SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (26 page)

"If he’s home."

"He better be home," Jack spoke with the low snarl of a big mad cat.

Sam led the way to the front door. The doorbell button was dangling from a broken wire so he rapped soundly on the beveled glass. A hall light came on and a man about Jack’s age peered through the glass before unlocking the door.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I’m Detective Bartholomew," Sam said, pretending to reach inside his coat for a nonexistent badge. "And this is Officer DeShane. I’d like to ask Nick Ringer a few questions, please."

"I’m Nick, but you’re wasting your time. The cops have already been here about the girl. That’s all cleared up."

Sam turned to Jack reflexively. He kept the surprise from showing on his face. He removed his hat as if expecting to be asked inside. "I’m sorry, but this isn’t about the girl. Do you mind if we come in?"
What girl?
he wondered.

Another man appeared in the doorway and gently moved Nick aside. "Did I hear you say
Detective
?" the second man asked.

"That’s right, and we’d like to..."

"Didn’t my brother tell you that’s all been cleared up?" the man interrupted. "I tried to save her life. I know I was wrong in not reporting it, but… " He shook his head sorrowfully.

"May we come inside, Mr. Ringer? It’s not about the girl," Sam explained again.

"Sure," the second man said, stepping aside to allow them inside. "Come on in. This way."

Sam narrowed his eyes to peer into the gloom. He thought he might sneeze. Dust filled the air and from somewhere the stench of garbage wafted into the room. When a lamp was turned on, Sam was not surprised to find he was in the front sitting room of the old house and that it was far from tidy. College textbooks littered the floor along with beer cans and candy wrappers. A sweater turned wrong side out was draped over a chair back. Unopened mail spilled over a coffee table. Evidently the Ringer brothers lived without the benefit of a woman’s touch. Sam deduced they were bachelors and the state of their home the least of their worries.

"Sit down," Daley said cordially. He guided them to the sofa, circled the coffee table, and sat in a chair across from them.

"What did you tell the police about the girl?" Sam launched into questioning. "I hope you don’t mind repeating it for us."

Daley smiled uneasily and shifted in the chair. He shot Nick a glance and motioned for him to take a chair.

"I just told them Madra was my girlfriend once. She used to live here. But we didn’t get along very well--you know how it is--and she moved to Montrose with another girl. The day she died…"

Jack’s attention, which had been on Nick, moved to Daley. "Died?" he asked abruptly.

Daley lowered his gaze and went on. "She had epilepsy. When she lived here, she only had small seizures, like she was daydreaming in the middle of a sentence, things like that. I didn’t know she could have a grand mal. I went to her house that day to talk to her and she...she had a seizure. She was in the shower. I was in the bathroom talking to her and suddenly she clenched up and fell. She hit her head and was choking. I carried her to the bedroom and tried to force open her mouth. I got a spoon from the kitchen and tried that, but it was too late. The other officers who were here said the coroner’s report said she strangled on her own tongue during the time I was getting the spoon."

Again Daley shifted uneasily and glanced at Nick, who sat nearby.

"Yeah, he told all this to those other fellows," Nick said. "I don’t see why…” Sam waved his hand at Nick. "I’m afraid, Mr. Ringer, the girl’s death isn’t really why we’re here. I wonder if you’d mind telling me of your whereabouts on the morning of March first."

Daley looked from the detective to his brother and back again at Sam. "He was here--with me," he blurted.

"We were both home."

"What day was that?" Sam asked. He could feel Jack seething beside him, and he hoped Jack would keep his mouth shut.

"Well, it was...it was March first, like you said," Nick answered.

"If you don’t know what day of the week it was, how can you be sure you were home together that morning?"

Daley and Nick looked at each other.

"It was Monday," Jack said between clenched teeth. "Today is Wednesday, March the third. Where were you on Monday? You weren’t at work. We've checked that."

Sam wanted to throttle Jack. Instead, he rested his hand on Jack’s arm as if to restrain him.

"Monday?" Nick asked, sounding like a man who has been duped. "Like we said, I was home. I didn’t go to work. I was sick and Daley took care of me. Right?" He looked quickly to Daley for confirmation.

Sam smelled collusion and he did not like it. The brothers could ask them to go at any moment and they would have to leave. They were covering up for one another and Denmark had never smelled anything as rotten as the lies coming from the two Ringer brothers. "Do you have anyone else who could verify you were home that morning?" Sam asked carefully.

"What do you fucking want, a written statement from God Almighty?" Nick shouted.

From the corner of his eye, Sam could see Jack bare his teeth again. He prayed the man would control himself.

"What if I said you were in River Oaks Monday morning?" Jack asked harshly. "What if I said you got your goddamn jollies slicing the throat of a nice lady who spent her time tending to roses?
What if I said she’s not the only one?
"

"Jack, watch it," Sam ordered.

"Yeah, Jack, why don’t you fucking watch your lousy lying mouth?" Nick said. He stood up, towering over them, his face very white and angry.

Daley stood too. "I think you’d better go," he said, as he nervously picked at his brother’s sleeve.

“Come on, Jack." Sam drew the patrolman along with him to the hall and the front door. "This isn’t getting us anywhere."

"Sam, we have to--" Jack began pulling away from the older man.

"No, we don’t have to. Let’s go.
Now
." Sam’s voice was firm.

The brothers remained standing in the living room while the door was opened, then closed quietly again.

They stood still for a long time, neither man speaking.

On the ride across town Sam reamed out Jack up one side and down the other. When he was finished, Sam added they were not going to continue alone. They needed Lieutenant Garbo and manpower. They needed twenty-four hour surveillance units put on the Ringer house. They needed evidence--if Jack had not already screwed it up too much and warned off the only suspect they had managed to find.

"You don’t go back there, do you hear me, Jack?" Sam hated talking so rough to the younger man, but he had to stop something terrible from happening.

"If you can get Garbo to watch the house, I won’t go back."

"Is that a promise?” Sam prodded.

"My word’s good."

"Fine, Jack. That’s what I had to hear. You’re too close to this, and if we’re going to end it, you’l1 have to back off."

The rest of the trip home was made in silence. The excitement Sam had experienced in Danny’s was a hundred times greater. All the pieces were beginning to fall into place, one by one. If Nick was the Wireman, they would get him. "I swear to God," he said aloud.

"Me too," Jack said. "I just hope God’s listening."

BY TEN 0’CLOCK the next morning Sam had received two phone calls from Jack asking if he had talked to Lieutenant Garbo yet. Sam assured Jack the Ringer house would be watched. He was not going to call Garbo about it. He was going downtown to the department, corner the lieutenant in his office, and get a promise from him personally. But first he wanted coffee and breakfast, and his advice to Jack was to sit on his hands and stay out of it. Sam doubted the advice would be taken seriously. He expected Jack at the door any minute.

Sam dunked a fourth of his second honey bun into his coffee and bit into it. Maggie’s house was silent, warm, homey. She had a lace tablecloth over the red Formica kitchen table, and a dime-store vase of red silk roses nodded at him every time he jiggled the cloth. A cardboard print of an American Indian in full headdress stared down solemnly from the wall.

Before Sam was finished with the second bun, the telephone in the hall rang shrilly for the third time that morning.

"Dammit, Jack!" Sam said, getting up.

He carried the breakfast roll with him to the phone, carried the phone back with him to the kitchen table, and did not lift the receiver until he took another swallow of black coffee. "I’m leaving in five minutes!" he shouted into the phone.

After a moment’s hesitation a man’s amused voice said, "Well, I’m sorry to interrupt your leave-taking, but I wanted to tell you something, Detective."

Startled, Sam tried to place the voice and failed. "Who’s speaking, please?"

"Dr. Rubens, V.A. hospital." The psychiatrist chuckled.

"Oh, I’m sorry, Doctor. I thought you were someone else."

"No harm done," Rubens assured Sam.

"What is it you wanted to tell me?"

"The patient we were discussing last evening, he called early this morning and he’s decided to come in for an eleven o’clock session. I have something he wants, and the only way he can get it is to see me, so I suppose he’s reconsidered. At least for this one last meeting."

Sam hunched over the table and fingered the fake roses. "What are you telling me?" he asked.

"I can’t tell you his name, can I?" Rubens explained. "I was awake most of the night worrying about this man, pondering his innocence or guilt in the matter. I’ve never been in this position before and I’m not sure what to do. I shouldn’t be talking to you. I could get into a lot of trouble if anyone found out we had talked.

"But, dammit, I have to live with my conscience--whatever other people say."

Sam already knew what the psychiatrist wanted him to do. It was the long way around and it bordered on the unethical in Dr. Rubens’s point of view. But with a little work Sam could discover the identity of Dr. Rubens’s patient. All he had to do was be at the V.A. hospital before eleven, watch the patients entering, and narrow it down to the eleven o’clock appointment going into the doctor’s office. If he didn’t recognize the person, he could run a DMV check on the man’s car, find a name that way.

"That was a clever move, Doctor, and I want you to know that I appreciate it. I’ll handle the rest."

"That’s good, that’s what I wanted to hear. Now I know that I’ve done all that I can do without compromising my office beyond certain limits. I wish you luck."

"Thanks for the help, Dr. Rubens."

"We will never mention it," Rubens said firmly, hanging up.

Fifteen minutes later when the hall phone rang again, Sam was gone.

#

Sam was at the V.A. hospital twenty minutes early. In the noisy corridor outside Rubens’s office he took a seat and watched the people. A young amputee shuffled past talking to himself. Behind him came a nurse who appeared to be all flat chest and big hair. She called, "You’re going the wrong way! Turn around, you’re not heading for the lab that way!"

During the next ten minutes, tiring of the wandering patients and staff, Sam counted fifty-seven squares of shining white tile down the center of the hall, beginning with the one beneath his feet. Beyond fifty-seven his vision blurred and the lines between tiles vanished. No one seemed to care what he was doing there and Sam decided they were all too busy or self-involved to question his presence.

He glanced at his watch. Eight minutes till eleven. What if Dr. Rubens’s patient did not show?

A beautiful black girl came from Rubens’s office and rushed down the corridor to the ladies’ room. She rushed back before three minutes were up. Sam thought her pit stop must be one of the fastest in history.

She nodded in his direction and disappeared into the office.

Sam turned his head to scan the corridor. At the far end double glass doors opened and a familiar figure stepped inside, paused, and proceeded toward Sidney Rubens’s office.

Sam jumped to his feet, turned away from the man, and made for the mens’ room as fast as he could. Even behind the protection of the restroom door, the shock of the patient’s identity caused Sam’s heart to race.

Have I got a surprise for you,
Garbo,
he thought. Jack’s instincts are right. Nick Ringer needs surveillance.

After what Sam thought was a reasonable amount of time, he left the men’s room, passed Rubens’s office without a glance, and left the building. He was on his way downtown. Finally he had something that would hold up under scrutiny.

"I NEED SOMETHING stronger than Valium," Nick said, avoiding the penetrating stare of Sidney Rubens.

"All right, Nick. I can do that for you."

"You can?" Nick looked at the psychiatrist in surprise.

"Sure, it’s no problem. I’m glad you came back to see me. Yesterday was a misunderstanding. I think we can talk about it, can’t we?"

“I don’t know. I just flew off the handle and I didn’t mean what I said--about my brother and all." The young man seemed genuinely sorry.

"I understand."

"You don’t understand!" Nick shouted.

Rubens held up his hand for peace, but he saw the sullen look creeping over Nick’s face. In his estimation it would take months, maybe years of therapy to reach Nick Ringer--and even then they might not be successful. They did not have time for that. The most he could hope for was reconciliation with the patient.

He must not alienate him again.

Rubens took a prescription pad from his desk drawer. "I won’t keep you from your work. I’ll give you something for your nerves and you try to see me again tomorrow. Is that fair enough?"

"Yeah, that’s okay." Nick was obviously relieved the questions could wait for another time.

Rubens watched him leave the office and knew he was going straight to the hospital’s pharmacy to have the prescription filled. He wondered if Detective Bartholomew had made it on time and found out Nick’s name in some way, The psychiatrist wondered too if he had done the right thing or if he had violated his patient’s privacy. The only thing he did know with any certainty was that his conscience was clear. Now it was up to the authorities to do the rest. God knows he couldn’t do much more.