Then a long moment of silence was ended by a scream that filled the corridor from wall to wall.
I jumped for the corner, swung around it, saw an open door ahead, went through it, and slammed the door shut behind me.
The scream had stopped.
I was in a small dark vestibule with three doors besides the one I had come through. One door was shut. One opened into a bathroom. I went to the other.
The fat manager stood just inside it, her round back to me. I pushed past her and saw what she was looking at.
Sue Hambleton, in pale yellow pajamas trimmed with black lace, was lying across a bed. She lay on her back. Her arms were stretched out over her head. One leg was bent under her, one stretched out so that its bare foot rested on the floor. That bare foot was whiter than a live foot could be. Her face was white as her foot, except for a mottled swollen area from the right eyebrow to the right cheekbone and dark bruises on her throat.
“Phone the police,” I told the woman, and began poking into corners, closets and drawers.
It was late afternoon when I returned to the agency. I asked the file clerk to see if we had anything on Joe Wales and Peggy Carroll, and then went into the Old Man’s office.
He put down some reports he had been reading, gave me a nodded invitation to sit down, and asked:
“You’ve seen her?”
“Yeah. She’s dead.”