carried the other, the special, the dressy one. Iâd forgotten I owned it. I hadnât used it since. That had been the last time clothes, accessories, meant anything to me. Iâd been down to elementals from then on.
So I got it out and looked in that. And at the first touch of my fingers, as I unsheathed the mirror, turquoise flashed up at me like a patch on the black lining.
I opened it at the M page. My fingers had stopped being steady any more. I thought: âSomeone in this book killed her. The name is in this book. On this very page Iâm holding open here. Itâs looking right at me, staring me in the face. And Iâm looking at it. But I canât tell which one it is.â
Marty â¦â¦â¦ Crescent 6â4824
Mordaunt â¦â¦â¦ Atwater 8â7457
Mason â¦â¦â¦ Butterfield 9â8019
McKee â¦â¦â¦ Columbus 4â0011
âIâm looking at it,â my mind repeated, âand I canât tell which one it is.â
But I was going to find out.
I didnât even know his first name, or rating, or which precinct house he was attached to. So if thereâd been more than one of them by that last name I might have got hold of the wrong one. In fact, I didnât know anything about him. Only that heâd been a little less brutal, a little more human, that night that theyâd brought Kirk back to the apartment. And I had to have someone to turn to; I couldnât go the thing alone.
So I walked into the precinct house that was the nearest to where she had lived and I asked for him. âIs there a Flood here?â
âWesley Flood, on Homicide, that who you want?â
âIâI guess so.â
âName, please?â
âJust say a young lady.â
They showed me into some room at the back, and he saw me in there. It was he. He couldnât place me for a minute, I could tell. Then he remembered. âYouâre Murrayâs wife; thatâs it!â
I told him wanly, yes, that was it.
He looked me over surreptitiously, I guess to see how I was taking it, standing up under it. I caught a flicker of sympathy in his eyes, though I suppose he didnât realize it showed. I really didnât want that; I wanted advice and coaching.
I told him what Iâd found at the Mercer apartment. I told him what I thought it meant and what I intended doing about it.
He heard me through. Just sat and listened attentively. There was no mistaking his expression, though. Finally I had to say, âYou still donât think I was up there that day, do you?â
âPossibly you wereâââ
âWell, hereâs the book. Look, right here. Her book.â
He leafed it, tapped it a couple of times against his thumbnail, handed it back. His attitude was unmistakable: it was over; it was water under the bridge. Whether I had been up there or not didnât matter any longer. Hadnât in the first place. The case was closed.
He tried to talk me out of it at first. âLook, even taking your point of view, even granting that Murrayâthat your husbandâisnât guilty and that thereâs someone else still at large who is, donât you see you may be starting from a wrong premise altogether in basing something on this book and on that match cover you say you saw? Thereâs no hard-and-fast rule that the name of everyone she knew had to go into that book. It could work the other way around, couldnât it? Those she knew well, those she knew best, mightnât be in it at all. Sheâd be so familiar with their numbers sheâd know them by heart, wouldnât have had to write them down. Only those she knew less well would be in the book.â
I thought of Kirkâs name. Sheâd known him well enough to try to vamp him into going away with her, and his name was in the book. I didnât tell him that; there was still an ache in that old wound.
âThere have been