Nowhere to Hide (20 page)

Luckily, it wasn’t too hot.

Dwight took the cup from her hand and set it on the end table. "Honey, what’s the matter?" he frowned, belting his robe. His dark hair was damp from the shower. "You look like you saw a ghost."

She merely shook her head and changed the channel on the TV.

Others were not so reticent. Calls flooded police stations across the country.

Twenty-five

"Anyone you recognize?" Mike asked, calling Ellen as soon as the broadcast was over.

"No."

Lately, news of the murder had dwindled to barely a mention, but tonight they’d done a complete recap, running Ellen’s interview along with the composite.

"The sketch might just be of some poor slob out for an evening on his own," the policeman said. "He’ll likely call in unless he told his wife he was somewhere else. That’s if he doesn’t panic seeing himself on TV, especially in connection with a murder. "

"Mrs. Harris, you’re a psychologist. Why don’t you sit down and see if you can’t come up with a profile of this guy. Do you think you can be objective?"

"I don’t know.
Maybe."
Busy work, she thought. He’s humoring me. But at least she’d be doing something.

Sitting on the sofa with the yellow legal pad on her lap, Ellen carefully penned "Serial Killers" at the top of the page. Then she drew a line down the center, headed up one column, "disorganized", and the other "organized". On the next page she began to jot down everything she could recall about what she knew of serial killers, assuming it was such a person who had murdered Gail—she had to jump off at some point.

Four pages later, Ellen jerked the pen across the page when the phone rang. She snapped up the receiver on the second ring.
Glanced at the clock.
It was twenty-five past one.

"Hello?"

No answer. But someone was on the line. She could hear breathing.

"Hello," she said again.

"Is this Ellen Harris?"
A woman’s voice, very soft, very low.
She sounds afraid, Ellen thought.

"Yes, this is Ellen Harris. Who is this,
please.
"

"It doesn’t matter. You don’t know me." The voice had dropped even lower, and Ellen had to press the receiver closer to her ear to hear. "I just wanted to tell you, I know... I know who killed your sister."

Her heart leaped. "Who is this, please?
Who—?"

"I’m sorry. I can’t tell you... I have to go... I’m sorry..."

"No, please, don’t hang up." Panic filled her. "You’re
right,
I don’t need to know who you are. Just tell me—" But it was already too late. She’d hung up. Ellen had frightened her off. She held the receiver to her ear for several seconds before finally replacing it in its cradle.

Maybe she’ll call back, she thought, without much optimism.

Angry with herself, hand shaking, she lit a cigarette and went to stand at the window. A police car drove slowly past the house, dome light whirling,
throwing
bloody color into the woods. Damn them! He won’t come if he sees that.

She had Lieutenant Oldfield’s home number, but there was really no reason to bother him. He couldn’t do much about a phone call, even if Ellen did sense that the caller was genuine.

She sat back down on the sofa, not bothering even to glance at the yellow legal pad beside her. Crushing her cigarette out in the ashtray, she felt under the cushion for the gun.

She held it in her hand for a few minutes, then, feeling reassured, put it back.

~ * ~

In the morning she woke up on the sofa, her body cramped and unrested, her mind heavy with unremembered dreams. The phone was ringing. With a silent prayer, she snatched up the receiver, but it was Myra. They’d decided not to go away, after all, she said. "We’re coming to stay with you, Ellen. Both Carl and I decided. We’re not leaving—"

"Please, Myra, I don’t want you to do that," Ellen said, her voice tight. "He’ll know if there’s someone here with me and he won’t make contact. I’m okay, really. Lieutenant Oldfield’s watching out for me. And I told you, I have—"

"I know.
An equalizer."
For a few seconds she was silent. Then, "I saw the police cruiser drive by last night."

"There you go."

"I’m here if you need me."

"No, Myra. I want you to go on your vacation just like you planned."

"Would you if it was me?" Myra asked quietly.

Ellen paused. "I’ll only feel guilty if you don’t go."

"Don’t be silly. We’ll have our vacation right here. It’ll be nice not having the kids for a few days."

There was no talking her out of it. Ellen hung up feeling a confusing blend of gratitude and exasperation.

She glanced at the pile of mail on the sideboard. She’d go through it later. Bills still had to be paid. What she needed right now, she thought, as she headed out to the kitchen, was a good, strong cup of coffee.

~ * ~

Edie was down on her hands and knees washing the floor in one of the washroom cubicles, her forehead shiny with perspiration. She used to get down at least twice a week, but now her knees bothered her, and the heat, so she’d stretched it out to once a week, just damp-mopping in between.

Edie took pride in her work, in the fact that there was not one speck of dirt to be found in the corners. Still, she had to admit she wasn’t as young as she used to be, and lately she found herself thinking how nice it would be to be able to retire. But with Harry only driving taxi part-time, they needed her money. Maybe she wouldn’t mind so much if he would talk nice to her, or smiled once in a while. But she guessed that he wouldn’t be Harry if he did. If he was ever any different, Edie no longer remembered or cared. Maybe one of these days she’d just up and leave him, just pack up her bags and fly off to Glasgow and live out her days in the fair land of her youth.

They hadn’t lived right in the city itself, but in a little green place just outside, where a sweet brook ran behind the house. Clara said it was all different now, that she wouldn’t know the place, but Edie didn’t like thinking about that.

Edie dipped her cloth into the bucket of hot, sudsy water, wrung it lightly,
then
, smiling to herself, fantasized how lovely it would be to be reunited with the sister she hadn’t seen in years, to chat with old school chums, to meet with the cheery cousins Clara talked about in her letters. She reached with her cloth into the tight space behind the toilet bowl. Maybe she’d rent a little place with a backyard, she thought, where they could all sit outside at one of those round garden tables with a pretty, striped parasol to shade them from the sun.

The fantasy set aside, she stared at the pretty blue and silver bow that her cloth had pushed into view.

Edie’s smile faded.

It was the bow that had been on the present Edie had seen standing against the photocopier, the one Cindy had told her she bought for her mom’s birthday—a painting, she had said.

"What’s it doing here?" Edie muttered to herself, but she was getting a bad feeling. She’d tried to tell the others that Cindy didn’t run away with
no
fellow, but no one wanted to listen to a cleaning lady.

Especially that Alice Fisher, who had a royal fit just because Cindy left a dirty ashtray behind.
Of course, she was always complaining about something. Lately, it was about "that ghastly smell" in the elevator.

Twenty-six

Debby Fuller Allan had slipped quietly out of bed after her husband was asleep and made the call on the downstairs phone. Her mother was gone now, taken by cancer two years earlier, carrying her daughter’s secret to her grave. But lying in bed, Debby had heard her voice clearly:
You have to tell, Debby. You don’t have to call the police. You could call the sister. You don’t have to give your name. But you have to tell, Debby. If he’s out there killing women, you have to tell someone.

Well, she’d tried. But her mother was wrong. The Harris woman had insisted on knowing her name. Still, that didn’t mean she had to give it, did she? She could just have given his name and hung up.

After Dwight left for
work,
and Kevin for school, Debby went to the phone again. Once, she got so far as to partly dialing the number. But she hung up quickly, too afraid that they’d somehow find out
who
she was. What if they could trace the call? Maybe Ellen Harris even had one of those phone setups that recorded the numbers of incoming calls.

Or maybe he’d find out she’d called and come after her.

Most importantly, she thought of the love she saw in Dwight’s eyes when he looked at her.

What would she see there if he knew?

Twenty-seven

Lloyd Anderson of Anderson Insurance arrived back from a business trip mid-morning of the next day, which was Tuesday, January 26th. Mr. Anderson had been in Vietnam, and recognized "that ghastly smell" the others had been complaining about the instant he stepped into the elevator. It was one he’d hoped never to smell again.

The police came and sprayed with something that spread a sweetness to cover the odor, and pushed up the emergency door in the ceiling. Something weighed against it, but at last it gave, and a pale, slender arm dropped down. The two policemen lifted the body down, laid it gently on the floor. Mr. Anderson, whose face had gone as white as his hair, identified the dead woman as one Cindy Miller, the employee who had been reported missing.

The news traveled throughout the building as though with a life of its own, and soon the corridor outside the elevator was crowded with shaken and weeping people who had to be gently persuaded back to their own offices. Many went on home, to be questioned later.

Noticing the horseshoe earring on the dead woman’s ear, and the other ear dotted with dried blood where an earring had been torn out, one of the policemen commented dryly, "Didn’t bring her much luck, did they?"

~ * ~

Ellen generally preferred showers, but with the shower scene from
Psycho
taunting her, she opted instead for a bath. She wouldn’t hear an intruder with the water running, and she had no intention of being taken by surprise.

The gun was on the floor beside the tub, within easy reach.

After dressing in a soft blue lambswool sweater, cream-colored slacks and her parka, she dropped the gun in her bag.
Don’t leave home without it.
She slipped the folded sheets of yellow legal paper filled with her scribbling’s in an envelope and put it in a zippered compartment on the outside of her bag.

She was just pulling out of the driveway when the phone in the house began to ring. It rang ten times before falling silent.

~ * ~

Replacing the receiver, Debby Fuller Allan thought,
There, I called! It’s not my fault no
one answered
. She was standing in a pay phone in a downtown shopping mall in East Dedham. In a way, she was relieved Ellen Harris wasn’t home. In fact, she took it as a clear sign from God that he meant her to stay out of it.

~ * ~

It was still dark outside when Alvin slipped out of bed. He went out to the kitchen and got a beer out of the fridge. He snapped the tab open. It had unnerved him a little seeing the composite of himself on TV, though not enough to panic him. As far as he was concerned, the drawing looked nothing like him. Still, he didn’t like it that the doorman had gotten that good a look at him.

It wasn’t the only thing bothering him these past couple of days. Slapping his now empty beer can down on the table, Alvin shrugged grimly into his red plaid jacket and went out the door.

Reaching his van, he slid the door open.

The ruined painting lay on the floor. The Miller bitch had put her foot through it in the struggle. He shouldn’t have taken it, though. That had been a mistake. He wasn’t quite sure why, but he knew it was. He should have put the painting with her just like he had her purse.