Kiss and Kill (7 page)

“That's a switch,” said Ed.

“But why would he get out of bed in the middle of the night and come down here? And see how his pajamas are twisted around, bass-ackwards. He wasn't wearing these when he died, Ed. They were put on him after he died by somebody who was in too much of a hurry to notice what he was doing.”

He stooped and began removing the man's pajamas. “You'll have to help me, Ed.”

“I can't!” Then Ed said, “Of course, I can.” And he came over and raised the torso and Barney stripped off the pajama coat. “My God,” Ed said.

There were big blotches of blistered flesh under the corpse's armpits. Barney pulled the pajama bottoms down. The schoolteacher's genitals had been burned, too.

Ed swallowed again, and once more. “They look like electrical burns,” he said. “I've seen a lot of them.”

“Electrical?” Barney searched the basement. He turned up a length of electric cord with a plug at one end. The other end had had its socket ripped off and the insulation stripped to the bare wires.

“The wonderful world of science,” said Barney. “They weren't satisfied with the old standby, lit cigarettes. Poor bastard.”

“Do you suppose he told? Whatever it was they were torturing him for?”

Barney glanced at the haggard face of his companion. He knew what was in Ed's mind. If Aiken had told his tormentors what they wanted to know, then they probably no longer needed Liz Tollman.

But Barney shook his head. “Aiken was a schoolteacher. They're a pretty sedentary lot. And he had some prissy habits. He doesn't strike me as the sort who'd keep a secret if he was facing torture. Besides, he knew he had a bad heart. So they wouldn't have to torture him at all; he'd have told immediately if he knew anything—whatever it was they wanted to know. It was the poor guy's bad luck that they didn't believe him. So he got the torture anyway, and his heart conked out after all. My guess is our friends didn't learn a damn thing, and Liz is still safe.”

They dressed the body and left it there. As they walked over to the car, a woman emerged from the house next door and stooped to pick up her milk.

“Good morning,” said Barney, and made for her.

The woman straightened with a start. She stood nervously poking at her tousled hair and smoothing her wrinkled housecoat.

“Could you tell me if Mr. Aiken had visitors last night?” Barney asked her. He was smiling.

She looked relieved. “I don't think so. I heard his basement machinery running after midnight. He wouldn't be working down there if he had company.”

No, thought Barney, he wasn't working. Someone needed the noise of the machinery to drown out Aiken's screams.

The woman was starting inside. Barney asked smoothly: “Has anyone come during the last few days? A woman, for example, in a cream-colored Lincoln convertible?”

Her unroughed mouth tightened and Barney knew he had lost her.

“We don't pry into our neighbors' business,” she said. “Excuse
me
,” and she went into her house.

On the way out of town Barney stopped at a pay phone and called the police to report that there was a dead man at Rodney Aiken's address. He hung up before they could ask questions; he could not afford to be detained by dead bodies while there was still a live one to be found.

“And then there were two,” Ed said bitterly as they drove south. “Liz and Claire English. The others are out of the way.”

“And if Claire English was trying to warn the victims, she's out of a job. Let's go back and see if she's come home to roost.”

A police car was parked outside the St. Louis photographic studio. Barney and Ed walked by without turning their heads. In a drugstore phone booth a block away, Barney dialed the woman's apartment. A male voice answered: “Hello.”

“Is Claire there?”

“Who's calling?”

A friend.”

“You'll have to hang on, friend. I'll get her.”

Barney left the drugstore quickly.

“The cops have got both places staked out,” he told Ed. “The guy tried to hold me while he traced the call.”

“Then the police must have her.”

“I'm not sure of that. Let's see what our friendly newspaper says.”

The chief news of the Kiddoo murder was that there was no news. A headline proclaimed: “NO LEADS IN MYSTERY SLAYING.” According to the rehash, the photographer's assistant, Arthur, had apparently stuck to the story Barney had given him—that he had come to check the studio and had found the body of the fat man. No mention was made of Barney and Ed; nor was there any indication that the St. Louis police had connected Kiddoo's killing with the murders in Colorado, Indianapolis, or Detroit. Barney clucked with relief at that; nothing would endanger Liz more than a hoopla of a nationwide manhunt. The last line of the story gave him the information he was after: “Miss Claire English, owner of the studio, is still missing.”

He folded the paper thoughtfully. “I wonder why the English babe is so shy of the cops. She could have called them for help in Colorado, Indianapolis, Chicago …”

“Maybe she's on the other side,” said Ed.

“Unlikely, with the tour driver dumped in her studio. Now, of course, she can't show her face—” He snapped his fingers suddenly. “You know what I'd do in her shoes?”

“Crawl in a hole.”

“Yes. But I'd stick my head out once in a while to see if the coast is clear. Let's see if we can get a room facing her studio.”

They found a cheap hotel whose entrance was a flight of stairs between a bookstore and a restaurant. Barney asked for a room facing the street. The clerk said: “Give you three-twelve. Nope. Rented that one last night. I can let you have a third-floor rear. Good view—better than the front, in fact.”

Barney was about to move on, but the open register on the desk caught his eye. “Room 312.
Clarisse Engblom
.” It was too clumsily close for coincidence.

“We'll take the rear room,” said Barney. “No luggage, so we'll pay now.”

On their way upstairs Barney explained to Ed what he had seen on the register. He made Ed pass the door of room 312, drawing him a few yards down the hall.

“We don't want to spook her into running. Any ideas?”

Ed was excited. “Slide a note under the door telling who we are?”

“Would you believe a note, after what we've run into?”

“No, I suppose I wouldn't. They've got transoms over the doors, though, if that's any help.”

“Give me a boost up. I'll take a look.”

Barney saw an open suitcase, looking very expensive and out of place on a lumpy bed. It contained cosmetics, sheer underthings, and other articles of clothing that looked equally expensive. On the window ledge stood an ashtray full to the brim with cigarette butts. But there was nobody in the room.

Abruptly, he heard the shower hiss. He motioned Ed to let him down.

“She's in the bathroom. Taking a shower. Stand there so I can't be seen from the elevator.”

From his pocket he drew a penknife with a length of flexible steel in place of a blade. He inserted the steel in the keyhole and moved it carefully, listening to the tumblers. The shower made a reassuring background noise. He kept expecting it to stop. But it did not. She must be awfully damn dirty, he thought.

At last he got the lock to turn over. “Wait here, Ed. If you hear anyone coming, knock twice, pause, then twice more. Otherwise, follow me in in ten minutes.”

He drew his gun, slipped into the room, and tiptoed to the bathroom. He threw open the door fast, and instantly knew he had pulled a booboo. The shower hissed into an empty stall, and a voice behind him said:

“Don't move or I'll shoot.”

It was a throaty female voice, unexcited and convincing. Barney stood still.

“Claire English?”

“As if you didn't know.”

He said with a grin, turning his head ever so little, “You fooled me, Miss English. I mean, turning on the shower.”

“I was about to take one when I heard you start picking the lock. So I hid in the closet instead. Now don't try to stall me in conversation—and don't move!”

“Miss English, I'll explain why …”

“—while your friends move in? No, thank you.”

“I'm Barney Burgess—”

“And if you make a sudden move, or anybody comes through that door, I'll shoot.”

Barney did not care for the flutter of hysteria he detected underneath the calm voice. He began to develop an itch in the small of his back. What happens when Ed dutifully opens the door and steps in?

“You've got me, pal,” he said lightly. “I'll be a good boy.”

“If that's supposed to put me off my guard, forget it.”

Thirty seconds slogged by. Barney began to sweat. The woman had no idea what to do next. He said: “Suppose I lay my gun down on the floor and step into the bathroom with my hands up. Is that all right?”

Silence. She was examining his suggestion for pitfalls. Finally her voice said, “All right. But if you have any idea you can whirl and shoot before I squeeze this trigger, I advise you to forget it. You'll be dead.”

Barney was very careful. He bent at the knees slowly and laid his gun like an egg on the floor. He straightened up in slow motion and advanced into the bathroom inch by inch.

“It it all right if I turn around?” he asked, stopping.

“Yes. I want to see what you look like.”

It was a shock to both of them. She was naked, and he saw at once that she had forgotten she was naked. The short-barreled .32 in her left hand began to tremble.

It was the same slender figure he had seen so enchantingly displayed in the recess of her studio wall. Apparently she had actually stepped into the shower when she heard him lock-picking her door: droplets of water glistened on her belly and flanks and had left tracks down her legs. Her eyes were a woodland green, deep as emeralds, and shimmering with caution and a little fear. Her predicament would have been funny in other circumstances. She wanted to cover up the vital spots, and one hand was holding the .32 on him. The other hand did what it could, which was not much.

The face that had been in shadow on the photographs pinched his groin. It was painfully beautiful in a Greek sort of way—passionate nostrils, a nose chiseled out of marble, cameo lips that matched the nostrils, and a chin forming the perfect pediment. Barney saw why she had not photographed it. No camera study could have justified body and face in the same frame; it had to be one or the other, otherwise there would have been no center of attention.

The little gun trembled some more.

“Steady,” Barney said soberly; he forced himself to keep his eyes on her trigger finger. “Look, Miss English, I've been hunting for you—”

“You've found some of us,” she said with a bitter smile.

“You're the first live one.”

“The old couple in Colorado, that immense driver—”

“You've got it all wrong. I didn't kill them. I'm a private detective. I'm working for the husband of Elizabeth Tollman—the Chicago tourist.”

“You don't expect me to believe that.” But he saw her green eyes waver.

“I have papers that prove it.” He made a tentative move for his pocket, and stopped, looking at the finger.

“
Don't
.”

He raised the hand to rejoin its brother. His arms were aching. He could feel the sweat running down his back. She was very tense. Her nudity, her predicament, the whole absurd situation were too much for her to handle. He had to do something fast to get her off the hook. And there was always Ed Tollman out in the hall, waiting to come in.

“Miss English, this is ridiculous. What do you want me to do, stand here and look? I'd enjoy it under any circumstances but these. I'm allergic to guns, and I don't like the way you're handling that one.”

He had never before seen a blush suffuse an entire body. It was as if a pink baby spot had suddenly been turned on her.

“Mind if I make a suggestion?” Barney went on soothingly. “Let's do it like cops and robbers. I turn around, place my hands against the bathroom wall, and stand there with my feet spread way out. That lets you reach in from the side and take out my wallet with no danger of my jumping you. What do you say?”

After a moment she nodded. “All right, do it.”

Barney made like cops and robbers. The touch of her groping hand on his chest created butterflies in his stomach. She backtracked and, more deftly than he would have believed of her, kept the gun on him and explored his wallet.

“Edward Tollman is with me,” he said. “I left him out in the hall. He'll be coming in shortly.” He paused. “Now that you've seen my credentials—”

“How do I know the real Barney Burgess isn't lying dead in a ditch somewhere?”

“Hell, there's my photo.”

“How do I know the photo is of Burgess? It's just you.”

Barney said patiently, “May I turn off the shower? It's splashing over on my pants.”

“Go ahead. Stay in the bathroom.”

Barney turned the shower off, soaking himself. When he turned around she was gone. He heard the closet door. She reappeared in a moment, belting a white terrycloth robe with her right hand. The left still had the gun on him.

“Call your friend,” Claire English said. “Warn him that I'm armed.”

Barney stepped past her to the door of the hotel room. He raised his voice. “Ed! Come in. Slow. The lady's here, and she has a gun.”

The door opened and Ed Tollman poked his head into the room cautiously. He stopped like a shot as Claire stepped out of the bathroom with the .32.

“She caught me with one of the oldest tricks in the book,” Barney said sheepishly. “Miss English, Mr. Tollman. Are we squared away now?”

She examined the haggard Tollman face as if she were making a preliminary study for a portrait.