The Diehard Page 2

  The splashing continued.

  Near the window, next to the unmade bed with its white blankets rumpled, there was a desk. He sat down and carefully looked through the papers. Most of them were letters from friends. There were a few from the Detroit Bank and Trust. He tossed it all aside.

  The safe was set in the wall, behind a clock. He set the clock down and tried the safe. The splashing stopped. He listened, hand poised at the safe's dial. Then the water started running again. The bath must have cooled, he thought. He turned the dial again. In a few minutes the safe was open. He took out all the cash and put it in his pockets. There wasn't that much.

  He took a pistol out of his pocket and walked out of the big bedroom into the hall. By the bathroom door he stopped and leaned closer, peering through the tiny crack. He stared at the naked shoulders of the woman in the bath. He began to breathe harder and felt a stiffening in his crotch. Without thinking he put a gloved hand on the door and it opened an inch wider.

  Jane Clippert's eyes were half-closed in sybaritic pleasure. She stretched out her arms and splashed more foamy water onto her breasts. Then she looked up and saw the man. Her mouth fell open and they stared into each other's eyes. Then he dropped his gaze back to her naked breasts and she yelled.

  At first the man stepped backward, then he pushed the door open and came into the steamy bathroom. He raised a hand to his lips, as if to caution silence. It was the hand that held the pistol.

  This time, seeing the gun, Jane screamed. At that the man rushed to the tub and grappled with the woman who had half risen. “Be quiet!” he yelled. He struggled with her.

  But she was bigger than he was, and stronger. She slipped on the bottom of the tub and fell back into the water, pulling the man with her. He floundered in the hot, soapy water. They were both yelling. And then he momentarily regained his balance, long enough to strike her on the head with the pistol barrel.

  She slid down into a cloud of suds. The man struck at her head again. When the hot water reached her mouth she spluttered and fought back from confusion and shock, struggling to rise. The man was on his knees in the water, between her legs. A wet, gloved hand pushed her face down into the water.

  Jane looked up between the gloved fingers and saw a narrow face that needed a shave. He knelt between her thighs, pushing, and she thought, Rape. He wants to rape me. The man's face was contorted and his mouth opened and closed. He was talking, yelling, but she could hear nothing. Her head roared and pain ballooned. He raised the pistol again and struck at her.

  He's afraid, she thought. But he's hurting me. A terrible fear grew in her that the blows were doing something bad to her head, spreading numbness and weakness. She blocked a blow with her forearm. The pistol fell on her stomach and then disappeared into the soapy water. Her forearm was numb.

  With both hands he forced her down into the water, pushing on her head. Once again water rushed into her mouth and nose. She coughed and threw his hands off. She sat up. She grabbed instinctively at him for balance and he fell forward on top of her.

  “Goddamn!” he yelled. He thrashed wildly at the woman. She clawed at him and wrapped her long legs powerfully about his hips. With a great effort she managed to roll over so that now she was on top, straddling him. He lay on his back, fully clothed in the hot water. Her right forearm was across his neck and he was strangling. When he tried to breathe he only took in water.

  He felt the pistol under his hip. He seized it by the barrel and lashed out. The butt struck the side of the tub with a bong. The woman grabbed his gun hand and held it. With his free hand he punched at her and hit her full on the nose.

  Then her weight was gone from him. He sat up in the tub, choking and coughing, rubbing at his stinging eyes. When he could see he looked wildly about him.

  Jane Clippert crawled away toward the bedroom on all fours. Through blinking, burning eyes the man stared after her. She lumbered out of the bathroom like a wounded bear. Blood and soap bubbles ran down her wet back. Her breasts hung down between her arms and swayed as she crawled. Blond hair hung bedraggled and bloody. Her naked buttocks disappeared through the door.

  The man slipped on the tub bottom in his shoes and scrambled out. His feet squished in the shoes. He grabbed a towel and mopped his face. He flung the towel away and went after the woman.

  She was crouched against the foot of the big white bed, a white telephone in her hand. It was the kind of telephone that has punch buttons in the receiver. Slowly she punched out a number.

  “Stop!” yelled the man. She looked up, open-mouthed.

  He fired the gun. Something hit her in the shoulder and she dropped the telephone. He fired again. And again. He stood in the doorway, not ten feet from the woman, and blasted away at her. Six shots. But only two of them hit her. The air was acrid and the room seemed to ring with sound of the pistol shots.

  Jane Clippert lay sideways against the foot of the bed, trying to think what was happening. She looked down at her body. There was so much blood that she couldn't see any specific wounds, but there was pain in her right side and in her shoulder and she could hardly lift her right forearm. She looked up at the man in the doorway who was gawking at her. He was soaked, dripping, his pockets bulging, a smoking pistol in his hand. Then he ran away, down the stairs, his shoes squishing as he went.

  She picked up the telephone and began to punch out the number again.

  In the kitchen the man stumbled over the piled-up appliances and fell. He got up slowly, exhausted. He realized that he couldn't leave yet. Above him, on the wall, was a wooden rack containing a set of French cutlery. He fumbled in the rack with his wet gloves, then knocked it off the wall and shook out a long carving knife.

  Something wrong with this phone, Jane thought. It was making a kind of siren noise. She pressed the disconnecting button and got a new dial tone. She punched out the number again.

  The man was back. She could see that there was quite a lot of blood on him. He held the gun in his left hand and something else in his right. Then she saw what it was. She dropped the telephone to the floor and tried to rise. She fell back, onto the bed.

  “Arthur Clippert and Associates, Attorneys,” said a woman's voice. “Hello. Hello? May I help you?”

  The line went dead.

  When she came to she was still on the bed, on her back. The man was gone. And then she saw the knife. Or rather, she saw the handle of the knife. It was sticking out of her chest. It was very hard to breathe. She heard a slight whistling sound and felt a small, dead weight in the center of her chest.

  She tried to lift her hand to the knife but she couldn't seem to reach it. She quit trying. Somehow she was able to roll sideways off the bed, onto her knees. It took all her strength to rise to her feet. She took a few steps toward the telephone but when she tried to bend down she knew that it would be impossible. It was easier to stay erect, to walk. So she walked. She wavered and tottered, supporting herself with a hand against the white wall, trailing bloody handprints.

  Down the stairs, one at a time. It seemed to take hours. At the bottom she turned toward the front door and with great effort turned the knob until the door swung open. She stepped outside, onto the porch.

  She knew it must be cold, but she couldn't feel it. She couldn't feel much, except the dead weight in her chest and a pounding in her head. She couldn't see clearly.

  Very strange, she said to herself, look at me. Walking down Seneca in broad daylight and stark naked. Bad girl. She wondered if the old man who had been shoveling snow could see her, but apparently he had gone.

  She felt drunk and delirious. She staggered, putting a foot carefully before her, then lurching her weight after it. She stopped and squinted at the bright Christmas display on her snow-filled lawn. The carolers were knee-deep in snow. They looked over her head, ignoring her nakedness, singing away in total silence with their mouths in O's.

  The snow was deep enough that she was able to scoop up a handful by barely stooping. She brought it to
her mouth but could not taste its cold wetness.

  She stumbled along the sidewalk to the house next door. The Mercer's house. The walk had not been shoveled yet but the little porch had been swept off and someone had sprinkled salt on it. She could feel nothing underfoot, but knew in a distant way the coldness of the concrete and the graininess of the unmelted pieces of salt.

  Edna Mercer was out in the small greenhouse attached to the rear of the house. It was her favorite place, especially in winter. She moved about in the heavy warm air, picking dead leaves off plants and squirting the plants with distilled water from a spray bottle. She barely heard the distant chime of the doorbell.

  Now why doesn't Martha get that? she wondered. The bell chimed again and again, as if someone were leaning against it. Then Mrs. Mercer remembered. Today was Martha's day off. It was too early for Henry to come down and answer the door. He would still be in the upstairs bathroom. It took the poor man hours each morning, sitting on the stool, to accomplish his business.

  So she went off to answer the doorbell herself, grumbling amiably.

  Four

  Mulheisen spotted the scene from a block away. The sidewalks were lined with neighbors. Uniformed officers stood around talking to one another and keeping the neighbors from getting too close. A police ambulance was parked in the driveway of a large Georgian brick mansion. There were several patrol cars parked along the curb, and the van from the forensics lab was parked right in front of the house.

  Mulheisen had to park a half-block away and walk back. “Hi, fellows,” he greeted the patrolmen. “Buchanan still here?”

  “Yeah, Sarge. Him and Lieutenant Johnson, right inside.”

  A reporter from the News walked over. “Big murder, eh, Mul?” he said.

  Mulheisen looked mystified. “Don't know anything about it,” he said. He turned to the patrolman. “Is there a body here?”

  “Sure is,” the patrolman said. “A broad. Inspector McCain's here, too. He's over there.” He pointed a gloved hand at a large Tudor-style house with mullioned windows, exposed beams. There was an elaborate caroling scene on the lawn.

  “What's over there?” Mulheisen asked.

  “I don't know,” the patrolman said. “Somebody said that was where the broad lived, but this is where she died.”

  Mulheisen looked up and down the street where groups of people stood looking at the Georgian house. It was a neighborhood of mansions, built in a confusion of styles and effects. They were mostly built in the early boom of Detroit's industrial success. All of the streets in this neighborhood had Indian names, so the area was called Indian Village. Over the decades the neighborhood had been engulfed by residential growth. First working-class people from central Europe, then came the hillbillies, and now, finally, the blacks. It was nearly all black around Indian Village now, but the Village itself remained an enclave of the grandiose manner. It was mostly inhabited by the now elderly offspring of the original giants of the automobile industry. There were very few new houses in the Village and the old mansions were too expensive and inconvenient to maintain, even for wealthy people. Some of them were only partially occupied, whole wings and floors were closed off.

  “Don't they have some kind of private police patrol here?” Mulheisen asked the patrolman.

  “Yep. Triple Security. They got a couple men over there with Inspector McClain.”

  Mulheisen turned back to the man from the News. He had been joined by two more reporters. “I guess the guy to see is Inspector McClain, fellows.” They nodded and trooped back to the Tudor house. Mulheisen went on into the Georgian.

  The corpse lay on its back just inside the door. Mulheisen squeezed around lab technicians and photographers and into the living room. The body on the floor was that of a bloodied and severely brutalized young woman. She might have been beautiful once, but now her face was battered and swollen, lips cut and nose broken. The handle of a long knife stuck out of her chest.

  It was a terrible sight, even for Mulheisen, who had seen men with their noses torn off, with brains spilling from their shattered skulls. It was made more horrible by the realization that this mutilated mess on the Oriental carpet was once an exceptionally handsome creature.

  “What the hell? Are those bullet holes, too?” Mulheisen pointed to the bluish marks on the shoulder and abdomen.

  The City Physician stood by. “I would say so,” he said. He was a careful man. He was willing to attest that the body in evidence here was indeed that of a deceased young woman. The police could remove it to the morgue as soon as they liked. He would not, of course, offer an opinion on the cause of death, despite the massive evidence. That was the job of the pathologists who would perform the autopsy.

  A Homicide detective named Joe Greene stood off to one side with his hands in his pockets. He ignored the chatter of an inspector who stood beside him. This was Precinct Inspector Buchanan of the Ninth, a small and handsome man who did not look like a policeman. He looked like an undersecretary of a foreign legation. Next to him was his Lieutenant of Detectives, Stewart Johnson. Stew Johnson had a perpetual beard shadow and his uniform never fit properly. He was only slightly overweight, but looked obese. He was the perfect lieutenant for Buchanan, being intelligent without being imaginative or independent, and he was solidly loyal to his precinct inspector.

  Buchanan and Johnson saw Mulheisen at the same instant.

  “Where the hell have you been?” they said in unison.

  “Outside,” Mulheisen said. He looked at Joe Greene. “You handling this?”

  Greene looked pained. “Guess so,” he said. “Not that I don't already have a dozen cases going. This one could be a bitch if we don't get the bastard quick. The newspapers'll be all over it like flies on shit.”

  The ambulance men were placing the body on a stretcher. The knife handle still protruded.

  “Looks like she might have been a showgirl,” Mulheisen said. “Who was she?”

  “Mulheisen,” Buchanan said, “this is Homicide's case.”

  “I'm just asking,” Mulheisen said.

  “Mrs. Arthur Clippert,” Joe Greene said. “She lived next door. Her husband's some kind of lawyer. We haven't been able to get hold of him, yet.”

  “What happened?” Mulheisen said.

  “Mulheisen,” Buchanan interjected, “let's just leave this to Homicide, eh?”

  “Sure, sure,” Mulheisen said.

  “Seems like she came strolling in here about an hour ago, naked as a jaybird, and dropped dead on this lady's carpet. The lady of the house, a Mrs. Mercer, answered the doorbell and here's her neighbor with a knife in her chest. Mrs. Mercer is upstairs now with her husband and a doctor. One of your precinct boys is taking her statement.”

  Mulheisen turned to Buchanan and Johnson and smiled, showing his teeth. “Who's upstairs?” he said.

  “Ahab,” Johnson said. “Ahab” was the nickname of Hassim Ayeh, the youngest and newest member of the Ninth Precinct's detective squad.

  “Well, what's the deal?” Mulheisen asked.

  “This case is going to be controversial,” Buchanan said. “I think the precinct would do well to leave it to the big boys downtown. Of course, we'll be glad to assist them, but it's really Homicide's jurisdiction.”

  Mulheisen looked at Joe Greene out of the corner of his eye. Greene was studying a cigarette. “That sounds all right,” Mulheisen said.

  Buchanan was clearly relieved. “There will be a lot of press attention,” he said. “The department could come under a lot of fire if it isn't wrapped up quickly.”

  “I think I'll just go up and see how Ayeh is doing,” Mulheisen said. Greene went with him. Buchanan and Johnson looked after them with suspicion.

  It was a winding staircase with a spindle railing, old-fashioned and elaborate, like the wainscotted hallway. In the first bedroom an elderly woman sat in a rocking chair with a sweater about her shoulders. Nearby, on the bed, sat an old man. A man in a dark-blue suit holding a stethoscope stood watc
hing while Ayeh talked to the lady. Ayeh was tall and thin with a large hooked nose. He was trying to be polite and gentle with his witness, but she looked wary of him. Mulheisen thought she might still be in shock. Ayeh looked up with relief when he saw Mulheisen and Greene in the doorway. “Excuse me, ma'am,” he said, and came out of the room.

  “Can't get much out of her, Mul,” he said. “Still in shock, I guess. And the doc isn't too happy with me, either.”

  “What have you got?” Mulheisen asked.

  “Her name is Edna Mercer, his is Henry. They live alone except for a maid named Martha James who comes five days a week, not including today. Mrs. Mercer was in the greenhouse this morning—they got a greenhouse out back, attached to the house. About eight forty-five she heard the doorbell ring. She let Mrs. Clippert, her neighbor, in. Mrs. Clippert collapsed just inside the door. Mrs. Mercer fainted. Her husband came downstairs a few minutes later and he nearly fainted. But he called the doctor and the police. He called the police at eight fifty-seven, according to our records.”

  “Mercer is the name?” Mulheisen said.

  “Yeah. They've lived here for a long time. Mr. Mercer was the president of a big tool company. He's retired. I think Mrs. Mercer's father invented the hydraulic clutch or something. You want to talk to them?”

  “Okay,” Mulheisen said. He nodded to Greene and then went back into the room alone. He said hello to the doctor and introduced himself. “How are these folks doing, Doctor?” he asked.

  “They've had quite a shock this morning,” the doctor said. “I'd like to see them rest.”

  “Yes,” Mulheisen said. “I'd like to ask just a few questions and then we can clear out of here and leave them in peace.” He turned to Mrs. Mercer. “You're Mrs. Mercer? I'm Sergeant Mulheisen.” He cocked his head. “Mercer? Mercer. Now where have I heard that name?”

  On the dresser was a photograph of Mrs. Mercer in a long evening gown. There was a sash across the bodice.