simple emotional illness. A woman has been murdered here.”
She gasped, but made no other comment.
“Your niece is a material witness to the murder. She may be more deeply involved than that, and in any case she’s going to need support. So far as I know you’re her only relative, apart from her father—”
“You can leave him out. He doesn’t count. He never has, except in a negative way.” Her voice was flat and harsh. “Who was killed?”
“A friend and counselor of your niece’s, Professor Helen Haggerty.”
“I never heard of the woman,” she said with combined impatience and relief.
“You’ll be hearing a great deal about her, if you’re at all interested in your niece. Are you close to her?”
“I was, before she grew away from me. I brought her up after her mother’s death.” Her voice became flat again: “Does Tom McGee have anything to do with this new killing?”
“He may have. He’s in town here, or he was.”
“I knew it!” she cried in bleak triumph. “They had no business letting him out. They should have put him in the gas chamber for what he did to my little sister.”
She was choked with sudden emotion. I waited for her to go on. When she didn’t, I said:
“I’m anxious to go into the details of that case with you, but I don’t think we should do it over the phone. It really would be helpful if you could come here tomorrow.”
“I simply can’t. There’s no use badgering me. I have a terribly important meeting tomorrow afternoon. Several state officials will be here from Sacramento, and it will probably go on into the evening.”
“What about the morning?”
“I have to prepare for them in the morning. We’re shifting over to a new state-county welfare program.” Latent hysteriabuzzed in her voice, the hysteria of a middle-aged spinster who has to make a change. “If I walked out on this project, I could lose my position.”
“We don’t want that to happen, Miss Jenks. How far is it from there to Pacific Point?”
“Seventy miles, but I tell you I can’t make it.”
“I can. Will you give me an hour in the morning, say around eleven?”
She hesitated. “Yes, if it’s important. I’ll get up an hour earlier and do my paperwork. I’ll be at home at eleven. You have my address? It’s just off the main street of Indian Springs.”
I thanked her and got rid of Alex and went to bed, setting my mental alarm for six-thirty.
chapter
11
A LEX WAS STILL SLEEPING when I was ready to leave in the morning. I let him sleep, partly for selfish reasons, and partly because sleep was kinder to him than waking was likely to be.
The fog was thick outside. Its watery mass overlay Pacific Point and transformed it into a kind of suburb of the sea. I drove out of the motel enclosure into a gray world without perspective, came abruptly to an access ramp, descended onto the freeway where headlights swam in pairs like deep-sea fish, and arrived at a truck stop on the east side without any real sense that I had driven across the city.
I’d been having a little too much talk with people whose business was talking. It was good to sit at the counter of a working-class restaurant where men spoke when they wantedsomething, or simply to kid the waitress. I kidded her a little myself. Her name was Stella, and she was so efficient that she threatened to take the place of automation. She said with a flashing smile that this was her aim in life.
My destination was near the highway, on a heavily used thoroughfare lined mainly with new apartment buildings. Their faddish pastel colors and scant transplanted palms seemed dingy and desolate in the fog.
The nursing home was a beige stucco one-storied building taking up most of a narrow deep lot. I rang the bell at eight o’clock precisely. Dr. Godwin must have been waiting behind the door. He unlocked it and let me in himself.
“You’re a punctual man, Mr. Archer.”
His changeable eyes had taken the stony color of the
She gasped, but made no other comment.
“Your niece is a material witness to the murder. She may be more deeply involved than that, and in any case she’s going to need support. So far as I know you’re her only relative, apart from her father—”
“You can leave him out. He doesn’t count. He never has, except in a negative way.” Her voice was flat and harsh. “Who was killed?”
“A friend and counselor of your niece’s, Professor Helen Haggerty.”
“I never heard of the woman,” she said with combined impatience and relief.
“You’ll be hearing a great deal about her, if you’re at all interested in your niece. Are you close to her?”
“I was, before she grew away from me. I brought her up after her mother’s death.” Her voice became flat again: “Does Tom McGee have anything to do with this new killing?”
“He may have. He’s in town here, or he was.”
“I knew it!” she cried in bleak triumph. “They had no business letting him out. They should have put him in the gas chamber for what he did to my little sister.”
She was choked with sudden emotion. I waited for her to go on. When she didn’t, I said:
“I’m anxious to go into the details of that case with you, but I don’t think we should do it over the phone. It really would be helpful if you could come here tomorrow.”
“I simply can’t. There’s no use badgering me. I have a terribly important meeting tomorrow afternoon. Several state officials will be here from Sacramento, and it will probably go on into the evening.”
“What about the morning?”
“I have to prepare for them in the morning. We’re shifting over to a new state-county welfare program.” Latent hysteriabuzzed in her voice, the hysteria of a middle-aged spinster who has to make a change. “If I walked out on this project, I could lose my position.”
“We don’t want that to happen, Miss Jenks. How far is it from there to Pacific Point?”
“Seventy miles, but I tell you I can’t make it.”
“I can. Will you give me an hour in the morning, say around eleven?”
She hesitated. “Yes, if it’s important. I’ll get up an hour earlier and do my paperwork. I’ll be at home at eleven. You have my address? It’s just off the main street of Indian Springs.”
I thanked her and got rid of Alex and went to bed, setting my mental alarm for six-thirty.
chapter
11
A LEX WAS STILL SLEEPING when I was ready to leave in the morning. I let him sleep, partly for selfish reasons, and partly because sleep was kinder to him than waking was likely to be.
The fog was thick outside. Its watery mass overlay Pacific Point and transformed it into a kind of suburb of the sea. I drove out of the motel enclosure into a gray world without perspective, came abruptly to an access ramp, descended onto the freeway where headlights swam in pairs like deep-sea fish, and arrived at a truck stop on the east side without any real sense that I had driven across the city.
I’d been having a little too much talk with people whose business was talking. It was good to sit at the counter of a working-class restaurant where men spoke when they wantedsomething, or simply to kid the waitress. I kidded her a little myself. Her name was Stella, and she was so efficient that she threatened to take the place of automation. She said with a flashing smile that this was her aim in life.
My destination was near the highway, on a heavily used thoroughfare lined mainly with new apartment buildings. Their faddish pastel colors and scant transplanted palms seemed dingy and desolate in the fog.
The nursing home was a beige stucco one-storied building taking up most of a narrow deep lot. I rang the bell at eight o’clock precisely. Dr. Godwin must have been waiting behind the door. He unlocked it and let me in himself.
“You’re a punctual man, Mr. Archer.”
His changeable eyes had taken the stony color of the
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