Night Kills (25 page)

    "I'm going to have a little talk with Lane first. Brolan's been poking around. He may have figured out some things about our friend Charles," Foster said.

    "Good," she said.

    "I'll see you at your place around six," he said, and hung up.

    In another minute, he was driving again, enjoying the sparkling white snow and the dark branches swinging in the wind.

    

    

    BROLAN WAS NOT ABLE TO STOP SHAKING.

    Fifteen minutes after the detective had left, he sat behind his desk, his office door closed, trembling as if he had been left out in a farm field over night.

    He felt the weight of the past three days and nights on him-paranoia about the woman in the freezer, not enough sound sleep, wild suspicions and surmises about nearly everyone around him.

    One way or another, he knew, it would be over with soon. He simply didn't have the stamina for much more.

    He had put his head down on his desk, the way he once had as a grade-school boy. Had he ever been sleepier than he'd been trying to survive an afternoon of history and maths?

    It was no different now. All he wanted was sleep. Given all the trouble he was in, the desire was almost perverse.

    But he didn't care.

    He slept.

    He had no idea what time it was when his intercom buzzed. His head came up quickly, as if somebody had poked him with a pin.

    "Yes?"

    "Line two."

    Rubbing sleep from his eyes. "Do you know who it is?"

    "Somebody named Denise. Sounds young."

    "Oh. Right. Denise. Thanks."

    He picked up. "Hi."

    "Greg asked me to call you."

    "Fine."

    "He-we-wanted to know if you knew anybody who drives a silver XKE."

    "I sure do."

    "Well, he came here last night-over in Emma's apartment-and he pushed stuff around pretty good, and then he knocked me out."

    "What?"

    So, she explained. "So, you know who he is?"

    "His name is Cummings."

    "Greg thinks you should find out what he's up to."

    "I think that's a very good idea." He paused. "How do you feel, Denise?"

    "Neck's kind of stiff is all."

    "Otherwise all right?"

    "Otherwise fine."

    "I'm going to check him out. And right now."

    "The man who hit me?"

    "Right."

    "If you get a chance, punch him for me, will you?" Then she laughed. "I'm just kidding. I hate to see anybody get punched."

    "I'll try and get over there around dinner time. Maybe the three of us can order a pizza or something."

    "Greg wants to show me a serial called Jungle Girl tonight. Maybe you can watch it, too."

    Actually that sounded nice. Pleasant. Relaxing. He said, "Hope so, Denise. Hope so."

    

    

    From downtown Brolan went to the Chichester Country Club, which lay in a wooded-and now virtually snowbound area-south of the city.

    The snow, the freezing temperature, and the brutal winds hadn't kept many members from lunching there. The parking lot was full. A man in a hunting outfit on a mobile snowblower was scraping the parking lot. He waved when he saw Brolan.

    Chichester was by no means the most exclusive club in the city, but in a peculiar way it was the most difficult to get into. The men who founded the place following World War II looked for like kind only-hunters, fishermen, sports fanatics. That was the measure there-what type of man you were, and not social background or wealth. Of course, if you were impoverished and living on food stamps, it was unlikely the Chichester boys would take you, even if you knew how to catch fish with your bare hands.

    The ranch-style building stretched over a deeply sloping hill down to a small wooded area of pine and fir. It was made of native stone and rough timber, lending it the hoped-for look of rustic sophistication. The creek that ran downslope was frozen over and silver. A white-haired man in a long dark overcoat skated across the ice, holding himself erect with military decorum. At his age Brolan would be lucky to be able to get out of bed every morning, let alone do a few miles on a frozen creek.

    A chunky man in a good suit one size too small greeted Brolan just inside the door. "May I help you?"

    "I'd like to see Mr. Cummings."

    "I see. I'm afraid he's swimming right now. Maybe you'd like to wait in the bar."

    "Fine."

    The man pointed to the bar and stepped back for Brolan to walk in front of him.

    Brolan had a scotch-and-water and a cigarette. Then he had another scotch-and-water and two cigarettes. Toward the end of the second one, he started coughing. Wonderful.

    He had been in the bar twenty minutes when he started looking around. The northern wall was solid glass and overlooked steep downslopes that a few people were using for skiing. The other walls were the same native stone as the exterior. Deep leather chairs and dark wooden trundle tables took up (he rest of the space-except for the bar. All the linen was very white and very well pressed, and none of the glasses had any water stains on them, and the preppie-looking bartender was careful to call you sir without any irony in his voice whatsoever.

    Brolan decided to go looking for Cummings. He could sit there a long time. Cummings was a swimming freak. When stress not too much, he often came out here and swam all afternoon. Anyway, there was at least a chance that the doorman had mentioned Brolan to Cummings. And an equal chance that Cummings had glimpsed Brolan and decided to take off so he wouldn't have to answer any questions.

    Without having any idea where he was going, Brolan started searching through the club for the swimming pool. He found a snooker room and a den and a locker room. The pool was nearby.

    Cummings was in there. Barrel-chested, his. arms and back and chest covered with white hair, he rose and dove, rose and dove like a porpoise through the green, chlorine-smelling water. He was the only one in the pool.

    Steam misted the large window that overlooked the grounds. On the bottom of the Olympic-size pool you could see Chichester spelled out in a mosaic of blue and white tiles. Brolan walked along the edge of the pool. Cummings hadn't noticed him yet.

    Brolan went to the far end of the pool and stood next to the silver-coloured ladder leading into the water.

    After a minute or so, coming up for air, Cummings saw him. He said, spitting water, "What the hell do you want?"

    "I want to know why you broke into Emma's duplex last night."

    Cummings's answer surprised him. "How the hell'd you know about that?"

    "The girl you knocked out told me about it."

    "I didn't mean to hit her so hard. She shouldn't have been looking through my car."

    Cummings finished his lap and swam to the ladder. Climbing out of the water, he shook his head and then sleeked back his hair. He grabbed a nubby white towel from a deck chair and started towelling himself off.

    "So, what the hell're you doing here, Brolan?"

    "I want to know why you were in Emma's duplex."

    Wet, eyes red from the chlorine, white hair turned a dirty grey from the water, Cummings said, "Why the hell do you think?" He tugged his blue trunks up.

    "I don't know. That's why I'm asking you."

    Cummings began to work his jaw muscles. He narrowed his eyes and glared at Brolan. "What's going on here? You know damn well what I was looking for in her duplex. The nice little package I pay 'rent' on every month."

    Brolan started to ask him what he was talking about, but just then the doorman came into the pool area. His voice echoed off the tall ceding and the lapping green water. "There's a call for you, Mr. Cummings."

    "Thank you," Cummings said, poking a little finger into an ear and cleaning out some water. To Brolan, he said, "I've got to say one thing, Brolan. I'm surprised you'd have anything to do with this."

    "With what?"

    Some of the anger died in Cummings's eyes. His gaze was one of curiosity, then surprise. "You really don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"

    "No, I don't."

    Cummings's laugh bounced off the pool walls. "My God, Brolan, did you think it was because you two assholes are such great businessmen that you suddenly started picking off accounts?"

    "Cummings, I want you to tell me what you're talking about." Cummings patted his arrogant, handsome face with the nubby towel. "Go ask your partner, Brolan. Maybe it's time you started asking him about a lot of things."

    Before Brolan could say anything else, Cummings's wide white feet began slapping the wet tile floor. He was heading for a wall phone about ten yards away. He was obviously finished talking with Brolan, even if Brolan wasn't finished talking with him.

    But just before he reached the phone, Cummings turned around and said, "Tell the girl I'm sorry I hit her so hard."

    He walked over to the phone, jerked up the receiver, and began talking.

    Brolan stood there a long moment. What the hell had Cummings been talking about? What was he paying 'rent' on? And what did Stu Foster have to do with any of this?

    In the lobby, furious without quite knowing why, he went over to a bank of pay phones. They weren't enclosed, so he knew that he'd have to watch what he said. He called the office and asked for Foster. Still at lunch, was the answer. He hung up.

    As he walked to the parking lot, the cold finally dispelling the sharp, lingering scent of chlorine in his nostrils, his mind raced with possibilities of Stu's role in all this. But what would that be?

    And what had Cummings been looking for the night before, when he'd knocked out Denise?

    He got in his car and left the country club. As he made his way out, the man on the snowblower waved again.

    Brolan waved back and then gave his car as much power as it could handle on the icy road.

    

    

    HALFWAY THROUGH HIS SEARCH, he found the photograph. It looked as if it had been taken sometime during the sixties, because the little girl standing next to a 1967 Ford was not only dressed up in a Sunday blue dress but was also proudly hugging a Partridge Family album to her chest. The girl was very young and, in the sunny day, squinted up at the camera, which only made her look even more vulnerable than she would have naturally. The girl was Emma.

    "Did you find something?" Denise called from the other room.

    He had to clear his throat. Looking at the photograph had touched him in a way he hadn't wanted to be touched. Not by Emma. Not anymore.

    "No," he said. "I'm still looking."

    Over lunch Denise and Greg had speculated about what the man who'd broken in the previous night might have been looking for. Ultimately-because they had decided that the man probably had not found what he'd come for-they'd come over to Emma's and started looking for something that probably wasn't very mysterious at all… but something that was no doubt vital to the killer.

    In a bureau drawer Greg had found the photograph, and he couldn't stop staring at it. In a way the photo put a curse on him. He had decided that he no longer loved Emma; that in her heart she'd seen him not as an individual or a man but as that abstraction known as a cripple. He had decided two days before to keep that in mind whenever he felt sentimental or sad about her. But staring at this photo… he wondered what she'd been like as a little girl. He wished he had a time machine and could go back to her on that sunny Sunday morning and talk to her. Help her, really.

    If Greg had raised Emma, she certainly would have turned out to be a very different woman. Not hating herself; not lacking even the barest self-confidence. (She genuinely believed she was ugly and stupid; Emma-ugly and stupid!) He would have seen that she took her studies seriously, that she dated only the right kind of boys, that she went on to college… And then, of course, (in this time machine fantasy) she would have fallen in love with him. He would have offered her a wonderfully normal girlhood, and she would have returned the favour by seeing that no one loved her as well as Greg Wagner himself. And it would not have been pity, and it would not have been gratitude; it would have been pure love, an admixture of both the romantic and the more mature sorts of love, and they would have been bound up in this forever.

    He had no idea that he was crying as he sat in the sachet-scented bedroom, slumped in one corner of his wheelchair.

    But behind him, gently, Denise said, "You all right, Greg?" And when he looked up at her, he felt very foolish, of course, and unmanly, tears silver on his cheeks. "I'm fine."

    She grinned. God, she did have a cute, impish grin. "Yeah, that's just how you sound, too. Fine."

    He had to laugh. He was sad, but she got him laughing, and he silently thanked her for it.

    She came over and stood next to him and looked at the photograph. "Is that Emma?"

    "Yes."

    "Boy, she was really pretty."

    "She sure was."

    "You'll always love her, won't you, Greg?"

    He smiled up at her. "Actually I'm trying to not to."

    "Really? How come?"

    "Because she didn't love me."

    "From what you said, I'll bet she did."

    "Well, not in the way I wanted to be loved anyway."

    "So, why should that stop you from loving her in the way you want to love her?"