Into the Night

“The shower curtain—” wasn’t pulled across the tub. She caught herself just in time. In the breath space between two words. The shower curtain — “could have been pulled across by her herself if she felt a draft, for instance.” Just a double space between two words instead of a single one.

But he was a detective. Was he a detective. “I knew you were up there,” he said cheerfully. “I had a pretty good hunch you were, all along, anyway. But this cinches it. Because I heard what it was you didn’t say just now.”

“So it’s still going on!” she flared. “Is that what you came up here for?”

He got to his feet. “Why not? Just to satisfy myself. I couldn’t get it out of you while you were on guard. I figured maybe I might if you were relaxed and with your guard down.”

She looked after him, and he had the door open and was about to leave — without her.

“Does the fact that you think I was over there tonight put me back into the case?” she asked him.

“There isn’t any more case,” he answered, “to put you back into. The case is closed. It was closed just as I was leaving the precinct house. That’s what delayed me.”

“But who is it — who was it?” she tried to call out after him.

But he shut the door behind him and left.

The radio didn’t carry it until about twenty hours later. It first came on on the 8:00 P.M. news break, and from then on was repeated every half hour until it had ridden out the night. In other words they, Homicide, must have deliberately withheld the news until they were sure beyond any doubt or chance of a slip-up. Smitts had already told her the case was closed when he left her door at 12:30 the night before. But that was off the record, so to speak.

It was this angle of it that froze her, frightened her stiff, much more than the news in itself. The murder item had been on the news all day long, but without the definitive arrest. She kept listening and listening, switching from station to station, and it was always the same, just with a change of tired, beat-up adjectives. “The glamorous café singer” was found dead in her tub. “The beautiful café star” was found dead in her bath. “The exotic café performer” was found slain. “Night-life-celebrity” discovered lifeless in bath.

“A tramp got croaked,” Madeline finished it off for them, with a touch of the toughness she’d learned from Dell herself.

She didn’t eat all day. Didn’t leave the room all day, because the radio was there. Why had he told her that? Had he been kidding? But why should he want to kid her? She had an impression that he didn’t kid about squadroom cases, especially not with outsiders. Well, then, what were they waiting for, what was holding them up?

Twelve times she’d heard that a dog had ridden the earth’s orbit in a capsule, and couldn’t have cared less. Twelve times what Senator Somebody had said was repeated verbatim, and it hadn’t even been good the first time. Twelve times the exact location of Hurricane Hilda was pinpointed. Twelve times Cuba, the Congo, Algeria, Vietnam, and all the pharmacopoeia of the sick and suffering sixties were trotted out on display and then trotted back in again. And twelve times poor Adelaide Nelson was drowned in her bathtub, until the old saw about belaboring a dead horse became almost literal.

The newscasts were like flying saucers circling around her, going away, then coming back again.

Then suddenly it came. Came, went, and was over with.

“An arrest has been made in the Adelaide Nelson slaying. A man named Jack d’Angelo has been brought in and is undergoing questioning.”

She cried it out loud, it was wrenched from her with such shattering violence. “My God! They’ve got the wrong man! Shiller was the one I sent the note to!”

Thirty minutes went by. She didn’t leave the side of the set. Almost picked it up and shook it, like a recalcitrant clock, to get the words out of it more quickly. They’d changed a couple of words in it this time. “...and has been undergoing questioning the greater part of the day.”

And then, the following time, “The police are confident they have the right man.”

And then, the next time, “He has been formally charged and bound over...”

And then, the time after that, “...one of the quickest in the records of the Police Department. Less than twenty-four hours after the body was found.”

“Too quick,” she thought, shuddering. “Too quick.”

The phone was in her hand.

“Forty-fifth Precinct,” a man’s voice said.

“Do you have a man there named — uh — well, I guess it would be Smith?”

The voice chuckled, probably in fondness or because it was tired answering nothing but dry duty calls all day long. “Oh, Himself. The quiet one. The mouse. John Francis Xavier Smith. Yeah, he’s known around these parts.”