Читать книгу The Night Watcher - John Lutz - Страница 11

January 2002

The sweet, burnt smell remained in Hugh Danner’s co-op unit. Rica wondered if it would ever leave completely.

Helen Sampson said, “I don’t want to go into the kitchen.”

“You don’t have to,” Rica assured her. “We only want you to look around, see if anything might be missing or out of place.”

“Not in the kitchen.”

Rica exchanged glances with Stack. “Of course not.”

Helen Sampson was wearing a simple black dress and black flat-heeled pumps. Her straight blond hair was lank and looked greasy, and it had dark streaks, though Rica was sure she was a natural blonde. She was a gaunt, attractive woman with pale blue eyes, but she looked almost unbearably weary. Her grief was dragging her down. She glanced around her, then began walking slowly about in the living room, now and then running a finger lightly over things as if checking for dust, or maybe making sure she was among real objects and not in a bad dream.

“Approximately how many times have you been here?” Stack asked her.

She paused and looked at him as if he’d awoken her. “I’m not sure…a dozen, maybe more.”

He smiled at her and made a palms-up motion with his hands held low, gently urging her to continue.

She resumed her seemingly aimless slow roaming, her haunted eyes constantly moving.

“Do the wall hangings look the same?” he asked.

She nodded but said nothing.

“Nothing missing? I mean, did Mr. Danner have any valuable art?”

“He didn’t like art,” she said. “A decorator did the apartment a few years ago, and Hugh just left things the way they were.”

She left the living room and went down the hall to the main bedroom, moving along the wall as far away from the kitchen door as she could, actually holding her hand up to her eyes to block her view into the kitchen in case she might accidentally glance in that direction.

In the bedroom she went immediately to the bed and ran her hand over the wooden footboard, then touched the mattress softly with her fingertips. She clenched her hands together as if squeezing something between them and turned in a slow circle.

“It all looks the same,” she said. She walked to the bureau, where there was a framed photograph of her and Danner standing before what looked like a lake with boats in the distance. There were no leaves on the trees, and both of them wore jackets and were smiling, huddled tightly together. Danner had his arm around her waist and she was clutching his wrist with both her hands, as if she didn’t want him ever to release her.

“May I take this?” she asked, floating out a hand and touching the frame.

“We’ll let you know when,” Rica told her, “and we’ll make sure that you get it.”

“Hugh didn’t have any family he cared about other than his ten-year-old daughter in Oregon. I know he had a sister in Philadelphia, but they never saw each other and hardly even spoke except on birthdays. She wouldn’t want a photo like that. No one else would want it.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Rica said.

“I think we were going to be married.”

“Had he asked you?”

“No, but I’m sure he was going to.”

“Miss Sampson—” Stack began.

“Helen.”

“Of course. Helen. You’re an attractive young woman. Might there be somebody in your life who was jealous of Danner’s involvement with you? Who might have resented it and turned to violence?”

She seemed to take the question seriously, chewing her lower lip for a moment as she searched her memory, then shook her head no. “In the relationship I was in before I met Hugh,” she said, “he left me.”

“What about Danner’s former wife?” Stack asked.

“That was long over. They weren’t even good friends. Would never have had anything to do with each other except for their daughter.”

“There’s a woman’s dress and some blouses and slacks in the closet,” Rica said.

“Mine,” Helen Sampson said.

Rica smiled. “I thought so. They looked like your size.”

Helen Sampson went to a modern, glass-topped dresser in a corner and opened and closed a few drawers. Then she surprised them by gripping the dresser with both hands and shoving it to the side. It was on rollers and moving it had taken little effort even for so slight a woman. “Did you know that was there?’ she asked, pointing at something low on the wall.

Stack walked over and looked. A small safe with a combination lock was set in the wall about a foot above floor level and had been concealed by the dresser. “No,” he said. “Do you know what Danner kept in it?”

Helen Sampson shrugged. “I think just papers and such. He was an attorney, you know.”

“Yes, we did know about him being an attorney.”

“He had to put up with all those cruel lawyer jokes. So unfair.”

“Would you happen to know the combination?” Rica asked.

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

“That’s okay,” Rica said. “We’ll have a locksmith open it.”

They went into the smaller bedroom Danner had used as a home office. There was a wooden desk and chair, a bookshelf containing mostly reference books, a black metal file cabinet, and over in the corner a treadmill that looked brand-new. A stack of Money magazines was in another corner, and near it a pair of New Balance running shoes and a wadded pair of socks. The carpet was spotted with what appeared to be coffee stains. Stack’s carpet had similar stains; they were from pacing with a coffee cup while the mind was elsewhere. A large Far Side calendar was tacked to the wall behind the desk. Apparently the decorator hadn’t made it into this room.

“It was always like this,” Helen Sampson said, as if in apology.

She glanced into the gleaming tile bathroom. “The same as usual,” she said.

On the way back to the living room, Stack made it a point to stay between her and the kitchen doorway.

“I guess I wasn’t much help to you,” she said.

“We know now that nothing’s been moved around or stolen, and that there’s a safe,” Stack told her. “I’d say you helped us a lot, dear. We’re grateful to you.”

She managed a kind of half smile that faded fast. “I guess I won’t be coming back here.”

“You don’t have to,” Rica said.

“I mean, I’ll probably never see the place again. I don’t even know if I’ll want to. It’s so damned unbelievable about Hugh…so fucking unfair!”

Rica hoped she wasn’t going to start sobbing.

Stack moved to Helen Sampson and rested a hand softly on her shoulder. “Are you going to be okay?”

She nodded and swiped at an eye with a knuckle, then drew a deep breath.

“Want us to go downstairs with you?” Stack asked.

“No, no, I’m fine now, really….”

He opened the door to the hall for her, giving her a comforting smile, a final pat as he withdrew his big hand from her shoulder. “You sure?”

“Sure.”

“If you’re not going to be okay, or if you think of anything you might want us to know, you call us, you promise?”

“Of course I will.”

“Thank you, Helen.”

Rica watched Helen Sampson go, admiring the way Stack had handled her. The thing was, he did feel compassion for the woman. The other cops at the Eight-oh thought he simply had a knack for schmoozing along witnesses and victims, but Rica knew better.

“Let’s get somebody here to dust that safe for prints, then get it open,” he told her.

But she was already moving toward the phone.

They’d had time to eat lunch at a diner around the corner before the techs finished dusting the safe and the locksmith arrived to open it.

Back in Danner’s apartment, Rica could still taste pastrami. It didn’t go well with the lingering scent of Hugh Danner.

The locksmith pronounced the safe one of high quality, then used a carbide-bit drill to open it within minutes while Stack and Rica stood watching.

When the man was finished, he gathered his tools and bustled from the apartment, leaving it to one of them to open the safe door more than the few inches he’d eased it out to make sure the lock was destroyed.

Stack waited until Rica was out of the way, then stood to the side himself and slowly pulled the small, thick steel door the rest of the way open; you never knew about spring guns or explosives that might be triggered to foil safe-crackers.

But there was only one item in the safe—a roll of bills held tight by a rubber band.

“Isn’t this suspicious?” Stack said.

Rica didn’t know if he was doing some kind of TV cop act, putting her on.

He withdrew the money, then sat on the edge of the bed and counted the bills, mostly hundreds and twenties.

“Twenty thousand dollars even,” he said, looking up at Rica. “The bills have all been in circulation awhile and appear unmarked.”

Rica shrugged. “He was an attorney, you know.” Being unfair. Like life.

Stack dreamed of Laura that night. They were making love frantically, joyfully, rolling in a bed of soft green money. Then the money was on fire, the flames sweeping toward them. Stack didn’t want to part from Laura. They didn’t want to release each other but they had to in order to survive. If they stayed together, they would burn alive.

It was wrong! Stack thought, sobbing in his sleep. It wasn’t fair!

They would burn alive!

He awoke as if breaking the surface of a lake, finding himself alone in his cold bed.