Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 10, October 1990

He shook his head. “She would give me a smile, always say hello, call me by name. Always in a hurry, rushing in, rushing out again. You wouldn’t think she had a care in the world. But you never know.”

“You never do.”

“She lived on the seventeenth floor. I wouldn’t live that high above the ground if you gave me the place rent-free.”

“Heights bother you?”

I don’t know if he heard the question. “I live up one flight of stairs. That’s just fine for me. No elevator and no high window.” His brow clouded and he looked on the verge of saying something else, but then someone started to enter his lobby and he moved to intercept him. I looked up again, trying to count windows to the seventeenth floor, but the vertigo returned and I gave it up.

“Are you Matthew Scudder?”

I looked up. The girl who’d asked the question was very young, with long straight brown hair and enormous light brown eyes. Her face was open and defenseless, and her lower lip was quivering. I said I was Matthew Scudder and pointed at the chair opposite mine. She remained on her feet.

“I’m Ruth Wittlauer,” she said.

The name didn’t register until she said, “Paula’s sister.” Then I nodded and studied her face for signs of a family resemblance. If they were there I couldn’t find them. It was ten in the evening, Paula had been dead for eighteen hours, and her sister was standing expectantly before me, her face a curious blend of determination and uncertainty.

I said, “I’m sorry. Won’t you sit down? And will you have something to drink?”

“I don’t drink.”

“Coffee?”

“I’ve been drinking coffee all day, I’m shaky from all the damn coffee. Do I have to order something?”

She was on the edge, all right. I said, “No, of course not.” I caught Trina’s eye and warned her off and she nodded shortly and let us alone. I sipped my own drink and watched Ruth Wittlauer over the brim of the cup.

“You knew my sister, Mr. Scudder.”

“In a superficial way, as a customer knows a waitress.”

“The police say she killed herself.”

“And you don’t think so?”

“I know she didn’t.”

I watched her eyes while she spoke, and I was willing to believe she meant what she said. She didn’t believe that Paula went out the window of her own accord, not for a moment. Of course that didn’t mean she was right.

“What do you think happened?”

“She was murdered. I know she was murdered. I think I know who did it.”

“Who?”

“Cary McCloud.”

“I don’t know him.”

“But it may have been somebody else,” she went on. She lit a cigarette, smoked for a few moments in silence. “I’m pretty sure it was Cary,” she said.

“Why?”

“They were living together.” She frowned, as if in recognition of the fact that cohabitation was small evidence of murder. “He could do it,” she said carefully. “That’s why I think he did. I don’t think just anyone could commit murder. In the heat of the moment, sure, I guess people fly off the handle, but to do it deliberately and throw someone out of a, out of a, to just deliberately throw someone out of a—”

I put my hand on top of hers. She had long, small-boned hands, and her skin was cool and dry to the touch.

“What do the police say?”

“They say she killed herself.” She drew on the cigarette. “But they didn’t know her. If Paula wanted to kill herself she would have taken pills. She liked pills.”

“I figured she took ups.”

“Ups, tranquilizers, ludes, barbiturates. And she liked grass and she liked to drink.” She lowered her eyes. My hand was still on top of hers and she looked at our two hands and I removed mine. “I don’t do any of those things. I drink coffee, that’s my one vice, and I don’t even do that much because it makes me jittery. It’s the coffee that’s making me nervous tonight. Not — all of this.”

“Okay.”

“She was twenty-four. I’m twenty. Baby sister — square baby sister — except that was always how she wanted me to be. She did all those things and at the same time she told me not to do them, that it was a bad scene. I think she kept me straight. I really do. Not so much because of what she was saying as that I looked at the way she was living and what it was doing to her and I didn’t want that for myself. I thought it was crazy what she was doing to herself, but at the same time I guess I worshipped her. I loved her. God, I really did — I’m just starting to realize how much. And she’s dead and he killed her, I know he killed her, I just know it.”

I asked her what she wanted me to do.

“You’re a detective.”

“Not in an official sense. I used to be a cop.”

“Could you find out what happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“I tried talking to the police. It was like talking to the wall. I can’t just turn around and do nothing.”

“Suppose I look into it and it still looks like suicide?”

“She didn’t kill herself.”

“Well, suppose I wind up thinking that she did?”

She thought it over. “I still wouldn’t have to believe it.”

“No,” I agreed. “We get to choose what we believe.”

“I have some money.” She put her purse on the table. “I’m the straight sister. I have an office job, I save money. I have five hundred dollars with me.”