Nemesis

“I took her home. Or she took me home. That’s about all I remember. When I woke up she was lying beside me. She was dead. I wasn’t thinking very well. I walked out of the place and just kept walking. I stopped for some coffee and that’s where you found me.”

“Where did she live?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, where did she take you?”

“It was somewhere on Nelson Boulevard. I didn’t notice any street numbers.”

The copper turned the ignition key and stepped on the starter. He was still frowning.

“We can check that story easy enough,” he said.

“Can I call my wife?” Larry asked.

“Maybe from the station,” the copper said.

He put the car in gear and moved away from the curb. He was still frowning.

Chapter IV

The cell was small and airless. There was a cot, a chair, a basin of water. There was a uniformed policeman standing in the corridor with his back to Larry.

Larry sat on the edge of the cot, hands twisted together.

For six hours he had been telling and re-telling his story. And answering questions. Polite questions, tough questions, insulting questions. Questions that were simple, involved, ridiculous and shrewd.

He had dictated a statement and signed it.

His tongue was parched and his brain was numb. He didn’t care what happened. He wanted Fran. He wanted to talk to her. He had begged them for that much and they had looked at him as if he were speaking Hindustani. And had gone on asking questions.

He looked up as a key sounded in the door. The uniformed policeman was admitting the big copper, the big guy in the gray clothes, whose name was Meyers. Larry had learned to hate him in the last six hours.

He stood looking at Larry a moment, his hard face impassive. Then he sat down and brought out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, lit one, blew smoke at the ceiling.

“Still playing the same tune?” he asked.

“Go to hell,” Larry said weakly. “I’m not answering any more of your questions. I’ve told the truth. I haven’t lied about a damn thing. Now I’m through.”

He put his hands to his face and tried to keep from making a weeping fool of himself. “Have you called my wife?” he asked. He tried to keep his voice steady and it sounded like a croak.

“We called her,” Meyers said. “She’s on her way down.”

Larry looked up at him, waiting for a laugh, but it didn’t come. Meyers was dead-pan.

“Is that right?”

Meyers nodded. “I talked to her myself. As a matter of fact we called her this morning.”

“You bastard,” Larry said.

“Shut up,” Meyers said mildly. “That kind of talk ain’t going to help. This isn’t a kindergarten we run here. This is a police station. We aren’t interested in being nice to people. Your wife to us is just another witness. I called her trying to find out if you’d lied to me. She backed you up. She said you had a fight and you walked out. That much of your story we know is true. But the rest of it stinks.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Larry said wearily. “Why should I lie? I’ve told you the truth.”

“No, you ain’t. But we been asking ourselves one question all day. Why should you lie? We know you’re lying. We know damn well you’re lying. But we want to know why. Either you’re buggy as hell, or you’re covering up something else.”

He blew more smoke at the ceiling and frowned. His face was gray and hard and his eyes were puzzled. He was a big man, a solid, careful, cautious man, with gray clothes, graying hair and a gray soul. He liked to know the answers. He liked the feeling of all the details of a case dove-tailing together and giving one result. That was his passion. He didn’t like to be puzzled. And he was puzzled now.

“Why should a guy lie like you have?” he said. He wasn’t talking to any one in particular. He was thinking out loud.

“You keep saying I’m lying,” Larry said. “How the hell do you know? Do you look in a crystal ball? Do you have a private ouija board up in the Captain’s office?”

Meyers looked amused. It made him look grimmer.

“We don’t have anything like that,” he said. “All a copper has is a pair of legs. And the benefit of a little experience. That’s one copper. Now do you know how many cops we got in Chicago? About fifteen thousand. That’s thirty thousand legs, walking here and there, looking for things. All of those coppers have some experience and when you lump it all together that makes a big lump of experience. When you got thirty thousand legs you don’t need a crystal ball.

“Now the funny thing about this case of yours is this; we haven’t found the body of this girl you keep talking about. No corpse with a knife in it. No girl lying on a bed with blood on her chest. That’s the funny thing.”

“You didn’t tell me that before,” Larry said. He tried to say it calmly, but hammers were beating inside his skull.