You Live Once Part 15

You'd save money and you'd get fifteen extra minutes sleep in the morning."

She smiled at me.

"You could almost sell me on that sleep thing. But no, Clint. Thanks, but no."

It irritated me a little, because of the inference that I made the offer with ulterior motives.

"Why not?" I asked, too harshly over the tin drumming of the rain.

"Strange things happen to the local C.P.P. girls who date the fair-haired boys who get shipped in here, Clint.

They seem to get fired, and I like my work. Any more questions?" She had matched my harshness with her anger.

"Just a ride to and from work. What's wrong with that?"

She looked at me speculatively, lips pursed.

"Just a ride. That's it, isn't it? For now. Be practical, Clint, please.

We're both lonely. I'm aware of that and I guess you are.

Just a ride, to work every morning and home every night.

And every night I get out neatly and say thanks. Is that what you think? How soon before we'd stop on the way home? Just a cup of coffee, Tina. Sure. Later a steak.

Fine. No, Clint. We keep this formal. We work in the same office. That's all and that's all there will be, because I like you too much already."

She had worked her feet into her damp shoes while she spoke. She opened the car door and was gone, running through the rain, up onto the front porch of the old yellow house. She gave a shy wave and went inside.

I forgot everything else she said and remembered only that she had said she liked me too much already. It was the first c.h.i.n.k in cool armor. I suspected that she had said it impulsively and would be sorry later. Tina was not one to plot, to connive a chance to say a thing like that.

I went home and thought about her, about long quick legs and the tilt of her smile, about eyes that held gravity and shyness.

Chapter 6.

My local sonorous evening commentator said in part, at ten o'clock that evening, "Chief of Police Judson Sutton told your reporter earlier this evening that he expects an early solution to the brutal murder of Mary Olan. Rain and darkness prevented as thorough a search of the area where the body was found as was desired. The roped off and guarded area will be searched again in the morning in the hope that some clue can be found that will point to the ident.i.ty of the murderer."

I hoped they would not look in any holes in rotten birch trees.

"Earlier today Nels Yeagger, handyman at the Pryor estate at Smith Lake was brought down to the city for questioning. He was picked up by two of the men a.s.signed to Captain Kruslov, who is handling the case personally. At the time of this broadcast Yeagger has not yet been released, and it is a.s.sumed that he is still being interrogated.

"The coroner's office, after an examination of the body, has established the time of death as some time between two A.M. and five A.M. Sunday morning. Death was caused by a thin band of fabric that was tightened around the throat. There is no indication that the fabric was knotted.

Coroner Walther stated that the object used could have been a belt used as a slip noose. The actual throat injury was slight, and it is believed that strangulation took place slowly. The absence of any marks of conflict on the body seem to indicate that the girl was unconscious at the time she was killed. She had not been criminally attacked. The body was taken to the place where it was found in a car, and the tire marks were carefully obliterated where the car pa.s.sed over soft bare ground. An extremely valuable wrist.w.a.tch had not been removed from the body, and police have eliminated robbery as a motive, despite the fact that the dead girl's purse has not yet been found. At the dinner party before her death she was carrying a small black envelope purse with a gold clasp. She..."

My phone rang and I turned the radio down. It was Hilver.

"Mr. Sewell, the captain wants you should come down and leave off fingerprints. I was supposed to tell you today out at Pryor's but he sent me off and I forgot about it."

"Right now?"

"Right now."

There isn't any answer to that. I agreed, put my tie and jacket back on and went on down to police headquarters.

It is a grimy old red stone building, full of the varied stinks of a hundred years of crime and punishment. A sergeant behind a wicket told me where to go. A bored man wrote down my name, age, height, weight, marital status, employment, and place of birth. He rolled my fingers on an ink pad and then on a printed card. When he was through he gave me one paper towel and sent me over to a chipped sink in the corner of the room.

"Can I go now?"

"Sit down over there," he said. I sat. He left the room. I sat and sat. There was an electric clock on the wall. Every two minutes it clacked loudly, jumped forward two minutes and caught up with Time. A garage girl on a wall calendar had snared her skimpy skirt crawling through a barbed wire fence. Some jokester had given her a complete set of hirsute adornment. I kept yawning so hard I shuddered. I got sick of looking at the wooden floor, one high table, one low table, four chairs, the tan inst.i.tutional plaster wall. Sometimes people would walk down the hall, by the open door. That, at least, was mildly entertaining. A sniffling girl went by once, a short fat matron prodding her in the back with a bitter knuckle.

Another time a man started whooping and yelling and roaring. He stopped in the middle of a roar, stopped very, very abruptly. A young cop went by trying to sing.

At eleven-thirty Kruslov came in. He was in shirtsleeves, his tie untied, the two ends hanging down in discouraged fashion. He stared at me, obviously puzzled.

He turned on his heel and left. I called after him but he didn't answer.

Ten minutes later he came back with a sheet of paper in his hand, studying it. He sat on the low table.

"Sewell.

Let's see what we got. Clear print of first and second finger of left hand on rear of side mirror, smudged print of left thumb on face of mirror. Section of print of right thumb, clear, on horn ring." He put the paper aside and stared at me.

"I told you I drove the car," I said angrily.

"I adjusted the side mirror. I guess I blew the horn once. Now you've proved I've driven the car."

He yawned and stuck a fist against his mouth.

"Relax.

Relax. You shouldn't have been told to stay around."

"Can I go now?"

"Gus says you're a working fool. He says you spend more time on his back than off it."

"Gus and I get along."

"He said that too. He hasn't missed a day, except vacations, since they opened that plant. Twenty years around machines, the last six at that place."

"He's a good man."

He yawned again.

"I should have gone into that racket. I figured this would give me retirement. Now Gus gets retirement too, maybe better than I do. What's there left to make a man go on the cops?"