investigating detective to notify the family of a murder victim. Moreover, in this day and age police notification was often a redundancy; in most cases, the family had already been informed by television. In a manual prepared by a former chief of detectives, family and friends ranked only sixth in importance on his suggested list of procedures:
1) Start worksheet . . .
2) Determine personnel needs . . .
3) Assign personnel to clerical duties . . .
4) Arrange for additional telephone lines . . .
5) Carefully question all witnesses and suspects.
6) Interview family and friends of the deceased for background information.
Only after rounding up all the usual suspects was it considered necessary to talk to the family and friends. And then only to gather background information. But nowhere did the chief, or anyone else, insist that a detective had to call the family first, even if - in working practice - this often proved to be the case. Last night, they had notified Lois Stein at once, and had in fact asked her for Betsy's number in Vermont. She'd told them she would call her sister personally. Apparently she had. Because here was Betsy now, fuming and ranting and threatening to have them brought up on charges or hanged by their thumbs in Scotland Yard, whichever punishment most fitted their heinous crime. Carella was thinking that the true heinous crime was yet another murder, and he was wondering if the lady might not be protesting a bit too much about an imaginary oversight. Brown had already carried this a step further: he was wondering if Betsy hadn't boxed her own mother. Done the round-trip number from Vermont to here and back again. So long, Mama.
"We're very sorry, Miss Schumacher," he said, sounding genuinely sorry, "but it was very late when we finally got to your sister …"
"So many things to do at the scene . . ." Carella said.
"And we did ask her for your number, truly."
"She called me at four in the morning," Betsy said.
"Which was just a bit after we left her," Brown said.
Letting her know that these hardworking underpaid minions of the law had been on the job all night long, doing their crime-scene canvass, typing up re …
"It was still your responsibility," Betsy said petulantly, but she was beginning to soften. "Lois told me Mother was shot around midnight, and I didn't hear till…"
"Yes, according to the witnesses, that's when . . ."
"You mean there are witnesses?" Betsy said, surprised.
"Yes, two of them."
"People who saw the shooting?"
"Well, heard it, actually," Carella said. "Two nurses heading down the steps to the subway. They turned when they heard the shots, saw the killer running off."
"Then you have a description."
"Not exactly. They saw a person. But they couldn't tell us what that person looked like except that he …"
"Or she," Brown said.
"Or she," Carella repeated, nodding, "was dressed entirely in black."
"Then you don't really know …"
"No, Miss Schumacher, we don't," Carella said. "Not yet."
"Uh-huh, not yet," she said. "When do you think you will know?"
"We're doing our …"
"This is the fourth one, for Christ's sake!"
"Yes, we . . ."
"It is the same person, isn't it? Who killed Daddy and now . . ."
"We have good reason to believe it's the same person, yes."
"I don't give a damn about his bimbos, I wish someone had killed them both a long time ago. But if you want my opinion …"
Which they truly didn't.
"… this person is after the whole family. The bimbos were a smoke screen …"
Which theory they had considered, too. And rejected.
". . .to hide the real targets, who were my mother and father. And that means maybe Lois and I are next." She hesitated for just an instant and then said, "While you do nothing."
"We're doing all we can," Carella said.
"No, I don't think so. Not if four people can get killed in the space of two weeks, three weeks, whatever the hell it is."
"It's exactly two weeks today," Brown said.
"So, sure, that's doing something. That's doing nothing is what it's doing. Where the hell were you last night when my mother was getting killed?"
The detectives said nothing.
"You can see there's a goddamn pattern, can't you?"
"What pattern do you see, Miss Schumacher?" Carella asked patiently.
"I see Daddy's bimbo getting killed, and then Daddy himself. So we'll think this is something that has to do exclusively with him and her. But then the other bimbo gets killed…"
"By the other bimbo …"
"Mrs Schumacher, his beloved wife," she said mockingly. "Margaret, the very first bimbo. Come September, they'd have been married for two years. But isn't the irony wonderful? By last June - even before the wedding meats were cold - he'd already found himself another girlfriend. The point is. . ."
No, your timing is off, Brown thought.
". . . this person, whoever he is, first kills the new bimbo and then my father …"
He didn't start with the Brauer girl till this year.
"… in an attempt to make it seem as if there's a link between them …"
"Well, there was a link," Carella said. "Your father was having an …"
