I locked it up again and went back to the recording machine. I knelt down and squinted along the nap of the rug to the front door. I thought I could see two parallel grooves pointing that way, as though heels had been dragged. Whoever had done it had meant business. Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.
It wasn't the law. They would have been there still, just about getting warmed up with their forensic samplers and their cameras and their cheap cigars. They would have been very much there. It wasn't the killer. He had left too fast. He must have seen the girl. He couldn't be sure she was too drugged and dazed to see him. He would be on his way to distant planets. I couldn't guess the answer, but it was all right with me if somebody wanted Geiger missing instead of just murdered. It gave me a chance to find out if I could tell it leaving Carmen Sternwood out.
I locked up again, kicked the robot rickshaw to life, said, "Home, James" and rode off to a hot shower, dry towels and a late dinner. After that I sat around the apartment and drank too much hot toddy trying to crack the code in Geiger's blue indexed notebook. All I could be sure of was it was a list of names and addresses, probably of the customers. There were over four hundred of them. That made it a nice racket, not to mention any blackmail angles, and there were probably plenty of those. Any name on the list might be a prospect as the killer. I didn't envy the police their job when it was handed to them.
I went to bed full of whisky and frustration and dreamed about a man in a bloody Chinese coat who chased a naked girl with jade earrings while I ran after them on spindly silver limbs and tried to take pictures with a camera with no memory.
Part 2