The Night and The Music Read Online Free PDF Page B

apartment was I could see the pattern in the dust on top of the dresser where it had been. If you’ve got interior pictures maybe I’ll see something else that’s not there anymore and I can lean on McCloud a little and recover it for my client.”
    “And that’s why you’d like to see the pictures.”
    “Right.”
    He gave me a look. “That door was bolted from the inside, Matt. With a chain bolt.”
    “I know.”
    “And there was no one in the apartment when we went in there.”
    “I know that, too.”
    “You’re still barking up the murder tree, aren’t you? Jesus, the case is closed and the reason it’s closed is the ditzy broad killed herself. What are you making waves for?”
    “I’m not. I just wanted to see the pictures.”
    “To see if somebody stole her diaphragm or something.”
    “Something like that.” I drank what remained of my drink. “You need a new hat anyway, Guzik. The weather’s turning and a fellow like you needs a hat for fall.”
    “If I had the price of a hat, maybe I’d go out and get one.”
    “You got it,” I said.
    He nodded and we told Birnbaum we wouldn’t be long. I walked with Guzik around the corner to the Eighteenth. On the way I palmed him two tens and a five, twenty-five dollars, the price of a hat in police parlance. He made the bills disappear.
    I waited at his desk while he pulled the Paula Wittlauer file. There were about a dozen black-and-white prints, eight by tens, high-contrast glossies. Perhaps half of them showed Paula’s corpse from various angles. I had no interest in these but I made myself look at them as a sort of reinforcement, so I wouldn’t forget what I was doing on the case.
    The other pictures were interior shots of the L-shaped apartment. I noted the wide-open window, the dresser with the stereo sitting on it, the chair with her clothing piled haphazardly upon it. I separated the interior pictures from the ones showing the corpse and told Guzik I wanted to keep them for the time being. He didn’t mind.
    He cocked his head and looked at me. “You got something, Matt?”
    “Nothing worth talking about.”
    “If you ever do, I’ll want to hear about it.”
    “Sure.”
    “You like the life you’re leading? Working private, scuffling around?”
    “It seems to suit me.”
    He thought it over, nodded. Then he started for the stairs and I followed after him.
    Later that evening I managed to reach Ruth Wittlauer. I bundled the stereo into a cab and took it to her place. She lived in a well-kept brownstone a block and a half from Gramercy Park. Her apartment was inexpensively furnished but the pieces looked to have been chosen with care. The place was clean and neat. Her clock radio was tuned to an FM station that was playing chamber music. She had coffee made and I accepted a cup and sipped it while I told her about recovering the stereo from Cary McCloud.
    “I wasn’t sure whether you could use it,” I said, “but I couldn’t see any reason why he should keep it. You can always sell it.”
    “No, I’ll keep it. I just have a twenty-dollar record player that I bought on Fourteenth Street. Paula’s stereo cost a couple of hundred dollars.” She managed a smile. “So you’ve already more than earned what I gave you. Did he kill her?”
    “No.”
    “You’re sure of that?”
    I nodded. “He’d kill if he had a reason but I don’t think he did. And if he did kill her he’d never have taken the stereo or the drugs, and he wouldn’t have acted the way he did. There was never a moment when I had the feeling that he’d killed her. And you have to follow your instincts in this kind of situation. Once they point things out to you, then you can usually find the facts to go with them.”
    “And you’re sure my sister killed herself?”
    “No. I’m pretty sure someone gave her a hand.”
    Her eyes widened.
    I said, “It’s mostly intuition. But there are a few facts to support it.” I told her about the chain bolt, how it had