Ghosts

Esposito was staring at him.

“I’m sorry,” Hawes said. “I didn’t mean to make a speech. We’re aware of your wife, Mr. Esposito, we are very much aware of her. But we feel the primary murder was the one in Apartment 304, and that’s where we’re starting. When we get Gregory Craig’s murderer, we’ll also have the person who killed your wife. That’s what we feel.”

“What if you’re wrong?” Esposito said. His anger was gone; he stood there with his hands in the pockets of the fleece-lined coat and searched Hawes’s face for some reassurance.

“If we’re wrong, we’ll start all over again. From the beginning,” Hawes said, and hoped to Christ they were not wrong.

The call from Jerry Mandel, the schussing security guard, came just as Carella and Hawes were getting ready to go home. They had by then had a fruitless meeting with Lieutenant Byrnes, who told them he positively could not double-team his men at Christmastime and advised that they conduct the door-to-door canvass of Harborview all by their lonesomes even if it took till St. Swithin’s Day, whenever that was. He informed them, besides, that he had received a call from the attorney of one Warren Esposito, who claimed the murder of Gregory Craig was receiving preferential consideration over the murder of his client’s wife, and if some people didn’t start shaking their asses, they’d be hearing from a friend of the lawyer, who only just happened to work downtown in the district attorney’s office. Byrnes reminded them that in this fair city murder was perhaps the one great equalizer and that regardless of race, religion, gender, or occupation, one corpse was to be treated exactly as the next corpse—an admonition both Carella and Hawes accepted with a bit of salt.

They had next received the autopsy reports on both Gregory Craig and Marian Esposito, but those learned medical treatises told them hardly anything they did not already know. They would have turned in their shields at once had they not at least suspected that the respective causes of death were multiple stab wounds in the case of Gregory Craig and a single stab wound in the case of Marian Esposito. The medical examiners were not paid to make guesses—not anywhere in the linked reports was there the slightest speculation that the same instrument might have been used in both murders. The reports did tell them that Gregory Craig had been drinking before his murder; the alcoholic concentration in the brain was 16 percent, and the milligrams of ethyl alcohol per milliliter of blood were 2.3. The brain analysis indicated that Craig had reached that stage of comparative intoxication in which “less sense of care” had been the physiologic effect. The blood analysis indicated that he had been “definitely intoxicated.” They made a note to check with the Spook—they had already begun calling her that—about whether Craig habitually drank while he worked. Carella remembered the two clean glasses alongside the decanter in the living room and wondered now whether the killer had washed them after the murder. The list of articles found in the bedroom did not include either a whiskey bottle or a glass.

The call from Jerry Mandel came at 6:20 P.M. Carella was just taking his .38 Chiefs Special from the file drawer of his desk, preparatory to clipping it to his belt, when the phone rang. He snatched the receiver from its cradle and glanced up at the clock. He had been working the case since 8:00 this morning, and there was nothing more he could do on it today, unless he felt like rapping on the sixty doors in Harborview, which he did not feel like doing till morning.

“87th Squad, Carella,” he said.

“May I please speak to the detective handling the murders at Harborview?” the voice said.

“I’m the detective,” Carella said.

“This is Jerry Mandel. I heard on the radio up here—”

“Yes, Mr. Mandel,” Carella said at once.

“Yes, that Mr. Craig was killed, so I called the building to find out what happened. I talked to Jimmy Karlson on the six to midnight, and he said you people were trying to locate me. So here I am.”

“Good, I’m glad you called, Mr. Mandel. Were you working the noon to six yesterday?”

“I was.”

“Did anyone come to the building asking for Mr. Craig?”

“Yes, someone did.”

“Who, would you remember?”

“A man named Daniel Corbett.”

“When was this?”

“About five o’clock. It was just starting to snow.”

“Did you announce him to Mr. Craig?”

“I did.”

“And what did Mr. Craig say?”

“He said, ‘Send him right up.’”

“Did he go up?”

“Yes, he did.”

“You saw him go up?”

“I saw him go into the elevator, yes.”

“At about five o’clock?”

“Around then.”

“Did you see him come down again?”

“No, I did not.”

“You quit at six…”

“At about a quarter after, when Jimmy relieved me. Jimmy Karlson.”

“And this man—Daniel Corbett—did not come down while you were on duty, is that right?”

“No, sir, he did not.”

“Can you tell me what he looked like?”

“Yes, he was a youngish man, I’d say in his late twenties or early thirties, and he had black hair and brown eyes.”

“What was he wearing?”

“A dark overcoat, brown or black, I really don’t remember. And dark pants. I couldn’t see whether he was wearing a suit or a sports jacket under the coat. He had a yellow scarf around his neck. And he was carrying a dispatch case.”

“Was he wearing a hat?”

“No hat.”

“Gloves?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Would you know how he spelled his name?”

“I didn’t ask him. He said Daniel Corbett, and that was the name I gave Mr. Craig on the phone.”

“And Mr. Craig said, ‘Send him right up,’ is that correct?”

“Those were his exact words.”

“Where are you if I need you?” Carella asked.

“The Three Oaks Lodge, Mount Semanee.”

“Thank you, you’ve been very helpful.”

“I liked Mr. Craig a lot,” Mandel said, and hung up.

Carella put the receiver back on the cradle, turned to Hawes with a grin, and said, “We’re getting lucky, Cotton.”

Their luck ran out almost at once.

There were no Daniel Corbetts listed in any of the city’s five telephone directories. On the off chance that Hillary Scott might have known him, they called her at the apartment and were not surprised when the phone was not answered there; not many people chose to remain overnight in an apartment where a murder had been committed. They called her office and spoke to a woman there who said everybody had gone home and she was just the cleaning woman. They searched the Isola directory for a possible second listing for Hillary Scott. There was none. They ran down the list of sixty-four Scotts in the book, hoping one of them might be related to the Spook. None of the people they called had the faintest idea who Hillary Scott might be.

It would have to wait till morning after all.

3

Hillary Scott called Carella at home at 8:30 Saturday morning. He was still in bed. He propped himself up on one elbow and lifted the receiver of the phone on the night table.

“Hello,” he said.

“Were you trying to reach me?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I sensed it,” Hillary said. “What is it?”

“How’d you get my phone number?” he asked.

“From the phone book.”

Thank God, he thought. If she’d plucked his home phone number out of thin air, he’d begin believing all sorts of things. There was, in fact, something eerie about talking to her on the telephone, visualizing her as she spoke, conjuring the near-duplicate image of his wife, who lay beside him with her arms wrapped around the pillow, her black hair spread against the pillowcase. Teddy Carella was a deaf-mute; she had not heard the ringing telephone; she did not now hear Carella’s conversation with the woman who looked so much like her. He wondered, abruptly, whether—if Teddy had a voice—it would sound like Hillary Scott’s.