Bedside Murder

She didn’t pay any attention. “I was glad your father died. But it wasn’t enough. The police department told your mother he was a hero. She believed it. I prayed for her to die too. Then I stopped praying and I followed her wherever she went. One day I was behind her at the edge of a subway platform. Nobody would think that a little fat fourteen year old girl would do what I did. That’s how I got away with it. She screamed as she fell.”

I knew then that Carla Planck was completely mad. Her mouth twitched. Her fingers constantly curled and uncurled.

“By the time I came after you, you were gone. Part of your father lives in you, you know. You have no right to live. For nine years I’ve been waiting to kill you, Miss Ryan.”

I wanted her to keep talking. I was afraid of what would happen when she stopped.

“Why didn’t you do it when you first came to work for me?” I asked quickly.

“Because I’d be suspected. I want to go on living. After you die, I can begin to live.”

“But if you kill me in a locked apartment, they’ll get you for it.”

“Not if I open the window afterward, they won’t.” She smiled proudly. “Those two men think the window was opened once. I planted that in their minds. You have to be clever to kill. I know how to be clever.”

It was as though she wanted me to approve of her cleverness, to tell her that she was a bright kid. The gun Kim had given me was over on the bureau, a thousand miles away.

“How do you intend to do it?” I asked.

She looked at me with the dull blue eyes. “I guess I better strangle you.”

The fat hands reached suddenly for my throat. I hit her in the face with all my strength and screamed as I rolled toward the wall. I had hopes of being able to get away from her, but then her fat fingers closed on my wrist. She had the horrid, unbelievable strength of madness. I cried out with the pain, and tried to lift her and lower my head so I could bite her.

The other fat hand closed on my throat, and the world became a slowly swirling pool of darkness. A mile away glass tinkled thinly.

Then I could breathe. There was a hoarse shout, a loud explosion and a scream. It was a funny scream. It was as though somebody had stuck their head out of a moving car and screamed. It seemed to be carried away so suddenly. It ended in a squashy noise.

Somebody was close to me, breathing hard. I felt the faint touch of his breath. I wanted to tell him that it was a wonderful thing to be able to breathe and did they appreciate it?

And suddenly I was kissed. And that, in its way, was just as nice as breathing. So, to make certain that it would last an adequate length of time, I put my arms up and around the neck of someone who obviously had a neck built for the sole purpose of putting arms around.

The lips went away.

“Faker,” Kim said softly.

I looked up into his brown eyes. The wonderful glaze was there and I decided that I would become a specialist.

I would spend the best years of my life plotting exactly how to put that glaze there and how to keep it there.

Suddenly I remembered. I sat up and tried to ask a question. My voice didn’t work the first few times. Then I asked it. Kim sat on the edge of the bed.

“Baldy’s phoning your policeman friend, Dan. I had the silly idea that I could trap your visitor by hiding on the roof where I could watch the fire escape platform outside this window. I was up there when you screamed. I made good time coming down. I kicked the window out and came through. She let go of you and raced for the gun. She got there first. I knocked it out of her hand as she fired it at me. She missed. When I went after it, she went toward the window. She might have been all right except that I was waiting on the roof with a piece of pipe I picked out of the trash in front of this place. I left the pipe on the fire escape. She must have stepped on it.”

I shuddered. I clung to him, looking through tear-misted eyes toward the bedroom door.

Baldy appeared in the door, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. He looked wryly at us. “People, you are looking at a guy with a defective judgment of the fair sex,” he said.

Kim’s voice was muffled by my hair. “Go out into the living room and sit down and maybe I’ll come and look at you,” he said. “I can’t right now.”

Baldy left.

Kim kissed me. “You make so much more money than I do, darling.”

“You shouldn’t let a thing like that bother you,” I answered softly.

He held me at arm’s length. “Bother me! Honey, I was just gloating.”

At that moment Dan knocked on the apartment door. Through the broken window I could hear heavy feet and low voices in the alley. The end of fear. Be gay, Hank. Be ready with the quick retort, the bright-colored, billboard charm.

I wanted to say something to Kim that was deep and warm and real and honest. But all I could do was grin like a happy fool.