Suspects
Thomas Berger
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To Brooks London
1
“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 she—”
“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 Jane…. Your phone didn’t answer…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. I—”
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?”
“I can clear that up for you,” Larry said in his jovial voice. “She’s taking a shower. She wears that cap that bunches her hair over her ears. What with that and the water, she can’t hear you if you shoot a gun off. Take my word for it.”
“The water’s not running, though,” Mary Jane said. “And the bathroom door is wide open. The back bedroom’s the only one closed.”
“Huh,” said Larry. “Well, she’s got to be around somewhere. Running the washer?”
“Wait a minute, Larry.” Mary Jane looked for a place to rest the phone but, finding none, let it dangle. She had forgotten about the cellar. She opened the appropriate door, next to the stove, and peered down the stairs. The Howland basement was a cheerier one than her own, with lots of light on the floor from its high windows. She would not have hesitated to go down and look around, but she heard no sound of washing machine or dryer, and her calls of Donna’s name brought no response. And Larry was waiting on a long-distance line.
She reported back to him. “Nothing’s on down there.”
“Well, gee, Mary Jane, my time’s all gone now, I see. I got to rush. I will try and find a minute later, tell her, but if not, then sometime tomorrow. We got these real late sessions—I mean, counting the change of time zones. You take care!”
He hung up before he could be made to appreciate that the real problem was not his tight schedule but his wife’s whereabouts. But being annoyed made Mary Jane feel less fearful. With her newfound confidence she now crossed the hall, knocked sharply on the closed door, and called out Donna’s name. She suddenly remembered an odd failure on Larry’s part: when she had told him the door to the back bedroom was closed, he had not suggested she go and open it. Did that mean she wasn’t supposed to? On the other hand, he hadn’t said she should not, either.
She knocked again while turning the knob, and called Donna’s name one more time, as loudly as ever, and then, inside the room, continued awhile to repeat it softly in a series that soon became a single prolonged whimper. But at no point did she scream, though she had never before seen blood in this abundance.
The white bedspread was a swamp of it, so supersaturated that it had overflowed, cascading onto the bedside rug below. The redness was what Mary Jane first fixed on, as being more incongruous than the nude white body lying prone on it, in it, for the body was Donna’s, whereas the blood seemed altogether out of place, having no visible place of origin, Donna’s back being unmarked from shoulder to heels.
Mary Jane tried to believe her friend was still alive, despite the hemorrhage, and while being incapable of coherent speech, pretended to talk to her. When she received no answer to the questions she had not been able to ask, she leaned over the bed, to the left of the protruding feet and ankles, trying to avoid the once fluffy rug that squished with blood. Donna lay at a right angle to the axis of the large bed, queen- or king-size or whatever they called them; Mary Jane had slept her entire marriage in a just plain double. She touched Donna’s shoulder cap now and was relieved to find it warmish, certainly not really cold.
Once again she tried to speak, addressing the bloody tangle of hair above the serene smooth white groove of spine. She wanted to say she’d try CPR before calling anybody: you could never tell. But it was useless. She could not produce a sound. Not even her strenuous gasps for air seemed audible.
She tried one-handedly to roll Donna over to the supine. But the body had too much inertia to be moved, and it was glued down by the dense blood. Then at last, with a heroic effort, using both hands and putting her weight into it, she succeeded.
Donna, face up, was inaccessible to the kiss of life. Her upper teeth were embedded to the gum in her lower lip. Below her chin she was all raw flesh, with a continuous open wound from groin to breastbone.
Mary Jane remained soundless. Her emotions had been instantaneously annealed by the horror before her. In the next moment she was down the hall and at Amanda’s bed.
The child at least must be saved. But when she pulled the pink blanket aside, she saw that Amanda’s delicate throat had been slit from just below one pale little earlobe to the other.
The morning began with Lloyd Howland’s butter-fingered loss of an electric razor to a washbasin full of water. The fuse blew, and the shaver was probably permanently ruined. He could not go to his job without shaving. He was on thin ice at work for many reasons, and had already been chided for a recent appearance with a stubbled chin, which he had failed to get the boss to accept as being in the current fashion of many popular young film stars. “This is not a movie, Howland. This is a supermarket. Also wear a clean shirt tomorrow. Stay in back today. Keep off the floor.” So he unloaded produce from the big tractor-trailers that pulled around to the rear of the shopping center. He hated truck drivers on the highway and liked them even less close up. For one thing, they were habitually overweight, and Lloyd, himself constitutionally slender irrespective of diet, had an instinctive contempt for anyone he saw as obese. So he was wont to wisecrack in the hearing, sometimes even into the face, of some tub of lard who had climbed down from the high cab to waddle back and unlock the truck doors, and not all who were so derided had a sense of humor about it.
“You’re going to get your tail kicked one of these days,” the produce-department manager told him with obvious pleasure. “You got it coming.”
“Any time they want to try,” Lloyd said, “I’m available.” He thrust his jaw at the man. “Or anybody else.”
“That’s really going to throw a scare into ‘em,” sardonically murmured this narrow-shouldered, balding person. “Now get back to work.”
Lloyd would have liked to smash him in his smirking face. But he had already lost one job since the year began, and his duties here were easy enough to shirk. Not to mention that if he took on everybody whom he found objectionable, he would have to fight most of the world. So he had grimaced hatefully but pretended to do as ordered.