I don’t know how she expected me to do anything with both my hands wrapped up like that. I was climbing the stairs and I reached into my pocket for my jack-knife so that I could cut off the tape, but my knife wasn’t in there. I didn’t have a hole in my pocket or anything like that, and so I figured I’d probably left it on my bureau. As soon as I got to my room I looked on the bureau, but it wasn’t there, so I took off the tape with my teeth. I thought probably Elsie had Stanley come into my room to take my jack-knife for back rent.
The spider had made a new web in the same place and he was there sitting in his web. Mr. Winkley was scratching at the balcony door, and I opened the door and he went out and climbed down his tree.
I went next door to report to the Colonel. I told him that I searched Stanley’s room and found the picture.
“You have not been authorized to conduct searches,” he said.
“But his door wasn’t locked, and I was only in there for a few minutes. Later I followed him.”
He didn’t offer me a beer or ask me to sit down or anything. I sat down anyway, and we were sitting across his table from one another. He didn’t even look at me and I thought he didn’t want to be my friend anymore.
“Don’t you want to know what I found out from following Stanley?” I said.
“What did you find out from following Stanley?” he said.
“He has a hollow tree and put doughnuts in it. I tried to bust it up but I couldn’t.”
“I see.”
“Did he really start a fire and kill his mother?”
“You are instructed to cease and desist from further investigation,” he said. “The police and courts are trained and equipped to handle these matters. A man is presumed innocent until proven guilty.”
I didn’t like that word “guilty” on account of I’d heard it before, and the way he said it, it echoed like off the walls in a court room.
“I didn’t kill anybody!” I said. “I didn’t!”
“I will presume your innocence,” he said. “I will not believe that you would knowingly or willfully hurt anyone.”
That made me feel a little better, sort of.
“I wouldn’t lie to you, Colonel; well, not about anything like that.”
“I won’t lie either, Willy, but I can tell the truth regarding only that which I know. Sometimes it’s better not to know everything.”
“Have you figured out how the killer got out of the room?” I said.
“How do you think he got out?”
“I don’t know. I thought you’d have some ideas by now. The longer you don’t figure it out the harder it’s going to be to prove anything.”
“We are not required to prove or disprove anything.”
“I think you were right about Stanley; he’s not our guy. You said it might be Roy.”
“Roy is no longer a suspect. The killer needed two arms in order to reach around … highly unlikely.”
“Reach around what, Colonel?”
He didn’t answer me. I wanted him to cheer up a little bit, to get him interested in the case again.
“Maybe it was Howie,” I said. I didn’t really think it was Howie.
“I doubt that Howie has the agility to climb in … I don’t know.”
“Climb in what?” I said. He didn’t answer.
“Hey, maybe Francine killed Nancy,” I said. I knew it wasn’t Francine.
“It could be anybody, or nobody,” he said. “They’ll have to prove it in any case.”
I didn’t want him to go into one of his trances.
“Remember that time you were spying on the Russians and they found the decoder inside your wristwatch and put you in prison?”
“What about it?” he said.
“You put a dummy under your blanket and hid underneath the cot and when they came in to check on you they found the dummy and they thought you’d escaped so they went out looking for you and they left the cell door open.”
“Oh.”
“Well, maybe the killer was hiding under Nancy’s bed when the police went in.” I knew that didn’t make any sense but I thought if I could get him to tell one of his stories it might keep him from going into a trance.
“A man,” he said, “must face reality, though he may choose to keep that reality to himself.”
“I guess,” I said. “Mr. Winkley’s been pissing on my clothes. Why does he do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“I stuck a cigarette in his face. If he does it again, I’m going to burn him with a cigarette.”
“I see,” he said. “I suppose you don’t know any better than to be cruel to animals. I’m very tired. I want you to leave now.”
I left, and I was mad at him saying I didn’t know any better. I’d almost said I do know better, but I didn’t say it because then he’d have said something like, Then you have no excuse, but if I’d said I didn’t know any better, that would have been even worse, so that’s why I didn’t say anything. He had it all set up so that he’d have me either way, and it seemed to me that whatever I did or said, it was always wrong and everything was rigged against me, and it wasn’t fair.
I was going to go downstairs and see if Elsie had closed her door and gone to bed so I could go out and get Mr. Winkley and bring him in; but there he was, sitting in the hall outside my door. I opened the door and we went in. Right away he ran toward the balcony but I caught him just as he was going through the hole in the screen and I pulled him back in and closed the door. I held him and patted him on the side where his eye was. He didn’t like if you patted or snuck up on his blind side.
I wondered how he got out into the hall. I’d let him out by the balcony and he’d gone down his tree, and then I was in the Colonel’s room. When I left his room, there was Mr. Winkley sitting in the hall outside my closed door. I figured he probably snuck in when somebody opened the door to the hotel and it was just lucky for him that Elsie had already closed her door and gone to bed, or else she would have seen him go by.
Except it was too early for her to go to bed. I put Mr. Winkley down on the floor, and went out and tiptoed down the stairs and peeked around the corner. Her parlor door was open. No way could Mr. Winkley have come in the front door. I thought, Something funny might be going on here.
I went back to my room and picked up all my clothes from the floor and put them in my bureau because I didn’t want Mr. Winkley pissing on them, except I left out one pair of dirty underpants.
“These underpants are yours now,” I said to him. “Any time you get mad at me or you miss Nancy, you can piss on these underpants.”
I gave him some cat food but he was running out. Within a couple of days I’d have to get him some more somewhere. There was cat food and a big bag of cat litter in Nancy’s room, and I wished I hadn’t given the Colonel her key.
Mr. Winkley still wanted to go out. I didn’t want him to be out at night, but he kept meowing.
“You just came in,” I said. “If you wanted to go out, why did you come in?”
He kept meowing so finally I opened the balcony door and he went down his tree. I’d have to go out and bring him in before I went to bed.
I sat at my table, lit a cigarette, and looked at the window with the chicken wire on it.
I figured that the Colonel must have been thinking that I might have killed Nancy. He knew how the killer did it but he wasn’t going to tell me. He didn’t think that either Roy or Howie could have done it. It probably wasn’t Stanley. Unless it was Francine, or Gladys, or me—and I didn’t think so—it could only be the Colonel himself. I thought maybe that was why he didn’t want me investigating too much. I didn’t want to think that he might have been hypnotizing me to make me believe that I did it so he could hang the rap on me.
I looked all around my room for the statue, thinking maybe the Colonel came in my room when I was out and planted it. I didn’t find it, though.
Even if I killed Nancy and forgot I did it, I wouldn’t have hidden the statue in my room, because I had a secret hiding place that nobody knew about, where nobody but nobody could ever find anything I put there, and you could only get there with a ladder. I hadn’t been there for a long time, though; unless I’d been there and forgotten.
I heard Mr. Winkley meowing in the hallway outside my door. I opened it and he ran in and jumped up on the table and sat there looking at me.
It didn’t make any sense, because I’d just let him out by way of the balcony. I thought, Something funny is definitely going on here.
“How did you get in?” I said. I looked into his eye for an answer, but it was like Gladys said, a bottomless black pit.
“What did you see, pussy cat?” I said. “What do you know?”
I closed the balcony door so that he couldn’t go out again. I thought, That Colonel is a smart old guy and he thinks I killed Nancy. I put out my cigarette and went to bed.