Free Wax Apple by Donald E. Westlake

real identity. Which was good, since she was technically still on the active list of suspects, though I found it incredible to think it might be her.
    She looked up and gave me a distracted smile as I went by; I returned it and went out to the hall.
    Traveling through The Midway was a constantly unnerving experience, only partly because of the maze-like confusions of the place. The main point, though, was the danger of booby traps. Who knew what unsprung traps were lying around waiting for a victim? I tried to move normally, not to seem odd to the people I passed, but I tended to shuffle and stick close to the walls, like a blind man.
    It took a while once again to find my way to my room, and the problems and dangers of the search worked wonders in getting me off my irritation. When I finally walked safely into the room I no longer had any particularly urgent desire to hit Doctor Fredericks in the mouth. I still thought of him as offensive, a naturally offensive man who had found a way within his occupation to turn a personality defect to advantage.
    The strange thing was that I didn’t resent his having gotten me to talk about myself. In that regard, I trusted him. I had no doubt he would never use against me what I’d told him. Unless I was in the position of patient, of course, when he would surely hit me over the head with it from time to time just to see what my reactions were. He struck me, all in all, as being one of those medicines worse than the disease it cures.
    I was physically weary, but mentally alert, which meant I was soon bored inside my room. Aside from having promised to be here when the doctors had finally straightened things out between them, I really didn’t feel up to wandering around at all, seeking out someone to talk to or anything like that. Within the room there was virtually nothing to occupy my mind, no radio or television set, nothing to read.
    Finally, for something to do more than out of any belief I would learn anything, I decided to make a list of the residents, dividing them into those still suspect and those already cleared. I sat at the writing desk with my notebook and pen, and when I was done I had three lists. After the names of those I’d already met I put down some fact about the person to help remind me which one was which. I could have done so with the others, but I was afraid of reducing them too much to an adjective before actually seeing them.
    The first list was of the five people other than me who’d so far been injured:
    Edith Wooster
(terrace)
Rose Ackerson
kidnapper widow (table)
Molly Schweitzler
 
 
overeater (table)
Donald Walburn
(ladder)
George Bartholomew
 
 
(closet)
    The second list was also five names long, and was those residents accounted for during the time the stair booby trap had been laid:
    Bob Gale
shell shock
Edgar Jennings
 
Phil Roche
 
Marilyn Nazarro
depression
Beth Tracy
 
    And the third list, those residents still suspect, ran to twelve names:
    Jerry Kanter
multi-murderer
Debby Lattimore
suicide/catatonic
Robert O’Hara
child-molester
William Merrivale
father-beater
Kay Prendergast
nymphomaniac
Walter Stoddard
killer of retarded daughter
Ethel Hall
lesbian librarian
Doris Brady
culture shock
Nicholas Fike
alcoholic
Helen Dorsey
compulsive housekeeper
Ruth Ehrengart
 
Ivy Pollett
 
    Of these twenty-two people, I had so far met fourteen, but most of the eight I was yet to see in person were already eliminated for one reason or another. Edith Wooster, for instance, was still in the hospital following the collapsed terrace. Donald Walburn and George Bartholomew, neither of whom I’d yet run across, had both been involved in accidents. I hadn’t seen Edgar Jennings or Phil Roche or Beth Tracy, but they were among those eliminated by placement when the stairs were rigged. That only left Ruth Ehrengart and Ivy Pollett among the active suspects still to be seen in the flesh.
    I did already know both women, of course, to some extent, from the