Calypso (28 page)

    "Steve!" Meyer called.

    "You guys come bustin in here," Sarah said, following Carella down the hall, "and we're gonna lose half a yard, that's what this party was gonna bring us."

    "What've you got?" Carella asked Meyer.

    "This," Meyer said.

    "C. J.'s train schedule," Sarah said, "big deal. What the fuck good is it now? She's dead, she ain't gonna take no more trains noplace," she said, vigorously shaking her head and her breasts from side to side.

    "Will you go put something on?" Meyer said. "You're making me dizzy."

    "Lots of people say that," Sarah said, looking down at her breasts. "I wonder why."

    "Go put on a bra, will you?"

    "I don't have any bras," Sarah said, and folded her arms across her chest.

    "Ever see her consulting this?" Carella said.

    "Only once a week," Sarah said.

    "When?"

    "Every Wednesday."

    "Look at what she marked," Meyer said.

    One side of the schedule listed all trains from Isola to Tarkington, which was the last stop on the Sands Spit line. The other side of the schedule listed all trains coming into the city from the opposite direction. C. J. had circled the name of one town on the return side of the schedule: Fox Hill.

    "Listen," Sarah said, "would you guys like a drink or something? I mean, I hate to waste the fuckin afternoon, I really do."

    "Next train out is at three-oh-seven," Carella said, and looked at his watch.

    "I mean," Sarah said to Meyer, "you seem to dig the jugs, what do you say?"

    "What's this?" Carella said.

    "Where?" Meyer said.

    "Right here," Sarah said. "My bedroom's just down the hall."

    "Here on the bottom of the schedule," Carella said.

    "What do you say, Baldy?"

    "Some other time," Meyer said.

    
"When?"
Sarah said.

    Scribbled on the bottom of the schedule were the numerals 346-8711. Unless both detectives were enormously mistaken, they were looking at a telephone number.

    

    

    The harbor patrolman who took them out to the island in the Elsinore County police launch was a man named Sonny Gardner. What had been a steady downpour when they left the city an hour before had become here on the Spit a faint drizzle that was something more than fog but less than true rain, a misty cold wash that blew in off the water and penetrated the skin as if by osmosis.

    "You picked a hell of a day to go out to Hawkhurst," Sonny said. "I could think of better days."

    "Is that what the island's called?" Carella asked. "Hawkhurst?"

    "No, that's the house. The island is Kent. But the names are connected, if you know what I mean? The guy who built the house used to spend his summers in Kent. That's in England, that's a county in England. When the British were here on the Spit, the commander of the fort on one of the islands was originally from Kent. He named the two islands Greater Kent- that's the one had the fort on it-and Lesser Kent, that's the one we're going to. Anyway, the guy who later bought Lesser Kent was familiar with England and when he built the house out there, he named the house Hawkhurst, which is a town in Kent."

    "Man named Parker, is that right?" Carella said.

    "Nossir, not to my knowledge."

    "Phone company said the phone was listed to an L. Parker."

    "That's the daughter."

    "What's her first name?"

    "Lily. The old man built the house for her when she got married."

    "What was
his
name?"

    "Frank Peterson. Peterson Lumber, you familiar with it?"

    "No."

    "Very big out here on the Spit. Started the business in Jackson Cove, oh, back after World War I sometime, turned it into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. Bought the island for his daughter when she was sixteen. Only child. A birthday present, you know? How'd you like to have a father like that?" Sonny asked.

    "Yeah," Meyer said, thinking the only thing
his
father had ever given him was a double-barreled monicker.

    "Though who knows?" Sonny said.

    "People say the kid's nuts now, so who knows about things like that, huh?"

    "The kid?" Meyer said.

    "Yeah, the daughter. Well, she ain't a kid no more, she must be close to forty by now."

    "I take it she's married," Carella said.

    
"Was
married," Sonny said. "Husband left her practically on their wedding day. That's when she went bananas."

    "How bad was she?" Carella asked.

    "Well, she couldn'ta been
too
bad," Sonny said, "cause they didn't put her away or nothin. Took care of her out there on the island. I used to see the old man at the railroad station picking up the nurses-when they changed shifts, you know."

    "But people still say she's nuts, huh?" Meyer said.

    "Well, eccentric," Sonny said. "Put it that way. Eccentric."

    "Where's the old man now?"

    "Dead," Sonny said. "Must be six or seven years now. Yeah, that's right, it was seven years this July. That's when he died. Left the daughter all alone in the world."

    The boat was coming in toward a small sandy cove on the southern end of the island. A fog-shrouded dock jutted into the bay there, its pilings standing like ghostly sentinels in the mist. Beyond, on the ocean side of the island, the surf pounded in against a long white sand beach.

    "Only house out here, you know," Sonny said. "Hawkhurst. It's a private island. This one and Greater Kent. Both private islands." He maneuvered the launch into the dock, and Carella leaped ashore and caught the line Meyer tossed to him. He made it fast on one of the pilings, offered his hand to help Meyer ashore, and then said, "Can you wait for us?"

    "How else would you get back?" Sonny said. "No ferry service here, it's private, like I told you."

    "We may be a while," Carella said.

    "Take your time," Sonny said.

    The house stood stark and gray against a grayer roiling sky. Meyer and Carella came up a slate walk to the front door. There was no bell and no nameplate, but a tarnished brass knocker hung on the door, and Carella lifted that now and rapped it several times against the weathered wood. The detectives waited. A cold wet wind blew in off the ocean side. Carella lifted the collar of his coat, and then rapped again with the knocker.

    The door opened only a crack, abruptly stopped by a night «chain. Beyond the door, beyond the crack was darkness. In the darkness, they could vaguely make out a pale oval that seemed to be a woman's face floating in space behind the door.

    "Mrs. Parker?" Carella said.

    "Yes?"

    "Isola Police," he said, and showed his shield.

    "Yes?"

    "May we come in?"

    "What for?"

    "We're investigating some homicides back in the city," Meyer started, "and we'd-"

    "Homicides? What would I know about-"

    "May we come in please, Mrs. Parker," Carella said. "It's cold and wet out here, and I think we might be able to talk better in-"

    "No," she said, "I'm busy," and began to close the door. Carella immediately shoved his foot into the narrowing wedge.

    "Take your foot away," she said.

    "No, ma'm," he said. "My foot stays where it is. Either you let us in-"

    "No, I'm not letting you in."

    "Fine, then we'll talk right here. But you're not closing that door on us, ma'm."

    "I have nothing to say to you."

    "We're here because we found your telephone number on a train schedule belonging to one of the homicide victims," Carella said. "Is three-four-six, eight-seven-one-one your telephone number?"

    Pinpoint pricks of light in the darkness beyond the cracked door, her eyes flashing. Silence. Then- "Yes, that's my number."

    "Do you know anyone named C. J. Hawkins?"

    "No."

    Long blond hair, he could make that out now in the darkness. The eyes flashing again in the narrow pale face beyond the narrow open wedge of door and jamb.

    "How about George Chadderton?"

    "No."

    "Ambrose Harding?"

    "No."

    "Mrs. Parker, we know that C. J. Hawkins came out to Sands Spit every Wednesday, and was met at the Fox Hill station by someone driving an automobile." Carella paused. "Was that someone
you?"
he asked.

    "No."

    "Ma'm, if you'd just open the door, maybe we could-"

    "No, I won't. Take your foot away.
Move
it, damn you!"

    "No, ma'm," Carella said. "Do you know anyone named Santo Chadderton?"

    Again the eyes flashed in the darkness beyond the door. A brief hesitation. Then- "You asked about him earlier, didn't you?"

    "That was
George
Chadderton. This is his brother, Santo."

    "I don't know either one of them."

    "Do you own a pistol?"

    "No."

    "Have you left this island within recent days?"

    "No."

    "Were you here on the night of September fifteenth at around eleven o'clock?"

    "Yes."

    "How about three-thirty a.m. that same night?"

    "I was here."

    "Anyone with you?"

    "No."

    "Mrs. Parker," Carella said, "I'd appreciate it if you took off this chain…"

    "No."

    "You're not helping yourself…"

    "Go away."

    "You're only forcing us to come back with a search warrant."

    "Leave me alone."

    "Okay, then, that's what we'll have to do," Carella said, and pulled his foot from the door. It slammed shut at once. His goddamn foot ached.

    "Rotten bitch," he said, and began walking down the path toward the waiting launch.

    Beside him, Meyer said, "We really going for a warrant?"

    "In Elsinore County?" Carella said. "It'll take us a month."

    "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

    "I'm thinking we go in anyway."

    "Good," Meyer said.

    

    

    Sonny Gardner was waiting at the dock for them.

    "We're staying a while," Carella told him. "I'd like you to head back to the mainland without us. Make a hell of a lot of noise, rev your engines, toot your foghorn, make sure she knows you're going. You got that?"

    "I got it," Sonny said. "When do you want to be picked up?"

    Carella looked at Meyer. Meyer shrugged.

    "Make it an hour," Carella said.

    "What the hell's
in
that house?" Sonny asked.

    "Ghosts maybe," Carella said.

    "It sure looks it," Sonny said, and rolled his eyes. He was starting the engine when they heard the first scream. The scream was one of terror and pain, it threaded the fog, it raised the hackles on the backs of their necks. Carella and Meyer reached for their guns. At the same moment. Sonny killed the engines and drew his own weapon-but he did not move from the boat. The two detectives came pounding up the slate walk to the front door. Carella kicked it in, and both of them fanned into the entryway, lighted now with a Tiffany lamp that hung over a corner table upon which were heaped magazines, newspapers, and mail. Crouching, they probed the empty foyer with their guns, and heard the second scream coming from somewhere below and to the right.

    "The cellar," Carella said, and ran toward a door at the far end of a corridor leading to a kitchen beyond. He threw open the door and heard the screaming again, sustained this time, unrelieved this time, this time a single piercing steady scream that paused only long enough for whoever was screaming to draw breath, and then continued again. He came down the cellar steps with Meyer close behind him. Together, they ran through a finished room with a pool table in the center of it, and then past an enclosed furnace, and then stopped just outside a massive, piano-hinged, oaken door that was open into the corridor. The screaming was coming from inside the room beyond that door, a pause, the gasping for breath again, and then the scream, steady, terror ridden, agonized. There was a second door beyond the first one, also open, this one angled into the room. Carella stepped into the room and almost tripped over the carcass of a German shepherd dog lying just inside the doorway. The back of the dog's head had been blown away, there was a puddle of drying blood on the floor. Carella was moving around the blood and around the dog and around the second door when she came at him.

    Sonny Gardner had told them that the woman who lived here was only forty years old, but the woman who came at Carella now was certainly older than that. Oh, yes, she was tall and slender, and yes, her body seemed youthful in the long black dress that covered it, her blond hair graying only slightly here and there. But her face was the face of a sixty-year-old, lined and haggard, a ghastly pallor clouding it, the eyes sunken, the lips tightly compressed. He realized all at once that he was looking into the ravaged face of a madwoman, and felt a sudden cold chill that had nothing whatever to do with the incessant screaming that came from the other side of the room.

    Lily Parker had a knife in her hand, and the knife dripped blood, and her long black dress was drenched with blood, and her long blond hair was streaked with blood, and there was blood spattered on her hands and on her face. As she came toward him-he had not yet seen what was on the bed-he wondered if the blood was why she had not opened the door, had she been drenched with blood standing there in the hallway beyond the night chain? Her eyes were wide and staring as she came at him-he had not yet seen the man on the bed- the knife extended and flailing the air. He fired low the first time, at her legs in the black sheath of the blood-drenched dress, and missed, and still she came at him, and this time he raised the gun and pulled off two shots in succession, both of them catching her high on the left shoulder, and spinning her around, and dropping her to the carpeted floor.