Ghosts

“Okay,” he said.

“It’s just…I’m so damn ashamed of myself.”

“Why?”

“Fainting like that.”

“Well, it was pretty scary back there,” Carella said, and sat on the edge of the bed.

“I’m still scared,” Hillary said.

“So am I.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Believe it.”

“My first real manifestation,” she said, “and I…” She shook her head.

“The first time I faced a man with a gun, I went blind,” Carella said.

“Blind?”

“With fear. I saw the gun in his hand, and then I didn’t see anything else. Everything went white.”

“What happened?” Hillary asked.

“He shot me, and I died.”

She smiled and sipped at her coffee.

“What happened was I came to my senses about three seconds before it would have been too late.”

“Did you shoot him?”

“Yes.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No.”

“Have you ever killed anyone?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever been shot yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you keep doing it?”

“Doing what?”

“Police work.”

“I like it,” he said simply, and shrugged.

“I’ve been wondering how I can ever…” She shook her head again and put down the coffee cup.

“Ever what?”

“Go on doing what I’m doing. After tonight I wonder if I shouldn’t simply get a job as a ribbon clerk or something.”

“You wouldn’t be good at it.”

“I’m not so good at this either.”

“Come on, you’re very good,” he said.

“Sure. Fainting like a—”

“I almost didn’t come up those stairs after you,” Carella said.

“Sure.”

“It’s the truth. I almost ran out of that damn house.”

“Yet you’re willing to face men with guns in their hands.”

“A gun is a gun. A ghost…” He shrugged.

“I suppose I’m glad I saw them,” she said.

“So am I.”

“I wet my pants, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“I did.”

“I almost wet mine.”

“Fine pair,” she said, and smiled again.

The room went silent.

“Do I really look like your wife?” she asked.

“Yes. You know that.”

“I’m not sure of anything anymore.”

Again the room went silent.

“Well,” Carella said, and got to his feet.

“No, don’t go yet,” she said.

He looked at her.

“Please,” she said.

“Well, okay, few minutes,” he said, and sat on the edge of the bed again.

“Is your wife anything at all like me?” Hillary asked. “Or is the resemblance purely physical?”

“Purely physical.”

“Is she prettier than I am?”

“Well…you really look a lot alike.”

“I always thought my sister was prettier than I am,” Hillary said, and shrugged.

“She thinks so, too.”

“She told you that?”

“Yes.”

“Bitch,” Hillary said, but she was smiling. “Shall we order another round of these?”

“No, I don’t think so. We’ve got a long drive back tomorrow. We’d better get some sleep.”

“Yes, we’d better,” Hillary said.

“So,” he said, and rose again. “I’ll leave a call for—”

“No, don’t go,” she said. “I’m still frightened.”

“It’s really getting late,” he said. “We—”

“Every time I think of them I shudder.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said. “You’re here, and our lady friends are miles from—”

“Stay with me,” she said.

Her eyes met his. He looked into her face.

“Sleep here,” she said. “With me.”

“Hillary,” he said, “thank you, but—”

“Just to hold me,” she said. “In the night.”

“Just to hold you, huh?” he said, and smiled.

“Well, whatever,” she said, and returned the smile. “Okay?”

“No,” he said. “Not okay.”

“I think you’d like to,” she said. She was still smiling.

He hesitated. “Yes, I’d like to,” he said.

“So what’s—?”

“But I won’t.”

“We’re stranded here…”

“Yes…”

“No one would ever know.”

“I would know.”

“You’d forgive yourself,” she said, and her smile widened.

“Hillary, come on, let’s quit it, okay?”

“No,” she said. “Not okay.”

“Look, I—come on, really.”

“Do you know how my sister would handle this?” she asked. “She’d tell you she washed out her panties the minute she got back here to the room. She’d tell you her panties were hanging on the shower rod in the bathroom. She’d tell you she wasn’t wearing any panties under her skirt. Do you think that would interest you?”

“Only if I were in the lingerie business,” Carella said, and to his great surprise and enormous relief, Hillary burst out laughing.

“You really mean it, don’t you?” she said.

“Yeah, what can you do?” Carella said, and shrugged.

“Well, okay then,” Hillary said, “I guess.” She rose, shrugged out of the coat, laughed gently again, murmured, “The lingerie business,” shook her head, and said, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Good night, Hillary,” he said.

“Good night, Steve,” she said, and sighed and went into the bathroom.

He stood looking at the closed bathroom door for a moment, and then he went into his own room and locked the door behind him.

He dreamed that night that the door between their rooms opened as mysteriously as the doors at the Loomis house had. He dreamed that Hillary stood in the doorway naked, the light from her own room limning the curves of her young body for an instant before she closed the door again behind her. She stood silently just inside the door, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, and then she came softly and silently to the bed and slipped under the covers beside him. Her hand found him. In the darkness she whispered, “I don’t care what you think,” and her mouth descended.

In the morning, when he awoke, the snow had stopped.

He went to the door between the rooms and tried the knob. The door was locked. But in the bathroom he smelled the lingering scent of her perfume and saw a long black hair curled like a question mark against the white tile of the sink.

He would not tell Teddy about this encounter either. Seven ghosts in one night was one more ghost than anybody needed or wanted.

11

The pawnshop stakeout went into effect on December 28, as the result of a squadroom brainstorming session that took place early that morning in Lieutenant Byrnes’s office. The lieutenant was sitting behind his desk wearing a blue cardigan sweater—a Christmas gift from his wife, Harriet—over a white dress shirt and a blue tie. His desk was piled with papers. He had told Carella and Hawes that he could give them fifteen minutes of his time, and he looked at the clock now as Carella started his pitch.

“It looks like the man we’re after is this Jack Rawles,” Carella said. “Came down here from Boston on the day before the murders, wasn’t back there yet when I called yesterday.”

“Why’d you call?” Byrnes asked.

“Because he rented the house Craig wrote about.”

“So?”

“So there’re supposed to be ghosts in that house,” Carella said, not daring to mention that he had actually seen the ghosts who were supposed to be there.

“What’s that got to do with the price of fish?” Byrnes said, a favorite expression he never tired of using when his detectives seemed to be making no sense at all.

“I think there’s a co

“What co

“The typist up there in Hampstead says she typed up a portion of Craig’s book from a tape that Rawles may have made.”

“How do you know Rawles made it?”

“I don’t for sure. But when I talked to his roommate’s girlfriend, she confirmed that he has a rasping voice. The voice on the tape was described to me as rasping.”

“Go ahead,” Byrnes said, and looked up at the clock again.

“Okay. Somebody fitting Rawles’s description made two attempts to hock two different pieces of jewelry stolen from Craig’s apartment on the day of the murder.”