Out on the Cutting Edge

"Would it have been important? It was just the usual thing. 'Hello, this is Paula. I can't talk to you right now but you can leave a message at the sound of the tone.' Or something like that, that's not word-for-word."

"It's not important," I said. And it wasn't. I just would have liked a chance to hear her voice.

"I'm surprised you're still on it," Durkin said. "What did you do, call Indiana and shake some more dough out of the money tree?"

"No. I probably should, I'm putting in a lot of hours, but I'm not getting much in the way of results. I think her disappearance is a criminal matter."

"What makes you think so?"

"She never officially moved out. She paid her rent one day, and ten days later her landlady cracked the door and the room was empty."

"Happens all the time."

"I know that. The room was empty except for three things.

Whoever cleaned it out left the phone, the answering machine, and the bed linens."

"And what does that tell you?"

"That somebody else packed the stuff and carried it off. A lot of rooming houses furnish bed linen. This one didn't. Paula Hoeldtke had to supply her own linen, so she would have known to take it with her when she left. Someone else who didn't know might have assumed it was supposed to stay with the room."

"That's all you've got?"

"No. The answering machine was left behind, and it was hooked up to continue answering the phone and telling people to leave their messages. If she'd left on her own she'd have called and had the phone disconnected."

"Not if she left in a hurry."

"She probably would have called in somewhere along the line. But let's say she didn't, let's say she was enough of an airhead to forget it altogether. Why would she leave the machine?"

"Same thing. She forgot it."

"The room was left empty. No clothes in the drawers, nothing in the closet. There wasn't a whole lot of clutter around for things to get lost in. All that was left was the bed linen, the phone, and the answering machine. She couldn't have not noticed it."

"Sure she could. Lots of people leave the phone when they move. I think you're supposed to leave the phone, unless it's one that you bought outright. Anyway, people leave them. So she's gonna leave her phone.

So the answering machine— where is it, it's next to the phone, right?"

"Right."

"So she looks over there and she doesn't see something separate, an answering machine, a household appliance, keeps you in touch with your friends and associates, ends your worry of missing calls, di dah di dah di dah. What she sees is part of the phone."

I thought about it. "Maybe," I said.

"It's part of the phone, it goes with the phone. And, since the phone stays, it stays with the phone."

"And why doesn't she come back for it when she realizes it's missing?"

"Because she's in Greenland," he said, "and it's cheaper to buy a new machine than to get on a plane."

"I don't know, Joe."

"I don't know either, but I'll tell you this, it makes as much sense as looking at a phone and an answering machine and two sheets and a blanket and trying to make a kidnapping case out of it."

"Don't forget the bedspread."

"Yeah, right. Maybe she moved somewhere that she couldn't use the linen. What was it, a single bed?"

"Larger than that, somewhere between a single and a double. I think they call it a three-quarter."

"So she moved in with some slick dude with a king-size water bed and a twelve-inch cock, and what does she need with some old sheets and pillowcases? What does she even need with a phone, as far as that goes, if she's gonna be spending all her time on her back with her knees up?"

"I think somebody moved her out," I said. "I think somebody took her keys and let himself into her room and packed up all her things and slipped out of there with them. I think—"

"Anybody see a stranger leave the building with a couple of suitcases?"

"They don't even know each other, so how would they spot a stranger?"

"Did anybody see anybody toting some bags around that time?"

"It's too long ago, you know that. I asked the question of people on the same floor with her, but how can you remember a commonplace event that might have taken place two months ago?"

"That's the whole point, Matt. If anybody left a trail, it's ice-cold by now." He picked up a Lucite photo cube, turned it in his hands and looked at a picture of two children and a dog, all three beaming at the camera. "Go on with your script," he said. "Somebody moves her stuff out. He leaves the linen because he doesn't know it's hers. Why does he leave the answering machine?"

"So anybody who calls her won't know she's gone."

"Then why doesn't he leave everything, and even the landlady won't know she's gone?"

"Because eventually the landlady will figure out that she's not coming back, and the matter might get reported to the police. Cleaning out the room tidies a potential loose end. Leaving the answering machine buys a little time, gives the illusion she's still there to anybody at a distance, and makes it impossible to know exactly when she moved.