Free Wax Apple by Donald E. Westlake Page A

dossiers Doctor Cameron had loaned me. I no longer had them, since they would be difficult to explain in my room if someone else stumbled across them, but in my eighteen years on the force I had trained myself to have a good memory for material like that, and I remembered the general outlines of the histories of both Ruth Ehrengart and Ivy Pollett.
    Ruth Ehrengart was thirty-seven now. Between the ages of nineteen and thirty-one she’d had ten children, all still living. She had begun to be treated medically for extreme nervousness at twenty-seven—merciless comedy wants to edge in here, but I’m sure one look at Ruth Ehrengart’s face will cure that—but the nervousness increased, aggravated by frequent, almost incessant colds. In her thirtieth year a manic-depressive cycle started, its swings at first too long and gentle to be noticed, but then growing more severe, the happy periods verging on hysteria, with insomnia and boundless energy, the downs getting ever lower, with the nervousness giving way to violent irritability or a deadening depression. Shortly after her thirty-second birthday, she took the family car after Mass one Sunday, drove to a highway, and traveled at excess speeds till a state trooper spotted her. She didn’t stop for his siren, but simply went faster than before, the chase at times exceeding one hundred miles an hour and ending at a roadblock set up ahead of her. Her manner with the police and court officials led to her being held over for psychiatric examination, which ultimately led to her voluntary commitment to an institution. Five years later, the institution considered her stable enough to be returned to society, a judgment she obviously wasn’t sure she agreed with or she wouldn’t be here at The Midway.
    Ivy Pollett’s problems were almost the exact opposite. A spinster now forty-two, Ivy Pollett had lived with her chronically ill mother all her life, until four years ago she went to the police to declare that a grocery delivery boy had raped her. The boy, when picked up, denied the charge but wasn’t believed until several days later when Miss Pollett went back to the police station to report that her mailman was a Communist spy. When questioned further, it turned out that virtually all the people Miss Pollett came in contact with were spies or rapists or escaped convicts or white slavers. She was aware of a plot being hatched among these people to do away with her because she’d found them out, and when she realized the detectives questioning her were also part of the plot she became hysterical. It had taken four years in a state institution, during which time the chronically ill mother had died, before Ivy Pollett became convinced that she was not at the hub of an intricate plot.
    Thinking of these two women and looking at my lists, it occurred to me I’d already met all my male suspects, which meant Dewey from last night had to be on one of the cleared lists. Which was good; he’d seemed harmless enough, and it was pleasant to have him not a suspect.
    Well, which one was he? There were only four men on those two lists I hadn’t yet seen, so it was one of those four he had to be. Donald Walburn, George Bartholomew, Edgar Jennings, Phil Roche. I considered the names and dossiers, trying to guess which one would turn out to be Dewey.
    Well, it wouldn’t be Donald Walburn, who’d broken his leg with the rigged ladder, because Walburn was still going around on crutches. And George Bartholomew, who had been hit in the face by the metal bed frame, still bore the marks of that accident, so it couldn’t have been him either.
    Edgar Jennings. One of the ping-pong players with Bob Gale. Also, before his commitment, a self-exposure on New York City subways. His routine had been to wear a raincoat and a pair of cut-off trouser legs that only reached up to the knee, where they were held by rubber bands. When the raincoat was closed, he seemed to be fully dressed. His habit was to open