around the corner two blocks down. I drove tensely, sliding through stop signs, bypassing traffic any way I could. I had to get to the house before they did. I got stuck at a light and used the time to paw through my glove compartment, looking for the flashlight. I pulled it out and checked the batteries. They seemed fine. The signal changed to green and I took off again.
Belatedly, I realized my gun was still locked in the file cabinet at the office. I nearly slammed the brakes on and went back for it, but I didn’t have time. If they went to the motel first, packed, checked out, and loaded the car up, I might have time to get to the murder weapon before they did. If they beat me to the punch, I was going to head straight for Tillie’s and call the police. I had no intention of taking on Marty Grice all by myself.
I could feel a big rush of adrenaline and my neurons fired up, completing a circuit with a joyous leap. An answer to an old question popped into my head and I suddenly knew how they’d maneuvered the stomach contents. Marty had stolen Elaine’s kitchen trash. It wasn’t any more complicated than that. The brown grocery bag Mike had seen in the hall was Elaine Boldt’s garbage, containing the empty tuna can and the soup can that comprised her supper that night. Marty had had hours to set it up and I could visualize the scenario as though I had powers of clairvoyance. Leonard went out to dinner with Lily and Marty gave Elaine a call, inviting her over on some casual pretext. Elaine stopped by and at some point was bashed in the face until dead. Marty took the keys and went over to Elaine’s as soon as it was dark. She retrieved the kitchen garbage and took it back to her house, leaving it in the hall for a minute while she went down to the basement for the kerosene. That’s when Mike had appeared, opening the front door and closing it again when he realized that something was desperately wrong. Marty finished dousing the place with kerosene and sat back to wait for Leonard’s prearranged call at nine, reporting by phone what Elaine had eaten so he could later mention it to the police. A tuna sandwich and tomato soup. Maybe Marty stuck the leftovers on her own refrigerator shelf so it would all tally up and look legitimate. Marty set the fire and then slipped over to Elaine’s where she holed up in comfort until her flight to Florida the following Monday night. My guess was that she’d dyed her hair before she left and I suspected that the fine clump of gray-brown hair I’d seen in Elaine’s bathroom wastebasket during my initial search was, in fact, additional evidence that Marty Grice had been there.
I reached the Grices’ house and pulled up across the street, taking a moment to study the house and yard. In the darkness, the fire damage was hidden, but the place still exuded that aura of ruin and abandonment. There was no sign of the car out front. No lights anywhere in the house. No pedestrians on the street.
I left the keys in the ignition and got out of the car, leaving the door ajar. I wanted to be able to ease back in and take off without a lot of fumbling around, if it came to that. I opened the trunk and took out the tools I thought I’d need. As soon as I determined that nobody was coming, I crossed the street and cut through the Grices’ side yard.
I moved quietly along the walk, surveying windows as I passed. Most of the windows at the front of the house had been broken out by the fire and boarded back up again, but there were two near the back of the house that were still intact. I chose one and jimmied it open. It was pitch-black, and the neighborhood was quiet except for crickets chirring in the grass. I knew I should give myself an escape route, but I couldn’t take the chance. If the two of them showed up, they’d spot any open windows or doors. I’d just have to work fast and hope my guess about the murder weapon was correct. I didn’t have time for mistakes.
I climbed into the kitchen and pulled the window shut. The floor crackled with broken glass as I passed through. My flashlight streaked across blackened doorframes, smoke-tinged walls, into a hallway dense with shadow. I held my breath, listening. The silence was flat, one-dimensional. The electricity was turned off and I missed the soft hum of machinery. No refrigerator, no furnace, no wall clock, no water heater ticking from the other room. Some vague phrase about the silence of the tomb came to mind, but I pushed it away.
I moved forward, startled as a shard of glass popped underfoot. Was someone moving around upstairs? I swung the light across the ceiling, half expecting footsteps to appear up there like visible dents. The imagination has primitive, cartoonlike qualities, as any child can testify. I moved again. There was some illumination farther on, a pale light spilling in from the house next door. I paused at the window that looked directly into the living room across the way. Mr. Snyder was watching a television show, images flickering silently. The only other window on this side of the house was a small one just off the kitchen near the rear. I had a theory now about the banging May Snyder heard that night and I was about to test it out. I glanced toward the room where she slept, but it was already dark. I wondered if that’s what old age is about-sleeping longer and longer hours until one day you simply don’t bother to wake.
I ran my fingers along the window frame, shining the light across the fire-warped paint, a shriveled and puckered white, like dead skin. I could see where the wood had been damaged before. I could see where it had been secured with nails again: bang-bang-bang. I propped the flashlight on the window sill. It took me a few minutes to get the flashlight angled properly so I could see what I was doing and still have both hands free to work. I edged the narrow curve of the crowbar into the window frame and pried it loose with a crack so deafening it made my heart skip. I believed Elaine had been killed with a sash weight that had been tucked back in the window frame and nailed into place. The notion had come to me in one of those flashes of insight when I heard the weights in my own bathroom window thump dully against the studs.
It was nice. It had a certain domestic tidiness about it that Marty must have liked. If the house had burned down entirely that night, then who would ever have figured it out? The bulldozers would have mowed down what was left of the house, rubble loaded into high-siders, hauled off to the dump. Even now, even as it was, who was going to know? In a way, she was foolish to come back for it. Why not just leave
it where it was? She was being pushed into a panic, probably anxious to tie up loose ends so that she could feel safe wherever she went. They might catch her, but what could they prove? The murder weapon probably had her prints all over it. Maybe it still bore strands of Elaine’s hair or fragments of broken teeth and bones, microscopic particles of flesh. I wondered what she planned to do with the grisly thing. Bury it somewhere perhaps… toss it off the end of a pier. I jammed a big screwdriver into the tight crack between the framing and the strip of wood that held it in place. Window parts must have names, I thought, but I didn’t know what they were. I was just imitating Becky’s carpentry. The result was the same. I had the frame dismantled, exposing both sets of weights, the cord connecting them, and the pulleys that regulated the raising and lowering of the sash. I hauled both sets into view, four weights all together, careful not to touch anything. Shit, prints weren’t going to show up on these things. The metal was covered with a thin film of sawdust and grime. Moisture in the wall had generated so much rust that any latent prints had probably been obliterated now. It wasn’t going to help that six months had passed. Flecks of dried blood would still show up on a microscopic exam, but I wasn’t sure what else. I shone the flashlight along the sash. At the tip were two glinting blond hairs caught in a knot of dark brown. I could feel my lips purse with distaste. I eased a small plastic Baggie over the tip and secured it with tape. I advanced the blade in the utility knife I’d brought with me and slashed through the cords, clanging the weights together inadvertently as I lowered them into a big plastic bag. Lieutenant Dolan and his trusty crime-scene crew would have fits if they saw me manhandling evidence this way, but I didn’t have any choice. I tossed the utility knife in the plastic bag along with the rest of my tools, plastic rustling with my every move-which is why I didn’t hear Leonard and Marty until they had already reached the back steps.