Sleep of the Innocent (13 page)

Harriet smiled uncertainly. “I realize that. But I have trouble—”

“Talking about him. Given. But we weren't. We were talking about Lydia Neilson, who knows a lot about art and music and is very nice and about whom you also have trouble talking.”

She shook her head. “Only because of what happened. Which was strange and embarrassing. And because of your job. I like Lydia, and—”

“And five years ago she told you she wanted to murder her husband. To gun him down in his own hotel, preferably on an afternoon in March, which is her favourite month, with such-and-such kind of pistol, and so on. Is that it? Even if she did, she probably wouldn't have waited five years to do it. As evidence it's pretty lousy.”

Harriet had started to giggle alarmingly. “For God's sake, stop. Before I choke on my wine. No, she never told me she wanted to kill him, honest, Officer. But she did tell me she wanted to leave him. She was having an affair with someone—I don't know who—and she was planning on taking the child and running off into the sunset. And then, suddenly, I don't exist. She doesn't call me for those girlish chats. When I call her, she says she can't—doesn't want to—talk to me. She must have decided that leaving him would be too disruptive and was trying to convince herself that the whole episode never happened. And since she had told me she loved this guy, whoever he was, I just reminded her of her folly.”

“Or maybe she figured it would be too expensive. Leaving Neilson. He was very rich, I gather.”

“It's hard to say. Money didn't seem that important to her. It must have at one time, or she wouldn't have married him, but not when I knew her. It sounds corny, but I guess she'd figured out there were more important things in life.” She broke off and looked over at him intently. “She was afraid of Neilson, you know. I suppose the bastard was violent. But Lydia's a very quiet, gentle sort of creature. I doubt if she'd kill anyone. I mean, if he threatened her child, she might pick up an heirloom shotgun and let him have it. Both barrels. She was a fierce mother. But then she would have called the police and explained what she had done and why. You see, she would have felt perfectly justified.”

Sanders appeared unconcerned with Lydia Neilson's maternal urges. “Did you get to know Neilson?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Never. Met him once or twice, that's all. I knew some architects who worked for him. General public opinion seems to be that the man was a son of a bitch. With a genius for cheating people out of what he owed them. Whoever killed him did the world a favour.”

“Could be, but we're not allowed to work on that premise. Actually, the thing that interests me is not your friend—or erstwhile friend—Lydia and whether she is likely to have done him in. I had really been sitting here looking at that wine and wondering about the champagne in Neilson's hotel room.”

“Champagne?” Harriet looked puzzled. “With his money, he could bloody well afford champagne. What's strange about it?”

“There was a girl in the room when or just before he was killed. Someone he probably had up to the room fairly often, if I have pieced together what they found at the scene accurately.”

“So he bought his little piece of fluff a bottle of champagne. It's a sad but old story, John. You must have heard of men doing that sort of thing. Even if you never do.”

“Did you want champagne? And does that make you my little piece of fluff?” He ducked the blow. “But that wasn't it. He used to order up a bottle of house red for the little piece of fluff—”

“Cheap as well as thieving and vicious.” Harriet shook her head sadly.

“And besides, Harriet. When do you open bottles of champagne if you are meeting someone for an afternoon of passion? Or sadomasochistic fun and games, if you're right about him. Before? Or after?”

“I would have thought before, wouldn't you? In most cases. A glass or two before, to bring the atmosphere up to party level, and then a glass of flat champagne afterward—in the case of Carl Neilson, to wash away the taste.
Aargh
. I could never see how Lydia could have married him. He was so slimy looking.”

“Exactly. And the bottle of cheap red rotgut had been opened. The bed bore unmistakable signs of having been used for an afternoon of—passion, S-M games, whatever. Which means—”

“The girl was gone, and he was waiting for someone else.”

Sanders nodded. “Our only problem is we don't know who.”

“That's easy,” said Harriet. Sanders looked up quickly. “He was closing a deal of some sort. That's the other reason for ordering champagne. I mean, besides weddings and christenings and birthdays and such. Which don't somehow seem to apply. To validate some sort of business deal or project that just finished or, conversely, is off to a glorious start.”

“What kind?”

“I don't know. That's your job. Except he probably wasn't launching a ship.”

Lucas took another minor road, this one heading northwest. He wanted to put at least a hundred miles between them and that cabin, and headed toward an area just populated enough, he hoped, to have motels open in the off-season. For three hours he drove into the black and starless night, until his exhausted brain began to see menacing visions rise up in his headlights; hydro-poles swayed and danced to the hypnotic music of the road as he approached them. A particularly talented one stepped neatly in front of the car. He swerved back into his lane; his heavy eyes snapped open, and his heart pounded from the shock. He was no longer fit to drive, but if he stopped to grab some sleep, she would never last through the cold spring night once the heater was turned off. He pushed grimly on.

Over the next hill what he was looking for loomed up on his right—a place that looked cheap, seedy, anonymous, and open for business. A place where the management wouldn't inquire too closely about its guests. He parked the car away from the office, walked noisily in, and smashed his hand down on the bell on the counter. Nothing. He smashed it down again, and again, and again. A voice muttered in the background, and the door behind the reception area opened wide enough to allow a head to peer around it. “Yeah?” it said, and looked suspiciously at him. The head disappeared, the door opened wider, and the entire man appeared, rumpled and dirty-looking. A thin line of dried spittle had caked on the side of his face, trailing down to his unshaven chin.

“Hey, buddy,” Lucas asked with a leer, “you gotta room? A double? And not too close to anybody else, if you know what I mean.”

“Listen, Jack, there are twenty-eight empty rooms out there.” His voice was as unpleasant as his face. “Take your goddamn pick. How far away do you want to be?”

“Aw, come on,” said Lucas. “Don't get sore. We just got married, that's all, and my girl—I mean, my wife—she's kind of shy, like.”

“I'll put you at the end,” he said sourly, reaching for a key. “The wife's not gonna like it,” he added. “It means farther to walk when she makes up the rooms, and she'll be pretty damned sore about it, but if that's what you want . . .” He paused artistically. “It'll be fifty bucks.”

The sign outside promised double rooms for forty, but Lucas pulled out some bills and dropped a fifty on the counter.

“Thanks,” he snarled, grabbing the cash with a scowl. “Sign here.”

He carried Annie in, half-awake and muttering incoherent protests, set her down carefully on the bed and went back for the first-aid kit. He fetched some clean towels from the bathroom and then stopped to look down at her, uncertain how to begin. She lay with her eyes shut, clutching her swollen wrist. That he could deal with, he thought. Sprained wrists are like sprained ankles. He wrapped an elastic bandage around it and activated a cold pack, which he fastened on clumsily with another towel.

Next he tried to cut the bloodstained jeans off her body with the tiny scissors from the kit. It didn't work. He cursed quietly and set about taking them off instead. “You'll be more comfortable without those jeans,” he said firmly. She paid no attention. He struggled with the stiff button, won, and began easing them, together with her torn and bloodied long underwear, over her hips. She was thin—her hipbones protruded sharply on either side of her concave stomach—and was wearing plain white cotton panties instead of the black lace he was somehow expecting. He quickly covered the mess on her thigh with a thick gauze pad. All the time he was working on her, she remained white-faced, expressionless, immobile. Except for her hand. Her nails bit into the flesh of the palm of her right hand as he went doggedly on.

The burn took more courage than he possessed. He picked bits of dirt, pine needles, and broken leaves from its edges and then looked to see what was in his kit. There was a tiny container of antibiotic ointment. He looked at the tube and then at that wound. He couldn't spread anything on that burned and dirty mess, and so he ripped open another gauze pad and squirted most of the gooey substance on it. As he placed the pad gingerly on the wound and wrapped more gauze around her foot, he could feel the shock that went through her body.

He searched the kit for the codeine pills he knew were there. “Take these,” he said. “And I'm sorry I'm not very good at this sort of thing.” She swallowed them, and let her head fall back on the pillows again. He raised her up, yanked back the blankets, and eased her into bed.

She fell into an uneasy slumber almost at once.

The double bed that she was occupying dominated the room. He looked around for some place to stretch out; his aching body screamed for a few hours' sleep. There was only thin cold carpet laid over the concrete floor. In desperation, he tried lying cautiously beside her, keeping well away from her side of the bed, but she tossed her head restlessly and cried out in her sleep as his weight pulled the blanket down against her injuries. He got up again, dizzy with exhaustion, found an extra blanket, and settled himself into a plastic armchair, with his feet propped up on a corner of the bed.

At 7:00 a.m., Rob Lucas stirred himself out of an uneasy sleep. He struggled awkwardly out of the chair and went to inspect his patient. She was breathing slowly and deeply, lying on her side, her hair spread on the pillow in a mass of tangled curls. If it hadn't been for the cumbersome bandage on the wrist that was flung up on the pillow beside her face, he would not have believed that any of this had happened. That and his own exhaustion. He had an irrational impulse to wake her up, to throw her out of bed, and make her admit that she felt perfectly healthy. Common sense intervened. He found his razor and toothbrush and headed for the shower.

Hot water and a sense of being clean again restored him to something closer to equanimity; he pulled the armchair over to the window and sat down to mull over his position. Problem one: in four or five hours, they were going to expect him back with his witness. And two: the woman lying on the bed right behind him should probably be in the hospital. Preferably in the city. But three: to look at it all in an organized way, her life would be in danger if he brought her back. End of discussion. They'd stay out here. He shook his head, baffled. You're crazy, Robert, he said to himself. You don't know what you're doing. Because if you don't turn up this afternoon, there's going to be a disciplinary hearing, and there goes your job. Which, on the whole, you like. At least some of the time. But if he turned around, he knew he would see the frail, battered body of little Jennifer Wilson lying on that cold concrete floor. “Screw the job,” he muttered, and rubbed his tired eyes.

He would temporize, he decided at last. This morning he would call in with some plausible excuse for not returning to the city and for not having found Annie. Something that would keep them happy for a day or so and put off the moment of decision for him.

He considered her again. She appeared to be sleeping soundly enough for him to go out for food and coffee. As he headed for the truck stop across the highway, he reflected that he was probably the worst person in the world to take charge of an injured person. Healthy himself, he had no patience with the ill. He couldn't even imagine how she must be feeling. But he was better than someone who was trying to kill her. He could at least keep her quiet, fed, and full of painkillers.

The restaurant was bright with morning sunshine; its beams lit up the torn leatherette benches and the worn tiled floor with cruel precision. It smelled of coffee, burned bacon, and disinfectant. Only one booth seemed to be occupied—by a couple of men in overalls talking quietly over egg-stained plates—and the room echoed with his footsteps as he crossed it. Eating breakfast in there was not to be thought of. The smell caught unpleasantly in his throat; and he was too restless to sit around and wait. “Give us a coffee, eh,” he said to the sleepy-eyed waitress behind the counter. “And coffee, orange juice, and toast for two, to go.”

Never had such a simple meal taken so long to prepare. He turned his back to the counter, cradling his mug of coffee in his hands and staring across the highway at the room where he had left the sleeping girl. Finally there was a slap as a bag hit the counter behind him. “That'll be five dollars and fifty cents,” said the waitress flatly. He dropped a five and a one on the counter, grabbed the bag, and walked across the room. As he crossed through the broad entrance passage, the bright red of a soft-drink machine stopped him. He dumped all his change in it and added three cans to the bag.

Annie woke up at the sound of the closing door. In one swift motion, he picked her up and carried her into the bathroom, leaving a hot damp washcloth and towel within reach on the edge of the tub, in case she wanted to wash. He couldn't tell from her expression if she was embarrassed, or resentful, or simply too miserable to care at this invasion of her privacy. She didn't protest; in fact, she didn't speak. After he settled her back in bed, she surprised him by consuming her share of the tinny orange juice, the coffee, and most of his toast as well as her own. He opened one of the cans of soft drinks, and left it on the bedside table.

“How do you feel?” he asked finally. He had been avoiding the question, afraid of what her answer might be.

“Not bad,” she said. “Thirsty. But I'm not cold anymore.”

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

She grimaced. “My foot is—” She seemed to look for words and be unable to find them. “Yes. It does. And my wrist is throbbing. But otherwise I'm okay. Just tired.”

He got her a fresh glass of water and shook two more painkillers out of the tube in his first-aid kit. She took them silently, rolled over on her side, and appeared to slip easily back into slumber.

Now he had to put some sort of plan into action before Baldy got alarmed. He couldn't risk doing it from here. She was asleep again, and he looked down at her, frowning with indecision. Leaving her alone seemed heartless, but she'd be a lot more uncomfortable if he dragged her around the countryside with him. Finally he took out his book and wrote her a note, in block capitals, clear and noticeable, explaining tersely that he had to go out, that he would be back, and that she was to stay where she was. “If things get bad,” he added after some thought, “don't be a fool. Call the motel office. Lift the phone and dial zero. They will get a doctor. Take care. Robin.” Last of all, he dropped into the motel office, where he paid for another day, told the manager's bedraggled wife to stay out of the room, and traded in their used towels for clean ones.

Lucas gave one more worried look at Annie as he dropped off the towels before climbing into the car. He stared at a road map, trying to think. If he was going to be anonymous, the first problem, clearly, was stashing this car. He started the engine and headed back in the direction they had come from.

Eighty miles and an hour and thirty minutes closer to Annie's cabin, he was standing by the side of the highway outside a moderately large town, hitching a ride. A red pickup approached, slowed, and stopped a little way ahead of him. He limped artistically up to it and climbed in. “Thanks,” he said. “You going into Deerton?”

“Umf,” muttered the driver. “Hurt yourself?” he added after a while, pointing vaguely in the direction of Lucas's lower limbs.

“Skidded into the ditch up that road back there,” said Lucas, almost as laconically. “Twisted my ankle.”

“There's a hospital,” said the driver. “In Deerton.”

“For a twisted ankle? Naw. It's okay. Is there a car rental place in town?” The driver grunted, and the two subsided into silence.

In fifteen minutes he was in possession of a new midsize four-door rental car, sober blue in color. In five more, he was standing near the entrance to the New Maple Leaf Grill, on the phone to the city, getting put through to Homicide.

“Inspector Baldwin isn't answering,” said an irritating voice.

“Then for chrissake get me Sergeant Patterson,” snapped Lucas. “This isn't a goddamn social call.”

Patterson answered at once. “Jesus, Rob, where in hell have you been?” he asked irritably. “We were—”

“Been? I'm up in the bloody north woods, that's where I am. Right now. I left this morning.”

“The hell you did,” said Patterson. “We've had the troops out since ten o'clock last night looking for you. Baldwin decided he wanted to talk to you. Then he couldn't find you, and the shit really hit the fan. Where were you?”

“It's none of your goddamn business, Patterson,” he snapped. “I was off duty. Where I was is my business—personal business, as it happens—and the department can keep its nose out of my affairs. I am not the goddamn chief—I'm a lousy sergeant, and the department can run without me. Everything I was doing is in my reports or on my desk. Go look.” He paused to take a breath. “And where in hell is Baldwin?”

“Okay, okay, don't get sore. He's walking in the door right now,” said Patterson. “Just a minute.”

“Don't say it,” said Lucas, as soon as he heard his boss's familiar voice. “Patterson just told me. Look, I'm up here in Deerton. I skidded out on a patch of ice this morning, and my goddamn car is in the bloody ditch.”

“Oh,” said Baldwin. He sounded confused. “Are you all right?”

“No, I'm not all right, damn it. I broke my fucking ankle and I wrecked my shoulder and cracked my collarbone. I can't even use crutches. I am stuck in this goddamn hospital bed, and they tell me I'll be here for weeks. I just called to tell you that, as of now, I'm on sick leave for at least two weeks, maybe three. And I never got anywhere near that girl or her bloody cottage, so you can send someone else or ask the goddamn locals to look for her. They don't seem to do anything else around here. You'll find how to get to it on my desk. Look—I gotta go. The fucking doctors are coming back. I'll call if I ever find out when I'm getting out of here.” And he hung up, fast, before Baldwin had a chance to think of anything to say. The owner of the New Maple Leaf Grill looked up incuriously, his damp cloth in his hand, pausing in his attack on the counter in front of him. He considered the large, healthy man who had been describing his pathetic injuries and shook his head in disappointment. He had heard a lot of strange stories told into that phone, and this one was a pallid effort compared to some.

Lucas got back into the rental car and headed out to a shopping center on the highway. The weather had changed suddenly in the past few hours; yesterday's brilliant spring sunshine had given way to flat gray clouds; a chill wind was blowing sheets of old newspapers and greasy hamburger containers around the parking lot. He shivered and zipped up his jacket. The automatic gesture made him consider the question of clothing for Annie. He looked around him. In addition to the supermarket he was standing in front of, there was a hardware store, a drugstore, a women's clothing store, and a bank. He suddenly thought about all those stupid bastards he had tracked down because of the paper trail of credit card slips they had left behind them and headed for the bank.

Thirty minutes later, he opened the car door and pitched in a bag containing a couple of lightweight track suits, size large, and three flannelette nightgowns, just in case. Flannelette didn't fit his image of the girl, but then he had no idea what she habitually slept in. Realistically, he supposed that she was more likely to prefer the white cotton she was wearing to black lace. The groceries sitting back there were just as randomly chosen: fruit, various kinds of biscuits and crackers, lots of odd cans and bottles of things to drink, some yogurt, and cheese. Whenever he went searching for food in the refrigerators of the women he knew, that was what he found, and he had to assume that all women in their twenties lived on this sort of thing. He himself could exist on takeout food from the restaurant across the road from the motel. That was something that six years on the police force had done for him; it had made him appreciate availability over quality in the food he ate.

As he drove back to the motel, he was conscious of a sense of nervous dread, the feeling he used to have as a child coming back from camp or visits away from home. When the taxi turned the corner onto his street, he would close his eyes in terror, sure that his comfortable house and his beautiful, impatient mother and his terrier, Bart, would be gone, replaced by a blackened, burned-out ruin, and everyone would be dead. And one time when he returned, it had happened. Only Mummy was gone, not dead, and the house was for sale, not burned to the ground. But this time, at least, there seemed to be no devastation. The motel sulked quietly under the gray sky. The management seemed to have finished whatever it did for the day to earn its keep, and the place was deserted. He pulled up with automatic caution in front of another unit, walked back, inserted the key without a noise and pushed the door open gently. Annie was lying much as he left her, breathing quietly, asleep.

She opened her eyes at the sound when he closed the door. “How are you?” he asked, a shade too heartily.

“Where were you?” she answered. Her voice sounded cracked and dry, but her eyes were accusing. “I was frightened. Someone knocked on the door, and you had disappeared. I didn't know what to do.”

He carried the water glass into the bathroom to dump it out. “I was shopping,” he said conversationally. He brought the glass back and refilled it from the jug. “Drink it,” he said. “All of it.” He put his hand behind her shoulders and lifted her up a little. “I got you a track suit,” he said. “Extra large. Not that you are, of course,” he added. “But I thought it would be easier for us to get you into it. If it were too big, I mean.”

She almost smiled.

“And while you're in the bathroom,” he said, “I'll try to straighten out the bed. It's a pity I was never in the army. I think I'd probably be a little handier at all of this.” And he picked her up again.

An hour later Annie was asleep, drugged against the pain, looking pale but reasonably healthy. He paced back and forth, trying to pretend she wasn't there. If they had to stay in this stifling room much longer, he would come to hate her. He brought his map in from the car and spread it out on the battered little table. His finger drew a circle around the motel. He didn't want to spend his time carting her around the countryside, but he had to find a place where he could sleep, too. He considered the possibilities. None of them looked that promising. He shrugged. One more night wouldn't kill him; he'd make his mind up tomorrow.

The afternoon was wearing away to a gray and miserable conclusion when Inspector Baldwin slammed down his telephone and jumped to his feet. He walked twice to the door of his office and then back to his desk again, in an agony of indecision. Finally he threw himself out into the corridor, roaring for Eric Patterson.

“He's not here,” said Kelleher. “He'll be back later this afternoon. He had a whole list of people he said you wanted him to see. Now that Lucas is out of the picture.” Kelleher looked at his watch. “Actually, he should be back soon. I'll tell him you wanted to see him.”