Suspects
Suspects
Thomas Berger
Contents
To Brooks London
“No answer, missus,” said the young policeman, stating the obvious, but he knocked on the door still another time before turning to Mary Jane Jones, whose call was the reason why he and his partner had come to 1143 Laurel. Mrs. Jones, a tall, big-boned but not heavy woman in her mid-sixties, though with the voice of a plaintive little girl, lived next door at 1145, in a larger and older house. She and Jack Marevitch, the other cop, stood together at the bottom of the two-step entrance. There was no porch here.
Art McCall, the policeman who had done the knocking, came down to join the others. “I'd wait awhile if I was you,” he told Mary Jane. “Sometimes people change their routines, you know, without warning. Sometimes something comes up.”
“I tell you she's in there,” Mary Jane insisted, in her high-pitched whine. “She hasn't gone
anyplace.”
Marevitch now was heard from. “Ma'am, you might be right. But maybe she's busy, see. You know, in the bathroom.”
“For an
hour?”
Mary Jane turned to share her incredulity with McCall, but he remained professionally noncommittal.
Marevitch was a strong-featured, thick-trunked man in his late forties. “How old's the individual? My seventeen-year-old, she'll stay in there all evening. Our mistake was giving her that portable phone.” He smiled at Mary Jane.
“I know Donna,” Mary Jane said, “and sheâ”
“What's the name again?” McCall asked.
“Donna. Mrs. Larry Howland.”
“The Howland residence,” McCall said, the shiny black bill of his navy-blue cap pecking the air as he nodded.
“Can't you go in and look? I tell you, I've been calling over there an hour.”
“You been phoning to this residence?” asked Marevitch. “This phone's been ringing?”
“Oh, it's not out of order. I can tell you that,” said Mary Jane.
“Well, we can't just break in, missus,” said Officer McCall. There was a radio unit clipped to his left epaulet, and it made a quacking sound now. He replied to it, lips close to its grillwork, in an almost metallic voice of his own, then straightened his head to say, “We got another thing we gotta go and do now, Mrs. Jones. If you're still worried, give us another call later on. But I bet everything will be okay and your friend is just fine. You'll see.”
He tipped his cap, and he and Marevitch walked to the curb and their patrol car, a shiny white vehicle with so many markings in royal blue and gold as to seem gaudy: official seal; the name of the city; the slogan “To protect and to serve” and another with an antidrug message; and “Dial 911.”
McCall took the wheel. On the passenger's side, Marevitch lowered the window and smiled out at the woman, which made his nose more evident than ever. “Probably everything is completely normal. But you always know where to get ahold of us.”
They drove briskly away. They had not even bothered to go around back. It was true that nothing could be learned looking in the windows and through the glass panes in the doors, which Mary Jane had proved before calling the cops, and she was aware that they could lawfully enter private premises only if invited or with a search warrant, but there was no one else to blame, unless of course Donna
was
soaking in the bath, listening to music loud enough to obscure the sound of the phone and the knocks on the door as well, and furthermore this had been true for a good hour, though Mary Jane knew that Donna invariably took showers after her daily exercise, not tub baths, and furthermore, with an ear against each of the doors in turn, she had not heard any radio or stereo noise.
She had not considered it her place to turn a doorknob. When Mary Jane was a girl, in this same town, though two miles away, over on Dimsdale, her mother had felt free to trot into the houses of the neighbors on either side without knocking, to borrow instant coffee or a cup of milk, or simply to talk, and they returned the favor whenever they felt like it. But people kept their doors locked nowadays unless they had children who came and went. Mary Jane's sons were long grown up and lived elsewhere. Donna's little daughter at three was still too young to go outside on her own in an unfenced yard.
Mary Jane decided to take the advice of the officers and go home, having anyway forgotten just why it was she had called Donna in the first place. She had come over to knock when the telephone had not been answered: that was clear. The policemen had not suggested she was wrong in so doing. It was important to Mary Jane that she keep things straight, for nowadays, having nobody to answer to, she was wont suddenly to lose track of what she was doing. Sometimes she went for several hours on the assumption that her husband would be back from work at the usual time, wanting his dinner, and would plan an elaborate menu.
Mary Jane suddenly remembered why she had phoned Donna. The young woman had invited her to supper, as she had so frequently done since Karl Jones's death, one or more evenings per week. Larry Howland was out of town at the moment, in fact all the way out on the Coast, attending a sales-training seminar given by his air-conditioning company. Donna had called Mary Jane that morning: how about coming over for the evening meal, women only? Just us three ladies, meaning she was counting little Amanda, and that was quite okay with Mary Jane, who had had only boys herself, two of them, and while she could not say she was disappointed, it would have been nice to have one other female in the house of men, which could sometimes be coarse, with all those sweaty clothes from sports and the mutual punching, though usually good-natured. They were fine sons.
So Donna had invited her to supper, but on this occasion Mary Jane had not accepted immediately. She had made one small beginning effort to reclaim her lost pride. She loved being entertained at the Howlands', and she had no place else to go, but she simply had to make a start at recovering her strength of character. So she pretended to have other arrangements that had to be altered, and Donna, who was the soul of delicacy, said the right thing: that the invitation would remain valid right up to suppertime. That had been just an hour earlier, but Mary Jane saw no reason to keep her in suspense. Donna might need to buy extra food if a guest with
her
appetite was coming.
That Donna would have gone out before getting Mary Jane's answer was unreasonable. Thus, when the phone was not answered, Mary Jane had walked on over. That she should go home now without solving the mystery might be acceptable to the police, but it would be a violation of her personal moral code.
She strode purposefully around to the back of the house, where, unlike the front, there was a porch, though only a little one, five or six feet deep, two steps up from the yard. She mounted the porch, opened the screen, and knocked forcefully on the wooden door. There was no bell in back. Without waiting for a response this time, she turned the knob. The door opened readily, on silent hinges.
She bent forward and poked her head into the opening so offered, speaking Donna's name at normal volume. When no answer came, she tried a somewhat louder version. Finally she stepped across the threshold onto vinyl tiles that she nowadays never trod without recognizing how much cleaner they were than her own had been since her husband's death. As always, the entire kitchen was spotless, a miracle with a small child in residence. It was also, at this moment, deserted.
She continued to shout. “Hello, Donna? ⦠Hi, Donna. It's Mary Janeâ¦. Your phone didn't answerâ¦Donna, if you're here, I beg your pardon. But I just can't keep waiting out there.”
The kitchen had two exits: one gave onto the dining room, which at a certain arbitrary point, defined only by the change in furniture, became a living room with a large picture window that provided a view of the street. Neither Mary Jane nor the policemen had been able to see clearly through this from the yard, that is, through the reflections of the bright afternoon into a darkened interior, and at a distance that was due to the thick rose bushes beneath the window, which were not yet in flower but were heavily budded.
In the kind of gingerly search Mary Jane was making, you could look out of the kitchen and see the entire dining-living room at one glance, not missing an occupant unless she was willfully hiding behind a sofa or drapery. Mary Jane therefore did not explore that area on foot but instead went into the hallway through the right-hand door. Here the three bedrooms were placed in line against the west wall, but separated each from each by sanitary facilities: a full bathroom between the back corner bedroom and the middle one; then came the lavatory, washbasin and toilet, that was near enough to the living room to be used by visitors; and finally the bedroom at the front corner of the house.
The back bedroom was the master, the middle served as nursery, and the one that faced the street was for guests if any, though there had never been any to Mary Jane's knowledge other than Larry's kid half brother Lloyd, who dropped by sporadically, between changes of address.
She headed for the middle bedroom, for the simple reason that its door was open, as that to the master bedroom was not. She was still more puzzled than fearful. Her apprehensions began only when she looked in through the open doorway and saw little Amanda, sleeping placidly on one cheek, silky fair hair strewn across the other side of the pillow, pink blanket pulled up to her pink ear. A serene image if there ever was one, except that the time must now be almost four-thirty, far too late for her normal nap.
She continued on to the top of the hall, past the lavatory, the door to which was normally kept slightly ajar, except when it was in use. It now stood in the wide-open position, as did those to the bathroom and the front bedroom beyond. There was no one in the lavatory or the bathroom, and the guest bedroom had no occupant.
Mary Jane walked slowly down the hallway to the closed door of the master bedroom, producing heavier steps than usual so as to alert Donna if the latter was napping within. But no response was forthcoming. When she eventually reached the door and put limp fingers, not yet clenched, on the knob, she received a violent shock as if the thing were electrified. It took her a moment to understand that the sensation was due only to the ringing of a telephone, and not a single instrument but several, many, too many and too loud for one small house. Apparently there was one in every room, and she was equidistant from them all. The din was unbearable. She covered her ears, but the noise seemed as loud as ever. The only way to stop it was to answer one of the phones. Obviously there was one in the room behind the closed door, though because of the barrier its ring was not so loud as that on the kitchen wall through the open door across the hall. Though this event offered an additional incentive to invade the master bedroom, Mary Jane was now grateful for an excuse not to intrude there.
She strode into the kitchen and seized the white telephone from its holder on the wall to the left of the sink.
“This is Mary Jane Jones.”
After a short pause, a man's voice said, “Mary Jane, I'd know you anywhere. It's Larry.”
“Larry, I want you to know what I'm doing over here. Iâ”
He interrupted jocularly. “I'm pretty sure you aren't stealing the valuables. You're welcome to all you can find. Listen, we're due back from lunch in a minute, out here, but I thought I'd say a word to my sweetie because I'll be tied up later in the day and evening, at least till after her bedtime. So.”
“Nobody answered the phone, so I did,” said Mary Jane. “I don't know what's going on. Amanda's in bed. Donna's I don't know where. You left the car at the airport, didn't you?”