The Eye: A Novel of Suspense (21 page)

How did he know I was here?
Oxman thought.
Saw me come into the building? But I could have been on an official visit; I could have come to see anybody who lived here. And how did he know I’d been to bed with Jennifer?

How did he know?

PART 4

MONDAY

SEPTEMBER 23

7:19 A.M.

JENNIFER CRANE

She was alone in bed when she woke up. At first she thought E.L. had gone, slipped away without saying anything to her, and she felt disappointment; but then she heard him rattling around in the kitchen, smelled coffee percolating. She sighed, smiled faintly, stretched. The sheet fell away from one of her naked legs, and she reached down to draw it over her again. The air conditioner was still on and the bedroom was cool, almost cold. Still half-asleep, she ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth, burrowed down deeper under the bedclothes.

Her first thoughts were pleasant: E.L. and the sex last night. But the ones that immediately followed were disturbing. The relationship with him was already more than sex, and it could be
much
more if she allowed it. She was letting herself become involved, and she was angry at herself for that, but at the same time it was exciting and seductive and she seemed powerless to prevent it. She wondered if it was the same way for E.L., decided that it probably was.

And then she remembered the phone call, what E.L. had later told her it meant. She tasted the fear again, metallic on her tongue, and she was wide awake. It was as though the psycho killer had been right there in her bedroom last night while they were making love, listening to their cries of passion and leering at them out of the shadows. The image of that was horrifying. How could he have known what they were doing?

And what if it wasn’t just E.L. he intended to come after next? What if he wanted to kill her too?

Jennifer shivered and sat up in bed. From outside she could hear the swish of passing cars, an occasional angry horn blast, the louder, deeper bass hum of a laboring bus or truck. It was like listening to the separate parts of a monstrous organism coming to life, engulfing, absorbing the people trapped within it for yet another day. And she was one of them. The damned city was going to absorb her one way or another, she thought, until there was nothing left of her but a memory.

She got out of bed, still shivering, and put on her robe and slippers. In the bathroom she splashed warm water on her face, rinsed her mouth with Listerine, and ran a comb through her sleep-tousled hair. Then she went out into the kitchen.

E.L. was sitting at the table, his big hands folded on the bare formica, staring over at where the coffeepot was perking with increasing vigor on the sideboard. But he wasn’t seeing it. His eyes had a remote look; he was so preoccupied that he didn’t even know she was there until she put her arm around his shoulders and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Then he blinked and looked up at her, gave her a wan smile.

“Morning,” he said. “How’d you sleep?”

“Not very well. You?”

“Not very well.”

“What time did you get up?”

“About twenty minutes ago. I’ve got to leave pretty soon.”

“I know. Do you want some breakfast?”

“No. Just coffee.”

The pot on the sideboard had grown silent; the aroma of brewed coffee filled the kitchen. Jennifer got two cups out of the cupboard, poured coffee, added cream to hers. She remembered that E.L. drank his with sugar and got the sugar bowl down, carried it and the cups to the table. She sat opposite him, watching as he spooned sugar into his coffee.

“I have to tell Lieutenant Manders about us,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because of that phone call. Because I’m a cop. Because you might be in danger.”

She understood what he was saying and she nodded. But she also understood what the admission might mean for him; she felt a vague sense of guilt. “What will he do?” she asked. “I mean …”

“I know what you mean. It depends. Report me to Internal Affairs, maybe. But not right away; this case is too important. He won’t let it become public knowledge for the same reason.”

“I wouldn’t care if he did.”

“I guess I wouldn’t, either.”

“Are you going to tell your wife too?”

“Maybe. It doesn’t matter to me if she knows.”

“It’s that way between you?”

“It’s that way and has been for years. She wants it that way.”

“I shouldn’t be glad, but I am,” Jennifer said. “Small of me, I guess.”

“Only realistic.”

She sipped her coffee, burned her tongue. When would she learn? She put the cup back down, brushed an errant strand of hair from her eyes. Her gaze kept clinging to him. God, he had a good face—not handsome but strong, gentle. Something stirred inside her, old feelings, old tendernesses, that she had forgotten were part of her emotional makeup.

“E.L.,” she said softly, “don’t let him do anything to you.”

“Nobody’s going to do anything to me. Or you. Don’t worry.”

“Do you really think you can find him before he—before anybody else gets hurt?”

“I’m sure as hell going to try.” He sipped his coffee. “I’d feel better if you’d agree to move out of here until we do get him,” he said.

“We went all through that last night. I swore off running a long time ago, when I found myself on my own. I live here, E.L. If I run from here, I run from part of myself.”

“Christ, don’t get philosophical on me,” he said. “This is an apartment in Manhattan, nothing more——”

“Damn it, E.L., I’m not talking about this place, any
place
, and you know it. What I’m not going to run from is my fear. If you don’t understand that …”

E.L. raised his hand and then lowered it gently, requesting calm. “Take it easy. I do understand.”

“Then don’t ask me again to leave.”

“All right. But don’t you take this lightly; meet me halfway. Lock your door when I leave. Don’t go out today and don’t open the door for anybody but me or another policeman. And don’t answer the phone. If I want to call you I’ll let it ring three times, hang up, then call back.”

She nodded. “If that’s what you want. I have work to do, so it won’t be a problem today. But I can’t stay a prisoner here forever.”

“You won’t have to, believe me.”

He finished his coffee, pushed his chair back and stood. “I’d better go now,” he said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. And I’ll either stay here with you again tonight or see to it that another officer does.”

Jennifer managed a small smile. “I’d prefer you, E.L. It would be too much trouble breaking in another cop.”

She went with him to the door. He kissed her, and she held onto him for a moment, her body tight against his, while he stroked her hair. “Remember what I told you,” he said, and a few seconds later he was gone.

After setting the locks, she returned to the kitchen and poured more hot coffee into her cup. She was a solitary person and she had always liked being alone, but now the apartment seemed empty, full of small odd sounds, vaguely oppressive. E.L. occupied a lot of space, she thought, so that his absence left a kind of vacuum. And it wasn’t just physical space that he occupied, either; it was also space inside her. The image of his strong, gentle face lay vivid in her mind.

She wondered, with a sense of awe, if she were falling in love with him.

8:20 A.M. — BETH OXMAN

Beth knew long before E.L. finally called her—though she couldn’t say how—that he had spent the night with another woman.

They had been polite at the precinct when she’d phoned earlier and asked for her husband, saying that he wasn’t available at the moment but would be back soon. Lieutenant Manders himself had told her that. She disliked Manders intensely and expected him to lie. What would he have said if she’d asked him point-blank why E.L. hadn’t come home last night? Why he hadn’t even called to explain his absence? But then, those questions would have prompted another lie, of course. Only another lie.

And now the phone had rung, and it was E.L. She’d known it would be, just as she knew he’d been unfaithful to her. Another of her headaches flared as soon as she heard his voice from the receiver.

“I meant to call you,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t.”

That was a laugh, Beth thought. A lie and a laugh and not very original. He’d made it impossible for her to respond sexually to him at home, so he’d been out rutting with one of the sluts he ran across almost daily in his work. Yes, she was certain of it now.

She tried to keep her voice calm, but it was vibrant with her fury. “You never spent the night away from home before without phoning. It’s the least a policeman’s wife can expect, a simple phone call.”

“You’re right, I should have called …”

“You were with another woman, weren’t you.”

A pause. “Beth, not over the phone …”

The resignation, the weariness in his voice added fuel to her anger. His guilt was so
obvious
. “How else, damn you! You’re not here to talk to in person.” She realized she was gripping the receiver so tightly that her fingers ached, and she forced herself to relax her arms, her upper body. Tension was the worst thing for her; Dr. Hardin had told her, had warned her about the effects of stress. But it was E.L. who was causing her tension, causing all her problems. Why should she suffer all day today, waiting for him? Hadn’t she, in one way or another, been waiting for him all her married life? “I don’t want to wait until tonight to discuss this, E.L.”

“I don’t think I’ll be home tonight, either.”

She felt her throat tighten. “Your work, I suppose,” she said acidly.

“Yes. You know how serious this case is——”

“You can’t fool me,” she said. “You never could.”

“Beth …”

She hung up on him. She hadn’t really planned it; her right arm snapped downward in a paroxysm of anger and slammed the receiver back into its cradle.

Beth sat for a long time on the bench near the phone, trembling, watching her fingers flexing and unflexing as if there were solid matter in her hands which she was slowly pulverizing. He hadn’t actually denied being with another woman, so he had been. She knew him well enough to be sure of that. And she hated him now as she had never hated him, with a force like hell’s own fury.

She stood suddenly—a reflex action, like slamming down the receiver minutes before. Not this time, she told herself.
Not this time
. She had put up with E.L.’s insensitivity and ingratitude for too many years. This was the final indignity.

She walked into the bathroom, stood before the washbasin and ran cold water over her wrists as Dr. Hardin had instructed her to do when she became flushed and overwrought. It helped; she was aware of the slowing of her heart. She could think more clearly now.

It
would
be different this time, she thought. She would be the one making the decisions, controlling her own life. When E.L. finally did come home—if he ever would—he would find her gone.

Beth gazed up at her reflection in the bathroom mirror as she made her decision, looked into the tortured depths of her eyes. And she knew that this time she meant it. Something in her had stretched and broken, and a part of her life was over.

She stood leaning with both hands on the washbasin; now she was completely calm, with the same sense of loss and acceptance that she’d felt long ago at her father’s funeral. She would go to her mother’s. Her mother understood how she’d suffered with E.L. Her mother would——

A flash of pain struck behind her eyes, without warning. She straightened, waiting with clenched jaws for the full force of the headache to assail her. Only it didn’t, not yet. Slowly, carefully, as if balancing something fragile on her head, she walked from the bathroom and back out to the front room. She would call Dr. Hardin, explain to him that she was in the midst of a crisis. He would tell her what to do.

Halfway to the phone, she stopped and lifted a hand to her forehead. The pain had vanished as quickly as it had come; the headache hadn’t taken hold. Always they started this way, and always once they started they struck with full and debilitating force. But not this time. Why?

Did freedom from E.L. mean freedom from the pain she’d so long endured?

She glanced again, lingeringly, at the telephone, weighing whether or not she should call Dr. Hardin. She had an appointment with him for tomorrow, she remembered. She could discuss things with him then, get a refill for her prescription if she needed it and if he felt it was necessary.

She hurried back into the bedroom and began to pack.

8:45 A.M. — E.L. OXMAN

Oxman was preoccupied as he entered the Two-four, trying to frame in his mind the words he would speak to Manders. They were difficult words, but they had to be said; it was his duty to tell the lieutenant about the phone call last night, about the psycho’s threat against him. And he also had a responsibility to Jennifer, to protect her, to keep her safe; he cared for her more than he was ready to admit just now. So there had never been any real question in his mind of what he must do, no matter the consequences to his career and his personal life. It was only a matter of summoning his resolve and facing the music.

He had already done that once, with the phone call to Beth from a public booth near Ninety-eighth Street, and it had been easier than he’d anticipated. Beth already suspected the truth, had divined it through some wifely intuition; and the fact was, he simply didn’t care. The marriage was over, had been over for a long time. The severing of the final threads was only a formality; he was sure Beth understood that as well as he did, now.

Lost in thought, Oxman didn’t notice Drake raise a cautioning hand as he passed by the muster desk, or hear him call out. He went upstairs without counting the steps, and he was five paces inside the squadroom before he realized that it was much more crowded than usual, before he heard Manders’ voice droning in a significantly official tone. Too late, Oxman saw the TV minicamera. And Manders and several milling members of the media saw him.

The shoulder-mounted minicam turned its round blank eye toward Oxman. A newsman from one of the local TV stations called out his name.
Shit
, Oxman thought. But there was nothing he could do now except to put on an official face of his own and let the vultures descend; he’d already lost his chance to avoid them.