The Good Friday Murder (18 page)

“Okay,” he said, finally, “I'll stay till morning.”

“Let me make up the guest room.”

“I'm staying down here.”

“You'll be more comfortable—”

“I'll do more good down here.”

We talked for a while and then I got him a towel and a pillow. While I was fixing up the sofa, he pulled a gun out of a holster around his ankle and put it on the end table. I must have looked surprised.

“No jacket in summer,” he explained. “Nowhere else to carry it.”

“Must make it tough to swim,” I said.

“Makes a lot of things tough.” He gave me a kiss. “Go to sleep and don't worry about anything.”

I didn't sleep well. I heard things, I imagined things. I wondered if Jack was comfortable.

At about three in the morning I put my robe on and tiptoed down the stairs. I hadn't even gotten to the last step when I heard his voice from the dark living room.

“Go back to sleep. Everything's fine.”

I said, “Good night,” and went back upstairs. After that I slept.

I spent most of the next day making fruitless phone calls. The Psychology Department at NYU thought I was crazy to be looking for someone from forty years ago. The secretary said she might be able to help me, but it would take time. Records that old were stored away, and she couldn't get to them today. The registrar found Gerard K. Spanner but said that he hadn't registered since the 1950 spring term. His last known address was Newark, New Jersey, but it was unlikely he was still there. Newark, they assured me, had changed. The alumni office had no address and asked me to give them one if I found him. Sure thing.

Then I got the status and whereabouts of the coauthors of the papers Dr. Sanderson had sent me. Two were dead, three were in New York, one in Los Angeles, one outside of Chicago, and one in Boston. I started on the East Coast and worked my way west. It was a thankless task. Most of the doctors were seeing patients or unavailable. I managed to talk to two. Both remembered the Talley twins; neither had
ever heard of Gerry Spanner. I got the feeling from one of them that his circle of friends didn't include psychologists.

Jack had said he would try to find Spanner through Motor Vehicles, but I didn't hear from him, so I assumed he'd failed to turn up the name. I called and left a message saying Spanner had lived in Newark in 1950 and could he try New Jersey Motor Vehicles, too?

Finally I got in my car and drove to Greenwillow.

The twins were fine, Gene was fine, Virginia McAlpin was fine. The doctor had been to see James, who was recovering nicely. No one had called about the twins or tried to see them except me. I hung around for a while and then, satisfied that they were safe, went home.

One of my neighbors waved as I came down Pine Brook Road, and I stopped and chatted, reminding her to stay alert. A car came along, and I left her and pulled into the driveway. Since I didn't plan to go out again tonight, I put the car in the garage and shut the door.

The garbage had been collected, and the tops to the cans were askew. I straightened them up and went into the house.

Life is composed of a lot of patterns. The one I follow when I enter the house is to go to the kitchen and drop my bag and keys on the counter. After that, I think about what I want to do.

So on that afternoon I followed my usual pattern, went to the kitchen, dropped my bag on the counter and my keys next to it, and turned to the refrigerator to get some juice. What I saw as I turned was a glistening on the floor, as though someone had spilled water. It puzzled me, because there was no water around and the ceiling was quite dry. I walked toward it—it was near the window that faced the backyard—and realized it wasn't water; it was shattered glass.
A pane of the window had been broken!

It took a moment to register. Someone had broken a pane of my kitchen window.
Someone was in this house!
I swiveled on my sandal, making a dash for the telephone. Aunt Meg had taped the emergency number on the side of the phone, and I knew the Oakwood police were very responsive.
I picked up the receiver and put it to my ear. There was no dial tone, and looking down, I could see that someone had removed the thin wire connecting the base of the telephone with the little box on the wall.

I needed nothing else to tell me to get out of the house, and fast. I grabbed my bag and keys and started for the door. I didn't get there.

He must have been hiding in the closet near the stairs, because suddenly he was in front of me, a man in his sixties who could have been my father except that he was holding a gun. I stopped dead.

“So that's what you look like,” he said, his eyes appraising me.

“What do you want?”

“You know what I want.”

“I don't.” I really didn't. What I was trying to decide was whether to let him know how much I knew or play dumb. If I knew nothing, would he have any reason to kill me?

He solved my dilemma. “You keep nice careful notes, Miss B. I like a well-organized woman.”

The dining room table! Practically everything I knew was written down in the order in which I had learned it. “There's more,” I said. “Things that aren't on the table.”

“Sure.”

“There are tapes.”

“Of what?”

“Of the twins' recollections of Good Friday. They've been turned over to the New York City police.”

“Sure,” he said again.

“It's true.”

“It doesn't matter. They're worthless in a court of law.”

I had no idea whether that was true or not, but a tape could certainly be forged quite easily. “And the police know your name. I got it from Dr. Henry Courtland.”

“That old bastard still alive?”

“Quite alive. And he remembers you well.”

“If he'd given me the slightest chance, I could have done
what I wanted. What I discovered was the biggest breakthrough in the study of the mind in this century.”

“I know that. I admire you for your discovery.”

“I don't need your admiration, Miss B. I need your help.”

“I can't help you.”

“You don't have a choice.” He wagged the gun.

“Mr. Spanner, I'm sure you killed Mrs. Talley by accident.” I knew from the twins that wasn't true, but I wanted to keep him calm. Dr. Courtland had said he had a nasty temper, and the twins' story of the murder reinforced that.

He stared at me coldly for several seconds. “Don't sweet-talk me, lady. I killed someone who got in my way. That's the long and short of it.”

It wasn't the long and short of it as far as I was concerned. Forgetting my resolve to keep from angering him, I said, “You also condemned two innocent men to forty years in prison.”

“They didn't know the difference. And if I couldn't have them, I wanted to make damn sure no one could.”

“It was a long time ago. They would never try you now. Why don't you confess and get it off your conscience?” I knew it was a foolishly Catholic thing to say to a man who had probably abandoned his code of morals decades ago, if he'd ever had one.

“My idea is much easier and much quicker. You and I go to Greenwillow, and you get me one of the twins. I don't care which one. It's your choice. You give him to me, and I go back to the identity I've been using for the last forty years. You see, it doesn't make much difference whether you know my name or not. Gerry Spanner's been dead and buried for a long time. Let's go.” He waved the gun toward the side door.

I stared at him without moving. I was to choose a twin for him to kill! Echoes of World War II reverberated in my head. This man wanted me to select who would live and who would die. He would make me his accomplice. And then what? Then he would kill me.

A hundred things went through my mind. If we stayed
here long enough, Jack would probably show up and even the odds. He might be calling me now for all I knew. With the phones disconnected, it would probably just sound like a ring to him and he would assume I had gone out. But it seemed that my best bet was to stay in the house as long as possible.

“I can't get the twins for you during daylight,” I said, trying to sound calm. “Since you tried to poison James on Saturday, they've been held indoors.”

“I don't intend to get them during daylight. I want to get you out of this house before your boyfriend arrives to spend the night.”

He had been watching the house. I felt my options decreasing. If only I could leave a message for Jack; if only I could…It was hopeless. I turned toward the front door, a small, tenuous idea starting to percolate.

“Not that way,” Spanner said. “Backdoor.”

It wasn't much, but I managed to walk outside leaving the back door unlocked. If Jack tried it—and why would he?—he would think it odd. But he might come in and see the broken window. It was a chance.

“We're taking your car.”

I started down the driveway, wishing I could see a neighbor. But like the legendary elusive policeman, there weren't any around when I needed them.

I backed out of the drive, leaving the garage door open, something I ordinarily took care not to do, but who would know that? I wished there were some small thing I could drop—a wallet, a pen—but my bag was now on the floor of the car next to Spanner's feet, and I had nothing available to toss.

“I know the way, so don't do anything stupid. Drive carefully. When we get there, I'll tell you where to park.”

To get to Greenwillow, you pass through several little towns, each with its own school system, police force, and volunteer fire fighters. There were cars on the road, and we even passed a police car, which I looked at longingly, but I
was afraid to flick on the emergency flasher; Spanner would not miss that.

Finally I started seeing signs to the hospital, and I put my signal on.

“Drive right by the hospital and keep going.”

“Where are we going?”

“You'll see when we get there.”

Where we were going was the local hamburger place. Gerry Spanner was hungry and obviously thought he had a long night ahead of him. He should have been a cop, I thought, nearly smiling.

We ordered food at the drive-through window and sat in the parking lot eating. I wasn't very hungry, but I managed to drink something. Spanner ate as though he hadn't eaten all day. I toyed with the idea of opening the car door and running, but he had that gun, and even while he ate, he kept it in his hand. I didn't think I'd get very far.

When we finished, he put the waste paper on the backseat and told me to drive to the hospital. We parked some distance away and walked. The hospital and the Greenwillow wing backed up on a section of woods beyond which was a fairly new development of attractive houses. I remember Aunt Meg telling me that the woods belonged to the town, so the home-owners could be sure of having privacy in perpetuity. It also gave Spanner and me a place to sit unseen and be fairly cool in the warm evening.

It was a long wait. Most of the residents came outside after dinner, but I could see the lights on in the lounge, where several probably sat watching TV.

“How do you plan to get inside?” I asked when we had been sitting for quite some time. “The doors are all kept locked.”

“Let me worry about that.”

“I don't see what you need me for.”

That was what puzzled me. He didn't answer, and I kept thinking about it. He had used a Greenwillow resident to get the candy to the twins on Saturday, but he couldn't try that again. The twins were being kept indoors, and he had to be
able to monitor the messenger. (He couldn't chance giving a poisoned candy bar to a resident who would disappear inside the building, possibly to eat it himself.)

And he couldn't trust me to go inside and come out with one of the twins. I wouldn't do it. I would call the police from the nearest phone.

So if he knew how to get in, what did he need me for? It's funny about puzzles. When you see the answer, you can't imagine why you didn't see it before.

Gerry Spanner didn't know which room the twins lived in. He needed me to show him. He couldn't go from room to room without waking a number of residents and causing a stir. Once I saw that, I knew exactly what I had to do. It was chancy and might put an innocent person in jeopardy, but I had no other choice.

We watched the residents go inside at dusk. One by one, lights went on in the bedrooms. Another hour passed. I wanted desperately to stand, stretch, run in place, but every time my movements made a crunch, Spanner turned on me with a glare that said everything.

I tried several times to engage Spanner in conversation. I had grandiose ideas of distracting him, disarming him, dissuading him. Although I knew the chances of doing any of those things were very slim, I had to try. But Spanner had no interest in conversation. He sat slightly behind me and to my left so that he could see my every move, and whenever I tried to talk, he shushed me brusquely.

The lights started to go out. The sky was now dark and I could no longer read my watch, but if Jack had driven up from New York, he would have arrived hours ago. I had kept my eyes peeled, but had seen him nowhere.

I wasn't sure how many staff members slept at Greenwillow, but two lights remained stubbornly lit after all the others were out. I could imagine someone lying in bed with a good book—how I wished I were in my own!—until the wee hours. I was so tired that I fell asleep against a tree, waking with a start when Spanner nudged me.

“Get up,” he ordered.

I had to orient myself for a minute. Then I stood, found my bag on the ground, and followed him toward the building.

He kept one hand wrapped tightly around my upper arm, tugging at it to stop me, to move forward, to slow me down. He knew where we were going, so I assumed he had scouted the area sometime earlier.

We came out behind the hospital and moved toward the Greenwillow wing, staying close to the building. We actually entered the hospital itself through a door that led to the basement level. There was a laundry on one side of the hall, and some doors fitted with wired glass panes behind which there was no light. I don't like hospitals, probably because almost everyone I've ever visited in them died. Although we were far from any patients, it was eerie and the hall was dimly lighted, and my distaste was palpable.

Spanner led the way to a door which opened into a dark area.

“This way,” he said.

We came to a flight of stairs, at the top of which was another door, and that one opened into the Greenwillow kitchen. In the moonlight I could see pots hanging from hooks, the large refrigerator, the huge institutional stove. Spanner's fingers were pressing into my flesh, hurting me and angering me.

We came out of the kitchen and walked into the entrance area. It was dark and empty.

“You know where their room is?” he asked in a whisper.

“Yes.”

“Let's go.”

We went up the stairs and down the hall. I walked purposely past the Talleys' room and stopped at my cousin Gene's.