Lilian Janus, dressed in a pink vest and skirt, white blouse, nylons, and white Naturalizers for her part-time job at Sibley's Department Store, had been sitting for two hours on the edge of her bed with her eyes on the naked corpse of her husband. It lay on the floor on its stomach, arms out straight, legs together, feet pointing in opposite directions, head supported by the handsome, cleft chin.
She was noticing for the very first time that the hair on his legs ended abruptly at the tops of his thighs. Practically every other part of his body, even his shoulders and his back, was covered with curly black hair. She remembered how proud he was of that hair; she remembered that he said he looked "manful" with so much hair on his body.
She had already sent her children off to school. They'd asked, "Where's Daddy?" because he was almost never absent from the breakfast table, newspaper in one hand, coffee cup in the other. "He went to work early," she'd explained, which they had readily accepted.
She now had a pair of scissors in her hand. They were a good, sharp pair of hair-cutting scissors that she'd used countless times on her husband's and kids' heads, and she was transferring them from one hand to the other, blade to palm, handle to palm. As she did this, she was remembering the way her husband had tried to seduce her the night before, his erection bobbing up and down as if to beckon her to the bed with it.
"Damned pig!" she hissed at him. "Whoever killed you, I thank them!"
She'd developed a few theories about the murder. Perhaps, while she and Frank were asleep, a burglar had come into the house and had put a knife straight into his heart, just to be safe. Or perhaps Frank had gotten up to fix himself a ham sandwich and as he carried the knife about, he fell on it. That would account for the fact that the point of the knife was now protruding from his back just to the right of his spine.
She got off the bed, kneeled next to Frank's body, and settled back on her heels. She had the hair-cutting scissors clutched tightly in her right hand. She transferred them to her left, leaned forward, and whispered to Frank's corpse, "Even in death you're very manful, aren't you, Frank?"
She had another theory about his murder. It was, she thought, the least likely of all because it involved another woman. His lover.
She'd seen her, briefly, in the mirror over the bathroom sink-a woman with flashing green eyes, an exquisite oval face, and an air of murder and hate that hung about her like a shroud. Lilian had known about that woman for a long time. She'd often seen her in mirrors, though never as clearly as she had last night. She knew that the woman's name also was Lilian, which was not, she thought, a very strange coincidence, because Lilian was a common enough name.
That woman could have killed her husband, she decided.
The woman named Lilian who seemed to exist only in mirrors.
Last night she could have come out of the mirror and shoved a steak knife deep into Frank's heart and then laid his body out straight.
So she, the real Lilian, could cut that awful black hair from him.
She leaned over Frank's back. With the hand that held the scissors she put the tip of her finger to the tip of the knife and pressed on it till a trickle of blood started. She smiled, withdrew the finger, and began to snip.
~ * ~
Ryerson Biergarten said to Joan Mott Evans, "I can't shake it, Joan. It just sits there and I can't shake it."
Joan, seated next to him on the couch, their hands clasped, had a good idea what he was talking about, not only because he'd described it to her-the field of pale blue, the dark gray smudges-but because she could see it, too, after a fashion. Not as clearly as he saw it, it was true. And it didn't stick with her, either; it came and went randomly on waves of psychic interference. But she could sense what he sensed in it-the evil, the threat, the obscenity.
"They're people," Ryerson whispered. "Yes," Joan said.
"People like Lila." He felt Joan's hand tighten. He added, "And Laurie Drake."
"It's always the young ones," Joan whispered.
"I don't think so," Ryerson said. "I don't think age matters. I think it's all in the soul."
She smiled. "You surprise me."
"With talk of the soul? I don't mean to."
"I got the clear idea that you were … antireligious."
He smiled, turned his head slightly to look at her. "I'm not antireligious, Joan. I have my beliefs, like everyone else."
"I'm glad to hear it."
"Yes," he said, "I know you are."
She let go of his hand suddenly. "I don't think I could ever get used to that, Rye."
"Get used to what?" he asked, feigning ignorance.
"You know very well what. That … habit you have of looking into people's heads whenever you want."
He took her hand; she resisted a little, then gave in. "It's not as simple as that, Joan. You of all people should know that. And I don't look into anyone's head. Whatever I see comes to me unsolicited, and most of what I see-God, most of it is best left unseen! You'd be surprised how many of our thoughts are …" He searched for the right word.
"Nasty?" Joan offered.
He smiled. "I was going to say 'inappropriate.' It's the academic in me, I guess. `Nasty' is better." A short pause. "This … thing I'm looking at now is nasty." Another pause. "I tried to talk to him, Joan. He's right in the middle of it-"
"Who? Captain Lucas?"
Ryerson nodded. "Yes. Captain Lucas. Yesterday morning, he threw me out of his office. Then I went looking for him this morning-" He stopped.
"Rye?" Joan coaxed. "What's wrong?"
Ryerson said nothing.
"Rye, please."
"I don't know. I don't know. Something's not right here."
"Something's not right where? What in the hell are you talking about."
"Here, Joan." He looked earnestly at her. "In this house."
"Jesus, Rye-you're scaring the hell out of me.
"Yes, I know. I'm sorry." He shook his head; he was clearly agitated. "Joan, you've got to leave here, you've got to leave this house."
~ * ~
In the Buffalo Police Department Records Division
Glen Coffman said, "What was that shriek I heard? It sounded like someone goosed you."
Irene Sabitch looked over at him, a huge smile on her face. "I got it, Glen."
"Well, for heaven's sake, don't give it to me."
"I got into those damned files. I found the user number and I got into them. I asked myself, now, what number would I use if I were Captain Lucas. And I answered myself, hell, there could be any of a number of different combinations, but the most likely combination would probably reflect my ego. My birth date, my shield number, my telephone number. So I got hold of all the numbers associated with him-at least all the numbers I could find, and I've been inputting them for the last two days." She paused.
"And?" Glen coaxed.
"And, at last, I got it. Two-one-five, that's the date of the Curtis murder/suicide. February fifteenth. So, two one five point LUC, for Lucas. It wasn't very inventive, but I guess that was the beauty of it-someone like me nosing about would probably discard the obvious. And I did, until the unobvious didn't work."
Glenn said nothing for a moment; he was surprised. Then, "Congratulations; you may yet learn to be a computer operator." He got up, studied her monitor a moment, then looked confusedly at her. "Well, c'mon, where is it, where's the readout?"
"That's it," she said.
"That's it? That's the whole thing?" He was looking at three sets of numbers, one on top of the other. They read:
5556892
843
28910
"That's it," Irene said. "Every file contains only those three numbers. My guess was that this one"-she pointed at the top number-"was a phone number."
"Try it," Glen said.
"I did. I had the computer check it." She paused.
"Well, go on," Glen said impatiently. "What is this, suspense night in Records Division? What did the computer say?"
"It said that that was the number for Greyhound Package Express, on Peacock Street, ten years ago."