In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes Page A

nearer, just around the corner on Beverly. Man-food in it. He was surprised that he too had an appetite. Good sleep meant good appetite.
    He grinned across the table at Brub. “For a moment this morning you startled me. I thought you were clairvoyant.”
    “About your redhead?” Brub whistled. “That’s a piece of goods. How did you arrange to meet her?”
    He could talk of her to Brub. And like a love-smitten swain he wanted to talk of her. “It’s time the Virginibus Arms had a good-neighbor policy.”
    “Virginibus Arms? Not bad,” Brub said.
    He realized then that Brub hadn’t known his address until now. He’d given his phone number, not his address.
    “Yeah, I was lucky. Sublease. From Mel Terriss.” Brub didn’t know Mel. “Fellow I went to school with at Princeton. Ran into him out here just when he was leaving on a job.”
    “Damn lucky,” Brub said. “And the redhead went with it?”
    He grinned again, like a silly ass. “Wish I’d known it sooner.”
    “Is she in pictures?”
    “She’s done a little.” He knew so little about her. “She’s studying.”
    “What’s her name?”
    Brub wasn’t prying; this was the old Brub. Brub and Dix. The two Musketeers. A part of each other’s lives.
    “Laurel,” he said, and saying the name his heart quickened. “Laurel Gray.”
    “Bring her out some night. Sylvia would like to meet her.”
    “Sylvia, my eye. You don’t think I’d expose Laurel to your wolfish charms, do you?”
    “I’m married, son. I’m safe.”
    “Maybe. What about that little gal yesterday? Wasn’t she cooing at you?”
    Brub said, “Maude would coo at a pair of stilts. Cary’s sort of a sixth cousin of Sylvia. That’s why we get together. Maude thought you were wonderful, hero.”
    “Did she ever stop talking?”
    ”No, she never stops. Although after she saw you with Redhead, she subdued a bit.”
    It was good to know that it didn’t matter how many saw him with Laurel. That he could appear with her everywhere, show her everywhere; there was no danger in it. Only he wouldn’t take her to Nicolai’s. Not to face Sylvia’s cool appraisal. Sylvia would look at her through Sylvia’s own standards, through long-handled eye glasses.
    “She was certainly hipped on your case,” Dix said. It was time to steer the conversation. “How’s it coming?”
    “Dead end.”
    “You mean you’re closing the books?”
    “We don’t ever close the books, Dix.” Brub’s face was serious. “After the newspapers and the Maudes and all the rest of them forget it, our books are open. That’s the way it is.”
    “That’s the way it has to be,” Dix agreed as seriously.
    “There’ve been tough cases before now. Maybe ten, twelve years the department has had to work on them. In the end we find the answer.”
    “Not always,” Dix said.
    “Not always,” Brub admitted. “But more often than you’d think. Sometimes the cases are still unsolved on paper but we have the answer. Sometimes it’s waiting for the next move.”
    “The criminal doesn’t escape.” Dix smiled wryly.
    Brub said, “I won’t say that. Although I honestly don’t think he ever does escape. He has to live with himself. He’s caught there in that lonely place. And when he sees he can’t get away—” Brub shrugged. “Maybe suicide, or the nut house—I don’t know. But I don’t think there’s any escape.”
    “What about Jack the Ripper?”
    “What about him? A body fished out of the river, an accident case. A new inmate of an asylum. Nobody knows. One thing you can know, he didn’t suddenly stop his career. He was stopped.”
    Dix argued. “Maybe he did stop it. Maybe he’d had enough.”
    “He couldn’t stop,” Brub denied. “He was a murderer.”
    Dix lifted his eyebrows. “You mean a murderer is a murderer? As a detective is a detective? A waiter a waiter?”
    “No. Those are selected professions. A detective or a waiter can change to another field. I mean a murderer is a