"I'd like to come out and talk with you, Mrs. Thal."

"Oh, I don't think so."

"I realize it's an imposition on your time, but-"

"I just don't want to get involved," she said. "Can't you understand that? Jesus Christ, Wendy's dead, right? So what can it help her? Right?"

"Mrs. Thal-"

"I'm hanging up now," she said. And did.

I bought a newspaper, went to a lunch counter and had a cup of coffee. I gave her a full half hour to wonder whether or not I was all that easy to get rid of. Then I dialed her number again.

Something I learned long ago. It is not necessary to know what a person is afraid of. It is enough to know the person is afraid.

She answered in the middle of the second ring. She held the phone to her ear for a moment without saying anything. Then she said, "Hello?"

"This is Scudder."

"Listen, I don't-"

"Shut up a minute, you foolish bitch. I intend to talk to you. I'll either talk to you in front of your husband or I'll talk to you alone."

Silence.

"Now you just think about it. I can pick up a car and be in Mamaroneck in an hour. An hour after that I'll be back in my car and out of your life. That's the easy way. If you want it the hard way I can oblige you but I don't see that it makes much sense for either of us."

"Oh, God."

I let her think about it. The hook was set now, and there was no way she was going to shake it loose.

She said, "Today's impossible. Some friends are coming over for coffee, they'll be here any minute."

"Tonight?"

"No. Gerry'll be home. Tomorrow?"

"Morning or afternoon?"

"I have a doctor's appointment at ten. I'm free after that."

"I'll be at your place at noon."

"No. Wait a minute. I don't want you coming to the house."

"Pick a place and I'll meet you."

"Just give me a minute. Christ. I don't even know this area, we just moved here a few months ago. Let me think. There's a restaurant and cocktail lounge on Schuyler Boulevard. It's called the Carioca. I could stop there for lunch after I get out of the doctor's."

"Noon?"

"All right. I don't know the address."

"I'll find it. The Carioca on Schuyler Boulevard."

"Yes. I don't remember your name."

"Scudder. Matthew Scudder."

"How will I recognize you?"

I thought, I'll be the man who looks out of place. I said, "I'll be drinking coffee at the bar."

"All right. I guess we'll find each other."

"I'm sure we will."

MY illegal entry the night before had yielded little hard data beyond Marcia Maisel's name. The search of the premises had been complicated by my not knowing precisely what I was searching for. When you toss a place, it helps if you have something specific in mind. It also helps if you don't care whether or not you leave traces of your visit. You can search a few shelves of books far more efficiently, for example, if you feel free to flip through them and then toss them in a heap on the rug. A twenty-minute job stretches out over a couple of hours when you have to put each volume neatly back in place.

There were few enough books in Wendy's apartment, and I hadn't bothered with them, anyway. I wasn't looking for something which had been deliberately concealed. I didn't know what I was looking for, and now, after the fact, I wasn't at all sure what I had found.

I had spent most of my hour wandering through those rooms, sitting on chairs, leaning against walls, trying to rub up against the essence of the two people who had lived here. I looked at the bed Wendy had died on, a double box spring and mattress on a Hollywood frame. They had not yet stripped off the blood-soaked sheets, though there would be little point in doing so; the mattress was deeply soaked with her blood, and the whole bed would have to be scrapped. At one point I stood holding a clot of rusty blood in my hand, and my mind reeled with images of a priest offering Communion. I found the bathroom and gagged without bringing anything up.

While I was there, I pushed the shower curtain aside and examined the tub. There was a ring around it from the last bath taken in it, and some hair matted at the drain, but there was nothing to suggest that anyone had been killed in it. I had not suspected that there would be. Richie Vanderpoel's recapitulation had not been a model of concise linear thought.

The medicine cabinet told me that Wendy had taken birth-control pills. They came in a little card with a dial indicating the days of the week so that you could tell whether you were up-to-date or not. Thursday's pill was gone, so I knew one thing she had done the day she died. She had taken her pill.

Along with the birth-control pills I found enough bottles of organic vitamins to suggest that either or both of the apartment's occupants had been a believer. A small vial with a prescription label indicated that Richie had suffered from hay fever. There was quite a bit in the way of cosmetics, two different brands of deodorant, a small electric razor for shaving legs and underarms, a large electric razor for shaving faces. I found some other prescription drugs-Seconal and Darvon (his), Dexedrine spansules labeled For Weight Control (hers), and an unlabeled bottle containing what looked like Librium. I was surprised the drugs were still around. Cops are apt to pocket them, and men who would not take loose cash from the dead have trouble resisting the little pills that pick you up or settle you down.

I took the Seconal and the Dex along with me.

A closet and a dresser in the bedroom filled with her clothes. Not a large wardrobe, but several dresses had labels from Bloomingdale's and Lord & Taylor. His clothes were in the living room. One of the closets there was his, and he kept shirts and socks and underwear in the drawers of a Spanish-style kneehole desk.

The living-room couch was a convertible. I opened it up and found it made up with sheets and blankets. The sheets had been slept on since their last laundering. I closed the couch and sat on it.

A well-equipped kitchen, copper-bottomed frying pans, a set of burnt-orange enameled cast-iron pots and pans, a teak rack with thirty-two jars of herbs and spices. The refrigerator held a couple of TV dinners in the freezer compartment, but the rest of it was abundantly stocked with real food. So were the cupboards. The kitchen was a large one by Manhattan standards, and there was a round oak table in it. There were two captain's chairs at the table. I sat at one of them and pictured cozy domestic scenes, one of them whipping up a gourmet meal, the two of them sitting at this table and eating it.

I had left the apartment without finding the helpful things one hopes to find. No address books, no checkbooks, no bank statements. No revealing stacks of canceled checks. Whatever their financial arrangements, they had evidently conducted them on a cash basis.

Now, a day later, I thought of my impressions of that apartment and tried to match them up with Martin Vanderpoel's portrait of Wendy as evil incarnate. If she had trapped him with sex, why did he sleep on a folding bed in the living room? And why did the whole apartment have such an air of placid domesticity to it, a comfortable domesticity that all the blood in the bedroom could not entirely drown?

Chapter 9

When I got back to my hotel there was a phone message at the desk. Cale Hanniford had called at a quarter after eleven. I was to call him. He had left a number, and it was one he had already given me. His office number.

I called him from my room. He was at lunch. His secretary said he would call me back. I said no, I'd try him again in an hour or so.

The call reminded me of J.J. Cottrell, Inc., Wendy's employment reference on her lease application. I found the number in my notebook and tried it again on the chance I'd misdialed it first time around. I got the same recording. I checked the telephone directory for J.J. Cottrell and didn't come up with anything. I tried Information, and they didn't have anything, either.

I thought for a few minutes, then dialed a special number. When a woman picked up, I said, "Patrolman Lewis Pankow, Sixth Precinct. I have a listing that's temporarily out of service, and I have to know in what name it's listed."

She asked the number. I gave it to her. She asked me to please hold the line. I sat there with the phone against my ear for almost ten minutes before she came back on the line.

"That's not a temporary disconnect," she said. "That's a permanent disconnect."

"Can you tell me who the number was assigned to last?"

"I'm afraid I can't, officer."

"Don't you keep that information on file?"

"We must have it somewhere, but I don't have access to it. I have recent disconnects, but that was disconnected over a year ago, so I wouldn't have it. I'm surprised it hasn't been reassigned by now."

"So all you know is that it's been out of service for more than a year."

That was all she knew. I thanked her and rang off. I poured myself a drink, and by the time it was gone I decided that Hanniford ought to be back in his office. I was right.

He told me he had managed to find the postcards. The first one, postmarked New York, had been mailed on June 4. The second had been mailed in Miami on September 16.

"Does that tell you anything, Scudder?"

It told me she had been in New York in early June if not before then. It told me she had taken the Miami trip prior to signing the lease on her apartment. Beyond that, it didn't tell me a tremendous amount.

"Another piece of the puzzle," I said. "Do you have the cards with you now?"

"Yes, they're right in front of me."

"Could you read me the messages?"

"They don't say very much." I waited, and he said, "Well, there's no reason not to read them. This is the first card. 'Dear Mom and Dad. Hope you haven't been worrying about me. Everything is fine. Am in New York and like the big city very much. School got to be too much of a hassle. Will explain everything when I see you.' " His voice cracked a little on that line, but he coughed and went on. " 'Please don't worry. Love, Wendy.' "

"And the other card?"

"Hardly anything on it. 'Dear Mom and Dad. Not bad, huh? I always thought Florida was strictly for wintertime, but it's great this time of year. See you soon. Love, Wendy.' "

He asked me how things were going. I didn't really know how to answer the question. I said I had been very busy and was putting a lot of bits and pieces together but that I didn't know when I would have something to show him. "Wendy was sharing her apartment with another girl for several months before Vanderpoel came on the scene."

"Was the other girl a prostitute?"

"I don't know. I rather doubt it, but I'm not sure. I'm seeing her tomorrow. Evidently she was someone Wendy knew at college. Did she ever mention a friend named Marcia Maisel?"

"Maisel? I don't think so."

"Do you know the names of any of her friends from college?"

"I don't believe I do. Let me think. I seem to recall that she would refer to them by first names, and they didn't stick in my mind."

"It's probably unimportant. Does the name Cottrell mean anything to you?"

"Cottrell?" I spelled it, and he said it aloud again. "No, it doesn't mean anything to me. Should it?"