The Cry of the Owl (22 page)

“What do you know!” Jack said, smiling, too. “Hell, this’ll blow over in no time! The cops’ll find him. They’re bound to. Who was the friend in New York?”

“I’m not supposed to say. You know—a guy with a pretty big job. Doesn’t want his name in the papers.”

Jack nodded. “Just happened to see Wyncoop, or what?”

“I don’t know. But I’m sure what he said is reliable.”

“I’m going to call Betty right away and tell her,” Jack said.

At a little after ten, Robert was called to the telephone. He was in conference with Jaffe and the head production engineer in Jaffe’s office when Nancy knocked on the door with the message, and Robert, knowing Jaffe hated interruption, asked if Nancy could take the number so he could call back. Nancy went out again, but in less than a minute, she returned.

“It’s very urgent, they said.”

Robert excused himself, embarrassed by Jaffe’s frown. It was no doubt the police, and Jaffe knew it.

It was Lippenholtz.

“Mr. Forester, we’ve checked with the Sussex Arms Hotel in New York, and their description of John Gresham tallies,” Lippenholtz said in his calm, slow voice. “That is, it resembles Wyncoop.”

“Good. Do you know if the New York police are looking for Wyncoop at all? And if so, how hard?”

“They’re looking,” said Lippenholtz. “But this isn’t exactly proof, Mr. Forester. If you could just give us the name of that friend of yours who—”

“I explained to somebody there that my friend doesn’t want his name given.”

“Not even if we promise to keep it out of the papers?”

“Not even then, I’m sure.”

Lippenholtz grunted. “Has this got anything to do with your wife? Your former wife?”

“Not that I know of. No, it hasn’t.”

Another grunt. “Mr. Forester, we had a piece of bad news this morning. At least, you probably haven’t heard it. Or have you?”

“No. What?”

“Jennifer Thierolf was found dead around eight o’clock this morning by the—”

“
Jenny?
”

“She took an overdose of sleeping pills. The milkman found her on the lawn back of her house this morning. She’d been dead three or four hours, the doctors said. She left a note.”

“My God,” Robert said. “I tried to call her last night around—around—”

“Want to hear the note?”

“Yes.”

“‘Dear Robert, I do love you. Now in a different way and much more deeply. Now I understand you and everything,’” Lippenholtz read in an expressionless voice. “‘I did not know until lately that you represented death, at least for me. It was foreordained. I do not
know if I am glad or sorry, but I do know what has to be.’ … Do you know anything about that, Mr. Forester?”

“About what?”

“About what she means. When did you see her last?”

“Monday. Monday night.”

“How was she then?”

“She seemed—depressed, I guess. She said she didn’t want to see me any more.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why unless—unless she’d started to think I—to think I’d killed Greg.”

“You’re stammering a lot, Mr. Forester,” Lippenholtz said sharply. “She took three bottles of pills. There were three bottles empty in the bathroom, anyway. Do you know how she got three bottles of Seconal?”

“Well—one she took from me. I missed it only last night. I thought I’d mislaid it and couldn’t find it. She got the bottle for me. From her doctor, she said. I suppose that’s where the others came from.”

“These bottles don’t have any doctor’s name or any prescription number on them. They’re pretty big bottles, the kind her boy friend would have among his stuff, and we think that’s where they came from.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s possible,” said Robert automatically, thinking, what did it matter now where they came from? He remembered that his bottle had had no label on it. Why hadn’t he asked Jenny about that?

“It’s also very interesting, Mr. Forester, that the Escham girl says Jenny Thierolf told her how you met her. Prowling around her house. Is that right?”

“Yes,” Robert said.

“Why didn’t you admit it before? Eh? What’s the matter, Mr. Forester?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

Robert hung up. He started back to the drafting room, his head down, and bumped into the swinging glass door with his forehead. Nancy was coming in. Robert stepped back.

“Hi-i,” Nancy said.

Robert watched her, glanced at her plump derrière disappearing fast down the corridor. He pushed the glass door open with his hand, and walked toward his table. He stood there by his bright fluorescent lamp, blinking.

“What’s up, Bob?”

Jack Nielson’s hand was on Robert’s arm.

Robert looked at him and said, “Jenny’s dead.”

“
Dead?
”

“Sleeping pills.” Robert started to drop into his chair, but Jack pulled at his arm, and passively Robert walked with him toward the reception hall.

Jack rang for an elevator. “We’ll get some coffee. Or a good stiff drink,” Jack said. “Who’d you hear it from?”

“The police just called. It happened this morning. Early this morning.”

They took Jack’s car. Robert paid no attention where they were going. Then he found himself in a bar, a cup of black coffee and a jigger of what looked like Scotch beside the coffee, and Jack opposite him with a cup of coffee, too.

“Drink ’em both,” Jack said. “You’re pale as hell.”

Robert sipped at both the coffee and the Scotch. He suddenly remembered he had been supposed to go back to the conference in Jaffe’s office. Robert pulled his hand down his face and laughed, then all at once his eyes were full of tears.

“Go ahead,” Jack said. “What the hell.”

“It’s the note,” Robert said between his teeth. He clasped his hands between his knees. “Jenny wrote a note. She said I was death.”

“What? Say that again?”

“She said, ‘I didn’t know until now that you represented death,’” Robert said in a whisper. “She was always talking like that, talking about death. Did I ever tell you—she used to talk to me about her little brother who died, died at twelve, or something like that, of spinal meningitis. Jenny said she had to keep thinking about death till she wasn’t frightened of it any more. In a funny way—” He looked at Jack’s tense, frowning face. “Do you follow me? Can you follow me?”

“Yes,” Jack said, but rather vaguely, signaling with a raised finger for another Scotch.

“And when I first met her, I remember she said, ‘I don’t know what you stand for, but someday I will.’ That was when I—I was standing outside her house. That’s how I met her. It’s true. I met her by prowling around her house.” Robert shut his eyes and drank the rest of the jigger of Scotch.

Jack was frowning, puzzled, as if what he had said didn’t make sense. “By prowling around her house? What do you mean?”

“Just that. One day she saw me. One evening. That’s how we got acquainted. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard. Greg—”

“Yes,” Jack said. “I guess it was Greg. An anonymous call I had—about a month ago. I didn’t know whether to mention it to you or not, so I didn’t.”

“So, you had heard.” Robert gave a quick smile, and touched the glass of the newly arrived Scotch. How had Greg found out Jack was a friend of his, Robert wondered. Maybe through Jenny. And what did it matter?

“The voice on the phone said he was a friend of Greg’s,” Jack said. “He said he thought I ought to know my friend Bob Forester was a—a nut and that he looked through girls’ windows watching them undress and that’s how he met Jenny Thierolf. I remember I said ‘Go to hell’ and I hung up. I thought maybe it was a friend of Greg’s, sure, and I thought, well, under the circumstances, Greg’s probably spreading all the stories he can against you.”

“Well—it’s true. Except that I always watched Jenny in the kitchen. Cooking. She gave me such—” He couldn’t talk any more, but it was not because emotion was choking him up. He felt very calm, even numb.

“What?” Jack prompted.

Robert took a breath and looked into Jack’s long, serious face. Jack’s expression was still puzzled, maybe a little wary. “I was depressed last winter, and she made me feel better. She looked so happy herself. I saw Greg visiting her a couple of times and I thought—she’s
a happy young girl going to get married. I’d swear I wouldn’t go back to see her, and then I would. I must have gone six or eight times. And finally, she saw me one night. I apologized—funny as that might sound. I thought she was going to call the police, but she didn’t. She invited me in for a coffee.” Robert gave a shrug and a smile. “You might say, she was very happy until she met me. Until she decided I represented death.”

Jack shook his head quickly, rubbed at the short hair on the top of his head. “But I know she was in love with you. Anyone could see that. As I listen to you, it’s like listening to a fantasy. Are you telling me the truth, Bob, about that prowling? I mean, spying?”

“Yes. It’s true.”

“Well”—Jack sat back, and took a sip from the water glass by his coffee cup—“you don’t have to tell anybody else about it. I wouldn’t, if I were you. What’s the need?” Jack concentrated on lighting a cigarette.

Robert sensed that Jack’s attitude toward him had changed, radically and permanently. People who looked through other people’s windows were creeps—whether they watched girls undressing or watched them frying chicken. “I’ve just told the police,” Robert said.

“Oh-oh. Well, what the hell? What’s it got to do with Greg, after all? Greg’s alive. If you—” Jack stopped.

There was a silence. Neither of them looked at the other.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” Jack asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you ever go to bed with Jenny?”

“No,” Robert said. “Why?”

“Because it would make it that much more intense, I suppose. For her. She seemed so young. She
was
very much in love with you, wasn’t she?”

“I suppose so. I wasn’t. I tried to make that clear—always. I’m not trying to justify myself, Jack—”

“I know.”

“But I should have known. Known better. I should never have let her see me after we met that time, that first night. I really didn’t care to see her again, but she looked me up. She came to the plant, looking for my car, followed me home one night.” Robert shut his eyes, sick of his own voice and his words.

“And what happened?”

“She spent the night. The drinks went to her head, only two drinks, I remember, and she didn’t want to go home, so she slept on my downstairs couch. It happened a few more times, and then Greg noticed, of course, noticed she wasn’t home. Then came Greg’s attack on me. You see, Jack?”

Jack nodded slowly.

“I should have cut it off, but I didn’t. I insisted that we see each other less, but I still didn’t cut it off. Jenny looked so unhappy. But I did cut it off at one point, when I was living in Langley, before I moved to the house. I said that I didn’t want to see her again, that it was best we didn’t. I’d been trying to talk her into marrying Greg.”

“And then?”

Robert rested his forehead against his hand. “Then—a few weeks later was when she came to the plant and followed my car to my house.”

“I see.”

Did Jack see?
I never made her any promises
, Robert wanted to say, but the whining, self-justifying words shamed him. “I’d better get back,” Robert said, reaching for his money.

“Don’t go back today, don’t be silly,” Jack said. “Call Jaffe up. Or I’ll speak to him for you.”

“No, I’ll face Jaffe.”

Robert faced Jaffe with a short statement about a “personal crisis,” which he delivered bluntly and stiffly, like a man who has nothing more to lose. Robert was quite sure his job was lost already, and he supposed the correct thing to do was send in a letter of resignation.

By noon, Robert was home. He took off his jacket and tie and fell down on the red couch. He lay there for several hours, until it began to get dusk. He had not slept, and yet it seemed that nothing had gone through his mind, not even the boring repetitions of events and conversations that usually plagued him. He might as well have been dead, and hours like these told as much about death as anything the living would ever know, he felt. He drove to Langley for the newspapers. He bought the
Inquirer
as well as the Langley
Gazette
. The story of Jenny was on the front pages of both, and the
Gazette
had a photograph. Robert looked over the stories as he sat in his car. Jenny had died with his sweater in her arms and his “Lesser Evil” bird card in one hand. The suicide note was printed in full and in italics. Set amid the journalese, it sounded poetic, tragic, yet somehow unreal. On page two of the
Gazette
was a picture of Susie Escham, her eyes closed with tears and her mouth open, telling her story of calling on Jenny just before ten last night and getting no answer. Susie also had said that Jenny “admitted to me three days ago that she met Robert Forester because he was prowling around
her house. That’s what Greg [Wyncoop] said all along. I think Jenny was afraid of Robert, and that’s why she killed herself.” Robert set his teeth and started his car.

The telephone was ringing when he went into his house. He did not answer it. He sat down and read through both newspaper stories carefully. Both stories retold the Forester-Wyncoop fistfight of Saturday night, May 16th, and said that Wyncoop had now been missing for ten days. There had been time, of course, for the newspapers to state that Wyncoop had been reported seen in New York, but evidently that story wasn’t considered reliable enough to print.

The telephone was ringing again. He couldn’t go on not answering it, he supposed. And if it were the police, they’d simply come over to find him.

“Hello,” Robert said in a hoarse voice.

“This is Naomi Tesser, Bob.”

Robert stiffened. “How are you?”

“We just saw the papers, Dick and I. And I—How are you, Bob?”

“How am I?”

“Well, I can imagine. We’re both so shocked by all this. Jenny was sort of a strange girl, so moody—even gloomy sometimes, we knew that.”

He waited.

“Meanwhile—has there been any news about Greg?”

“Greg,” Robert said. “They say he was seen in a New York hotel a couple of days ago.”