When Powder pulled up in front of his house, there was a young man on the porch ringing the bell. Getting no response, the young man seemed uncertain what to do. He carried a shallow, wide cardboard box.
Powder approached him slowly.
“Can I do something for you?” Powder asked.
“What? Oh. Is this where Rick Powder lives?”
“I think so.”
“Is he around?”
“I don’t know,” Powder said.
“Can I leave this for him?”
“Sure.”
“Tell him Sal brought it, will you?”
“All right.”
Powder took the box and the young man hurried down the front walk and turned toward downtown. Powder watched till he passed out of sight, then held the box up to his ear. He heard nothing.
Powder opened the door and let himself in.
He put his shopping in the refrigerator and carried the box to Ricky’s room. There, he penciled on the outside, “From Sal, no carrying charge.” He put the box on the bed.
Then Powder searched the room.
The things he found that interested him most were Ricky’s checkbook, a large plastic sports bag, a nylon money belt, and a shoulder holster.
The last check stub in the checkbook showed the amount Ricky had sent to register his new car. But that wasn’t what interested Powder. There was no stub for a check that paid for the car.
The sports bag contained a variety of items of electronic equipment and several tiny reels of tape. Much of the equipment had the Indiana Bell logo on it.
The money belt held nearly seven hundred dollars in fifties and twenties.
The shoulder holster was empty and looked new.
Before he left the room. Powder looked in the cardboard box. Inside was a dark-tan trench coat.
Powder parked in front of a dusty horizontal duplex on Tecumseh Avenue just north of Michigan. He rang the bell for the lower house. When the door wasn’t answered he rang again. Then he knocked.
A woman with streaks of light and dark red hair threw the door open, smiled broadly, and asked, “You been there long? The bell doesn’t work, I suppose I should put a sign on it. But that kind of thing is really a landlord’s responsibility, don’t you think?”
“I suppose so,” Powder said. He held up his ID. “I’m a policeman. May I come in and talk to you for a few minutes?”
The woman’s smile faltered only for a moment. She stepped back. “Please enter,” she said. “Always pleased to cooperate with our men in blue. Even when they’re not in blue.”
She led him to the door of her living room. She turned, however, and asked, “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
They sat in the kitchen while the woman made coffee. “What is it about?” she asked lightly.
“Mrs. Annie Weaver.”
After a little thought, she said, “Is that the woman from the lock store?”
“I was under the impression that you were friends.”
“Well, we’re not enemies,” the woman said, turning to smile as the coffee began to brew. “But I hardly know her.”
“She is missing from home, and her husband listed you as one of his wife’s three friends.”
“You know,” the woman said, “the other day I had a phone call from a man asking whether Mrs. Weaver was here. I said she wasn’t, so he said good-bye and hung up. I thought it was peculiar, but then being a single girl again I get some odd phone calls from time to time. I hadn’t given it another thought until now.”
“What day was that?” Powder asked.
The woman considered. “Saturday? How do you take your coffee?”
“Black.”
“Are you sure? You haven’t tasted my coffee.”
She poured two cups and gave one to Powder.
The woman asked, “What were the names of the other two friends?”
Powder told her.
“They hardly know her either,” the woman said definitively. “I know Mrs. Weaver better than they do.”
Powder sipped his coffee. The woman sat down.
“I went into this lock store, you see, to get a lock. I’d been watching TV about making doors and windows secure and it sankm. But I didn’t know a lot about locks. So I asked the girl who came to help me, when Mrs. Weaver took me over. She is quite a strong personality and we got chatting. She said she didn’t get out much and I suggested that she come along with me and my friends sometime. We—and you have the other two on your list—the three of us go out to the movies or sometimes to a play, maybe once a month. A meal first, and then a drink or two after. It’s a laugh and we generally have a real good time.”
“Did Mrs. Weaver go out with you?”
“Only the once. And that must have been nearly a year ago. And she didn’t have much fun. It was all right until after the show, but to tell the truth, I think she disapproved of us flirting with the barman and some of the guys who were drinking where we went. After a night out and a drink or two my friends and I get a bit frisky. Nothing serious. Well, except for me. I’m the only single gal, and you never know. But the Weaver woman was distinctly uncomfortable and quiet. And I never heard from her again.”
Fleetwood opened the door to the gap allowed by the chain, squinted, and said, “I don’t believe this.”
“That’s not very polite. Sergeant,” Powder said. “Invite me in.”
Powder sat in the same chair as the night before. “Oh, it’s good to sit down,” he said.
“You were just passing by again, I suppose,” Fleetwood said. She was not relaxed or amused.
“Yeah.”
“What is it with you, Powder?”
“What do you mean, Sergeant?”
“Are you after my body?”
“Should I be?” Powder asked. “That good, huh?” He wagged a finger in her direction. “Whatever your own feelings may be, Sergeant, I think you should understand from the beginning that my relationships with people I work with have always been strictly business. Try not to be disappointed.”
“I’m tired,” Fleetwood said. “What do you want?”
“A can of beer would be nice.”
“I’m all out.”
“Do you get enough to eat?” Powder asked. “All I’ve had is a cup of coffee, but then I’m on a diet.”
“What?”
“What have you had to eat tonight?”
“I haven’t been home long. And I’m not very hungry.”
“Shall I make you an omelet? Do you have any eggs?” Powder got up and went to the kitchenette, in a corner of the room demarcated by a curtain rail, though there were no curtains.
Fleetwood rolled after him. “Damn it, get out of there. I’m not hungry. All I want is for you to tell me why you’re here and leave so I can have some peace and quiet after a long day.”
Powder took a can of beer from the refrigerator. “The young are so impatient,” he said reflectively. “Do you want one?”
“No.”
He took a second can of beer, opened it, and carried it back into the living section of the room. “Sure you don’t want an omelet? It’s no trouble.”
Fleetwood didn’t speak. But she had to take the beer as Powder lowered it toward her lap. She knew he would just drop it otherwise.
Powder sat and took a long drink. “The young are so impatient,” he said again. He nodded quietly. “One forgets.You know. Sergeant, I have a son who is not all that much younger than you.Twenty-two. I haven’t had him living with me for several years, but he moved in two days ago and I’d forgotten, simple as that, I’d forgotten what it was like to be young.”
He paused. Fleetwood said nothing.
But she sipped the beer.
“I’d like you to meet him sometime. I’d like your impression. Because I’m worried about him.” Powder drank. “How did you get on at the hospital?”
“Nothing substantive. It’s very hard to get through to someone who not only doesn’t want to talk to you, but finds it physically hard to speak.”
“She’ll probably be better tomorrow,” Powder said. Suddenly he sat up and pointed a finger at Fleetwood. “Hypothetical question for you. Pretend you are a woman with a bit about you, a touch of class. And suppose at the same time you’ve got some kind of trouble that you just can’t escape from. What, really, is it going to take to make you determined not just to die, but to die anonymously? What is it?”
Fleetwood said nothing.
Powder said, “The humiliation of finding yourself in a situation, even if you weren’t at fault for getting there?”
He paused for a moment, but not expecting an answer. “It’s just not a pattern you see. Usually they’re dying to leave notes, excuse the pun.”
Fleetwood began to cry.
A few minutes later she said, “Not that it’s exactly the same for me, but you don’t know the number of times I’ve looked at myself in this wheelcage and said, ‘That can’t be me there!’”
Powder nodded, slowly.
Fleetwood looked at him.
“You bastard,” she said. “You sent me to see her to try to get me to use my sob story to bring out hers.”
Powder failed to deny it.
“Except that it didn’t work. She didn’t talk to me.”
“Did you cry when you were with her?”
“Are you as coldhearted a bastard as you pretend?”
“Colder,” Powder said.