"The chick wanted a rod."
"A rod?"
"Yessir, for real. She says she had heard about Pete and looked up his address in the phone book. I almost died laughing. Anyways, she says she lives in the provinces somewheres, real boondocks, you know. And there"s this geezer that bothers her, you know. So she wants a rod to scare "im off, so to speak."
DeKok laughed.
"Certainly a radical measure."
"Oh yes, but it weren"t true, you see. It weren"t no more than a story."
"How"s that."
"Come on, DeKok. You could feel that. It were too glib, you know what I mean? She wasn"t the type to be scared by men, nossir. So, I thinks to meself: why does that child need a pistol, right? Anyways, she leaves and I take off too. I follows her, you see. That weren"t too easy, me with a gimp leg and all. But she was window shopping from time to time and I could catch up. So I follows her all the way."
"And?"
"She don"t live in the province at all. She lives right here in town. Pilgrim Street. 21 Pilgrim Street. Leastwise, that"s where she went in."
"Is this the third degree?"
She dropped into one of the low, easy chairs, crossed her long, slender legs and gave both men a challenging look. A dangerous light glimmered in her cornflower blue eyes.
"Is this an interrogation," she repeated, "or a belated sympathy visit?" Her voice dripped with sarcasm. "Just tell me what you want."
DeKok did not answer her. He rubbed his gray hair with one hand while he gestured toward the young woman with the other.
"This," he announced, "is Flossie. The lover of the late, cruelly killed Pete Geffel. I don"t think you"ve met her before."
Vledder leaned forward and offered his hand.
"My deepest sympathy with the loss of your ... your fiance," he said in a friendly voice. "Please believe me, I feel for you."
Ignoring his outstretched hand, she looked up at him.
"Are you another servant of the Law?" she asked mockingly.
Vledder swallowed.
"I ... I try," he stammered, "more cannot be asked of any man."
She snorted. It sounded like an insult.
"Nice plat.i.tudes to hide behind."
Vledder withdrew his hand. His face was red.
"I don"t hide behind anything," he said vehemently. "Especially not behind the shortcomings of my fellow human beings. I am well aware of my own responsibility."
There was a momentary flicker of interest in her eyes, then she gave him a sad smile.
"Responsibility ... responsibility. It"s a dead issue. Psychiatrists have allowed it to die and judges have helped bury it." She made a graceful gesture with her hand. "If ... you had caught the killer of my Peter, then what? Do you think he would have been punished accordingly?" She gave them a pitying laugh. "No," she continued, "no! A battery of psychiatrists with soft hands and even softer brains would have painted a picture of soul-destroying psychosis, they would have depicted the killer as a sick, deluded person." She sighed deeply. "And you can hardly expect a humane Dutch judge to send a sick man to jail, to severely punish a person who"s not responsible for his actions."
DeKok looked at her, his head c.o.c.ked to one side, the melancholy look on his face somehow, subtly intensified.
"And is that why ... Flossie, that"s why you ... punished him?"
She did not answer. She lowered her head until her hair almost fell in her lap, she nervously adjusted the hem of her dress. The bright red color, that had marred her appearance while she was speaking, had drained from her face. She looked paler and more like the kind, nice girl so eloquently described by Mother Geffel.
"Did you punish him?" repeated DeKok.
She slowly shook her head.
"He didn"t come," she answered hoa.r.s.ely. "He didn"t show up." She kept repeating it, like an echo, softer and farther away. "I waited all night for him," she added in a whisper.
DeKok lowered himself into an easy chair across from her.
"You had invited him?"
"Yes."
"You gave him a note with your address?"
"Yes."
"He promised to come?"
Again she nodded slowly.
"I never doubted it for a moment. I was convinced he"d show up. It wasn"t until real late that I understood that someone else had gotten to him before me."
DeKok"s eyebrows rippled briefly.
"Before you?"
She pushed her blonde hair away from her face and slowly raised her gaze until she looked him full in the face. A wan smile played around her lips. Then she broke eye contact.
"Men ... you men have no feelings. They"ve been dulled. Totally blunted. Atrophied! We women have some left. In reality we"re closer to nature, the basic instinct. We have retained our animal roots since time immemorial ... through the ages, a feeling, a feeling that warns us, prepares us and alerts us, that tells us ... without knowing."
"Intuition?"
She took a deep breath and let the air escape slowly from her lungs. It seemed an affirmation and a release.
"You would call it that," she answered.
They remained silent for a long time. DeKok rubbed his eyes in a tired gesture. Vledder tried to find a more comfortable place for his shoulder against the wall. Flossie remained immobile. Finally DeKok broke the silence.
"As it became later," he condensed, "and Thornbush didn"t show up, you knew immediately that someone else had punished him?"
"Yes."
DeKok looked at her evenly.
"But you did invite him in order to punish him?"
Her tongue darted across dry lips.
"To kill him," she admitted softly. Her voice sounded distant, pre-occupied.
"To kill him," repeated DeKok. He leaned forward and stretched out a hand toward her. "Flossie, give me the pistol."
It seemed as if she had not heard him, as if the words broke over her like a series of sounds without meaning. She seemed far removed from what was happening in her immediate surroundings. Vledder briefly thought of the word catatonic, but then decided that her absent-mindedness was different, although not less real.
"Give me the pistol, Flossie."
DeKok"s voice was friendly, but compelling.
She finally tilted her head slightly and looked at him silently. The look from her clear blue eyes was cold, chilly, without pity. Nervous tics pulled at the corners of her mouth. Slowly the hands fell off her lap, the long fingers disappeared between the cushions of the chair, groping, feeling, touching. Suddenly, in a flash, she withdrew her hand and DeKok stared at the threatening barrel of the pistol. Her finger was around the trigger.
DeKok swallowed. He felt a rivulet of sweat drip from his head and find its way down the side of his neck. His outstretched hand almost touched the pistol. For a moment, a brief instant, he contemplated taking the weapon with a quick grab. But he remained motionless, for fear of startling her and have her fire accidentally. She could not possibly miss him at this distance.
With the utmost of self-control he caught her eyes in his gaze and he stared deep into her soul. Suddenly her face changed. The expression became milder. A faint smile appeared around the lips and reflected to a lesser degree in the eyes. For just another instant she seemed to hesitate. Then she placed the weapon into his outstretched hand.
DeKok heard Vledder"s sigh of relief as if from a distance. Without looking at the younger man, DeKok knew that he was replacing his gun into the shoulder holster. Vledder had always been a quick draw and despite DeKok"s disapproval of guns, Vledder seldom was without one.
DeKok looked at her empty right hand.
"Could you have?" he asked softly.
"You?"
"Yes."
"No, not you."
"But Thornbush?"
She nodded slowly, with emphasis.
"He killed my Peter."
18.
"Intuition ... intuition." Vledder raised his hands in despair. "That girl makes me sick with her intuition."
DeKok laughed heartily.
"You"re just upset because she wasn"t impressed by you." He imitated Flossie voice, badly. "Are you another servant of the Law?" he mocked.
Vledder gestured violently.
"Law ... justice, what does that child know of either? She"s so chuckfull of hate and revenge."
DeKok shook his head.
"Chockfull of sorrow," he corrected gently.
Vledder grinned deprecatingly.
"Sorrow!" he jeered. "Did you see her eyes while she was pointing that gun at you? At the slightest opportunity, at the merest excuse, she would have killed you. Believe me. And on what basis? What for? Gossip, that"s all. Gossip stories from a bunch of hysterical receptionists, or whatever." His face was red with indignation. "That"s all, just gossip."
DeKok rubbed his hair.
"Thornbush is dead," he remarked resignedly. "If we ever find out whether or not he killed Cunning Pete..." He made a dejected gesture. "In any case, we can rule out Florentine La Croix as the possible killer of the Secretary. Of course, we"ll go through all the routines, examine the pistol, what have you ... But I"m almost positive that she"s not responsible for the death of Thornbush."
Vledder shrugged his shoulders reluctantly.
"I"m sorry that I have to agree with you." There was regret in his voice. "I don"t believe that Flossie killed Thornbush, either." He sighed deeply. "Too bad really. She would have been such a fitting suspect. She had a motive ... a pistol ... and a black cat."
With a painful expression DeKok placed his tired feet on the desk. His feet were really tired this time. Again he felt the devilish pinp.r.i.c.ks in his calves. The pain should have abated at this stage, because he should have been closer to the solution. Instead, it seemed to have intensified. That could only mean that he was farther from a solution then he had been before. Of all his peculiarities, the feeling in his feet was the most reliable barometer of his progress. But he also hoped that this time, just this once, the feeling was a false alarm. He hoped fervently that he was closer to the end of the case then his feet wanted him to believe. He waved at Vledder who had taken a chair across from him.
"What happened to the money we found under the corpse in the trunk?"
"In the safe at headquarters."
"Has it been counted?"
"Yes, of course."
"How much was it?"
"Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, consisting of various denominations, but mostly American dollars. It took a lot of counting. If B&G"s claim is true, we"re still missing two million, two hundred and fifty thousand."
DeKok smiled.
"Plus we"re missing the perpetrators."
Vledder worried for a while with his left thumbnail.
"Don"t you think it"s strange?" he asked after a while.