Free The Sins of the Fathers by Lawrence Block Page A

so; the mattress was deeply soaked with her blood, and the whole bed would have to be scrapped.
    At one point I stood holding a clot of rusty blood in my hand, and my mind reeled with images of a priest offering Communion. I found the bathroom and gagged without bringing anything up.
    While I was there, I pushed the shower curtain aside and examined the tub.
    There was a ring around it from the last bath taken in it, and some hair matted at the drain, but there was nothing to suggest that anyone had been killed in it. I had not suspected that there would be. Richie Vanderpoel's recapitulation had not been a model of concise linear thought.
    The medicine cabinet told me that Wendy had taken birth-control pills. They came in a little card with a dial indicating the days of the week so that you could tell whether you were up-to-date or not.
    Thursday's pill was gone, so I knew one thing she had done the day she died.
    She had taken her pill.
    Along with the birth-control pills I found enough bottles of organic vitamins to suggest that either or both of the apartment's occupants had been a believer. A small vial with a prescription label indicated that Richie had suffered from hay fever. There was quite a bit in the way of cosmetics, two different brands of deodorant, a small electric razor for shaving legs and underarms, a large electric razor for shaving faces. I found some other prescription drugs-Seconal and Darvon (his), Dexedrine spansules labeled For Weight Control (hers), and an unlabeled bottle containing what looked like Librium. I was surprised the drugs were still around. Cops are apt to pocket them, and men who would not take loose cash from the dead have trouble resisting the little pills that pick you up or settle you down.
    I took the Seconal and the Dex along with me.
    A closet and a dresser in the bedroom filled with her clothes. Not a large wardrobe, but several dresses had labels from Bloomingdale's and Lord & Taylor.
    His clothes were in the living room. One of the closets there was his, and he kept shirts and socks and underwear in the drawers of a Spanish-style kneehole desk.
    The living-room couch was a convertible. I opened it up and found it made up with sheets and blankets. The sheets had been slept on since their last laundering. I closed the couch and sat on it.
    A well-equipped kitchen, copper-bottomed frying pans, a set of burnt-orange enameled cast-iron pots and pans, a teak rack with thirty-two jars of herbs and spices. The refrigerator held a couple of TV
    dinners in the freezer compartment, but the rest of it was abundantly stocked with real food. So were the cupboards. The kitchen was a large one by Manhattan standards, and there was a round oak table in it. There were two captain's chairs at the table. I sat at one of them and pictured cozy domestic scenes, one of them whipping up a gourmet meal, the two of them sitting at this table and eating it.
    I had left the apartment without finding the helpful things one hopes to find.
    No address books, no checkbooks, no bank statements. No revealing stacks of canceled checks. Whatever their financial arrangements, they had evidently conducted them on a cash basis.
    Now, a day later, I thought of my impressions of that apartment and tried to match them up with Martin Vanderpoel's portrait of Wendy as evil incarnate. If she had trapped him with sex, why did he sleep on a folding bed in the living room?
    And why did the whole apartment have such an air of placid domesticity to it, a comfortable domesticity that all the blood in the bedroom could not entirely drown?

    Chapter 9
    When I got back to my hotel there was a phone message at the desk. Cale Hanniford had called at a quarter after eleven. I was to call him. He had left a number, and it was one he had already given me.
    His office number.
    I called him from my room. He was at lunch. His secretary said he would call me back. I said no, I'd try him again in an hour or so.
    The call reminded me of