Richard Stark - The Split (Parker Series #7)

When he didn't get any answer the second time he knocked, Parker kicked the door in. Only the cheap bolt lock was fastened; the chain lock and the police lock were both open. Parker raised his foot and kicked the flat of his shoe against the door above the knob just one time, and the door popped open like it was surprised. It went with a dry cracking sound as pieces of doorframe ripped away from around the bolt. It was dry old wood in a rotten old building and it split easy.

The door swung all the way open, the inner knob bumping finally against the side wall, but Parker didn't go in right away. He stood in the hall, under the twenty-five watt bulb stuck in the ceiling, and waited and listened.

The door stood open on a long narrow hall. All the rooms of the apartment opened off that hall, to the right. The kitchen was first, with light spilling out the doorway. Next was the bathroom, in darkness, that part of the hall dark also. Next the bedroom, soft fight spreading out to the hallway from there. Last was the living room, into which the hallway emptied. From out here on the other side of the apartment doorway Parker could look down the hall like looking down a long rectangular funnel and see an edge of the living room at the far end, a dark brown mohair overstuffed armchair and a rickety dark wood table with a black telephone on it and the beginning of an imitation Persian rug. Also a floor lamp, standing beyond the armchair, lit now and making a soft glow out around its cream shade. There was another light source too, deeper in the living room, out of sight.

Everything the way he'd left it. Light on in the kitchen, off in the bathroom, on in the bedroom and living room. Bolt lock fastened on the front door, chain lock and police lock both unfastened. Everything the way he'd left it.

Except he'd knocked twice just now and Ellie hadn't come to open the door.

He'd gone downstairs ten minutes ago, to buy beer and cigarettes. The place on the corner was closed and he'd walked a block farther to the next place, and now he was back.

Ordinarily he'd have sent Ellie, but he hadn't been out of the apartment in three days and he felt like having some fresh air. So he dressed, while she sat on the rumpled bed nude, cross-legged tailor fashion, smoking a filter cigarette and scratching herself. She kept yawning, but the yawns that come after sleep, not before. "I'll make us some eggs," she offered, and he said, "Fine," and then he left.

And now, in ten minutes, something had managed to go wrong.

She wouldn't have gone out. And she wouldn't have gone back to sleep. She should have heard him knock, and even if she hadn't she sure as hell should have heard him kick the door in.

There was nothing in the apartment but silence.

Parker felt naked standing out here under this twenty-five watt bulb, wearing nothing but clothes. He had no weapon nothing but a bag with beer bottles and cigarette packages in it.

He put the paper bag down on the floor and reached just inside the doorway and around the other side of the split doorframe to where he'd leaned the bar of the police lock when he'd gone out. His fingers closed on it, and it was cold. He picked it up and stood hefting it. It was good iron, solid, three feet long. When it was in operation, one end was stuck at a slant into the metal plate in the floor behind the door, the other end in the locking mechanism on the door itself. With this bar wedged between door and floor, nobody would kick the door in; police lock was a good name for it.

It would make a good weapon. Better than bare hands.

Parker stepped across the threshold and shut the door behind him. It wouldn't shut all the way anymore. The hall was bright near to him, where light spilled out from the kitchen, and then dim farther on and softly glowing down at the living-room end.

Parker moved noiselessly forward and looked into the kitchen. It was three inches bigger than a closet and filled with appliances. A white circular fluorescent light fixture meant for a room of normal size glared in the middle of the ceiling, reflecting balefully from all the porcelain and white enamel crowded into the little room. Dirty glasses, dirty pots, dirty dishes, were scattered all over every flat surface. Grocery bags full of rubbish were crammed together on the floor.

No eggs had been started. Ellie wasn't in this room now, and it didn't look as though she'd been here at all.

Parker moved on and switched on the bathroom light, and this room, too, was empty. He left the light on and went past there and when he got even with the bedroom doorway he looked in and she was sitting there on the bed.

At first he didn't see the hilt, and he thought she'd just fallen asleep again.

She was sitting there just the same as when he'd left, legs crossed tailor fashion, back against the headboard of the bed, arms at her sides. A faint wisp of smoke was coming up from the area of her left hand, so she was still smoking the cigarette. Or had started a new one by now.

The only difference he saw at first was she wasn't looking up. Her head was slumped forward as though she'd fallen asleep again. Except the position looked awkward; it looked as though if she were asleep she'd fall over frontward. He looked at her from the hallway, frowning, the picture looking wrong, not understanding why yet, and then he saw the hilt jutting out from between her breasts.

Somebody had taken one of the crossed swords from the wall and jammed it through her chest and through the padded headboard of the bed and into the plasterboard of the wall. She was stuck there like a scarecrow put away for the winter.

The guy who did it had a hell of an arm. Either that, or he'd brought a sledge along to hammer it the rest of the way after the first thrust.

Parker moved deeper into the room, looking around, but there was nobody here now. The guy had been and gone.

There was practically no blood visible at all. It must have mostly gone out the back and soaked into the headboard padding.

So what now? He was supposed to stay here two more days. If he left, the others wouldn't know where to get in touch with him, and he didn't know where to get in touch with them, not easily. But he couldn't stick around with that thing on the bed.

Ten minutes. That was awfully damn fast. The guy must have been watching the place, waiting for Parker to get out of the way. As soon as Parker left, in he came, and right back out again.

Parker wondered what Ellie had done to somebody to make him that irritated with her. He'd only known her two weeks himself, and neither of them had spent much time on autobiography. This was her apartment, and he'd guessed that she'd inherited it from a man, that she'd originally lived here with somebody. The crossed swords on the wall, the beer mugs on the mantel in the living room, the round table in a corner of the living room that must have been used at one time for poker sessions, all told of a male presence here. Probably either a college boy or somebody who wished he still was a college boy.

Maybe it was the college boy who'd done. it. A football hero, maybe, offensive lineman, with the meaty shoulders and blunt strength needed to wield that damn sword that way.

But it didn't matter. Parker didn't give a damn who'd killed her, or why. It aggravated him because his plans were loused up now. He had no choice; he had to get out of here.

He turned and saw Mutt and Jeff standing in the doorway, wearing rumpled police uniforms. Mutt looked surprised, as though somebody had played a dirty trick on him, and Jeff looked frightened. They were both reaching for their pistols with a clumsy haste that would have made their old instructor at the Police Academy break down and cry.