It was the wee hours and there were few people out. I made my way cautiously to the center of the horseshoe. I looked up to find Harry’s suite in the Raphael. It was dark, as I had hoped. Harry had said he was going someplace: the ranch, the farm, I couldn’t remember. Best not to run into him.
I wondered if Harry knew that I had a room next door. It would compromise me if he returned the favor and searched it. But then I realized that the last thing on earth he wanted was any association with me, the person whose murder he had ordered. He’d think that if he was perchance found in my room, the charge might be a great deal more severe than trespassing.
I wasn’t keen on walking through the lobby. I tried all the other doors, which ordinarily are locked at night. My luck held and I found one that Security had overlooked. I had to stop several times to catch my breath while climbing to the sixth floor, I was so exhausted. As soon as my heart rate rose, the throbbing began again in my right arm.
The hall was clear. As quietly as I could, I staggered to my room, unlocked the door and slipped inside, fearful even of switching on a light. I stripped and went into the bathroom. With the bathroom door closed, the light was safe.
I removed the makeshift bandages from my hand and wrist. I sucked in my breath at the sight of the caked blood intermingled with torn skin and flesh. Carefully, with many a grimace, I washed the injury until the entire site was clean. Blood had begun oozing from several places. I made a fresh bandage from a washcloth, which I held in place with elastic bands. I held my arm over my head and stepped into the shower. I washed as best I could with one hand. When I finished, the bleeding had stopped and the arm no longer throbbed. I replaced the blood-soaked washcloth with a clean one, doused the light, and crawled naked into bed to await the dawn.
Though I’d slept only three hours, I felt rejuvenated when the first rays of the morning sun shone in. The bandage was dry and I managed to change it without causing more bleeding. I kept my hand elevated at shoulder level as I dressed and packed. I used automatic checkout through the TV set and, after one final survey of the room, slipped softly into the hall. Next door was quiet. I had no idea whether Harry had returned. I summoned the elevator.
In the lobby, two uniformed police officers stood at the check-in counter having an animated conversation with the clerk. The janitorial staff had been hard at work overnight. They had polished the floor anew, dusted the furniture and vacuumed the upholstery. The sand in the freestanding ashtrays was sifted smooth and left with an imprint of an ornate capital “R.” The louvered windows were open and drafts of morning air had driven away the odor of stale tobacco and alcohol. Despite my injuries, I felt renewed, resurrected, and so full of life as to be euphoric.
The security guard watched as I pulled my rolling bag across the lobby toward the exit. The automatic doors retracted and I stepped outside into the fresh morning and took in this new day of life. A squirrel skipped across the branches of a nearby tree. I became aware of the liquid song of a bird high in that tree, singing its own sweet carol of thankfulness to be alive on this morning.
The rising sun cast long shadows. One of those shadows was moving toward me. I thought I recognized the silhouette and turned my head to see Harry. He was gaping at me, slack-jawed, a look of disbelief on his face. The sight of him gave me an adrenaline rush. My arm throbbed in response to my pounding heart. We stared at each other for a few seconds. With regained composure, I passed close to him and hissed, “Tell your next goon not to drink and drive—somebody might get hurt.”
I didn’t think he’d shoot me in the back that Sunday morning. It wasn’t bird season.
BOOK TWO
TOM
CHAPTER 15
It felt strange to be driving again. I had to keep looking at my right hand to make sure it wasn’t chained to the steering wheel. The stunt I’d pulled the previous night wouldn’t have worked in my rental car. Both driver and passenger seats had airbags.
I drove to the Orlando airport with added caution. My earlier recklessness had had a rebound effect and had made me timid. I’d used up a lot of luck in the past 24 hours and now I was taking no chances. The morning flight to Raleigh was only half filled. I had no trouble getting a seat on my open return. My mood swung between the euphoric feeling I’d had in the hotel lobby and anxiety about the next stage of the investigation.
When I got home, I called Ashley to report success. The hair in the razor would be more than ample for the DNA test. The toothbrush, if it had enough cells on it, would provide confirmation against the outside chance that Ernest had used the razor. Ashley said that a courier would call for the items within two hours.
In response to her questions about the week’s activities, I told the whole truth with the exception of my run-in with Ernest. As far as she knew, I’d committed a successful burglary of Harry’s room, obtained the desired items, and brought them home. I didn’t like the gap in my report because, as my client, Ashley was entitled to know what I did while in her employ. I excused myself from this obligation on the basis that the law might construe my actions as murder, though in my mind it was justifiable homicide. In any event, I didn’t want to make Ashley an accessory.
Ashley moved quickly on to the topic of finding the other two men—presumably Tom and Dick—who had also assaulted her. I assured her that I’d expend every effort to pursue them, and that I had “some leads.” What I really wanted at that moment was some time off. I was spent to the core and my arm was feeling worse every moment. I ended our conversation with a promise to get back to her when I had something solid.
Immediately upon hanging up I went into the bathroom to change dressings. The wound had an angry look and spidery red streaks stretched up my forearm. This was a sure sign of infection. I needed professional help immediately. I was annoyed with myself for having called Ashley first, for now I had to await the courier.
I prepared the razor and toothbrush for shipping. The bloodstained clothes went into the wash—cold water, to be sure—with plenty of detergent. The house needed cleaning, which task I performed left-handed, holding my right hand in a makeshift sling. That done and still no courier, I got out a book of piano music for the left hand alone. I’d received it for a birthday gift one time and had kept it around out of curiosity. Now I actually had need of it, and the quaintness of playing—or trying to play, in any case—the one-handed music helped wile away the time.
The courier finally showed up. He was an off-duty state trooper with flinty eyes behind wire-framed glasses, and a service automatic on his hip. There was paperwork to be filled out. We both averred and avowed that our intentions were honest. I indemnified the courier’s company against everything from flat tires to epidemics. When I went to sign, I became aware of how stiff my right hand had become. My signature was cramped and unnatural. He left at last with the precious cargo in hand.
I drove to the emergency room immediately after the courier had departed. I took plenty of reading material, for there is no place on earth outside of the army where one hurries up and waits so much. When I showed the duty-nurse my arm, however, her eyebrows twitched. For the cool-headed emergency room personnel this is the equivalent of a gasp.
Within five minutes I was in an examining room. Another five and the ER doctor rapped twice and let himself in. He asked difficult questions, like “How did this happen?” and “Why didn’t you go to the hospital in Orlando?”
My answers were plausible lies. “I caught my arm in an electric car window and panicked. I didn’t want to miss my flight. I trust the doctors in Raleigh because I’m from here,” a piece of flattery that misfired since, as I learned later, he was a native Floridian.
Tetanus and penicillin shots promptly followed. He volunteered to call a plastic surgeon to stitch the wounds properly to minimize scarring. I’d have to wait a few hours, but as he noted wryly, I’d already waited far too long.
The plastic surgeon was unmoved by the injury. She was a middle-aged woman whose hair was just beginning to gray.
She wore no makeup and exuded self-confidence without egoism. I liked her immediately.
“You’re going to take about 100 stitches,” she said. “I’m going to have to tear all this apart and sew it in place. I’m afraid you didn’t get it all put back right.”
She numbed the area with repeated injections. The first one stung like hell but the numbness soon took over. She aimed each subsequent shot through a desensitized area so that the entire process was pain-free after the first injection.
Now she went to work on the injured tissues. She peeled back the flaps of skin to reveal the pulpy flesh beneath. She probed repeatedly to ensure that there was no structural damage.
“You’re extremely lucky not to have cut any tendons, honey. You destroyed several small veins in your wrist, but that shouldn’t matter. It’ll be swollen for months, and perhaps always be slightly larger than your other wrist, but you’ll be the only one to notice.”
The nurse who was assisting her flooded the area with an antiseptic, dried it thoroughly, and dusted it with steroidal powder. The surgeon repositioned the flaps and trimmed their ragged edges with surgical scissors. She sewed the flaps in place with a sickle-shaped needle. Each tiny stitch adjoined the next in a solid line of black that traced the boundaries of each wound. When she had finished, my arm looked like a Balkanized region on an atlas. I mentioned that to her and she laughed and said she’d never thought of herself as a cartographer. But indeed, with a little imagination, I could identify Bosnia, Croatia and Yugoslavia.
The doctor sent me home with antibiotics and pain medication, and strict instructions to rest for the next forty-eight hours. I barely took time to brush my teeth before crawling into bed. I remained there until the following afternoon.
When I awoke, I felt well enough to walk over to see Janet and reclaim my two greyhounds. They nearly jumped out of their skins with pleasure when I walked through the door. We went back home and played in the yard for a bit. Then it was back to work.
I needed Palm Pilot software to read the purloined file of names and addresses that I had gotten from Harry’s computer. I called next door and got Lily on the line. She was sure someone there had the software and offered to come over and get the diskette. Ten minutes later she was back with a complete printout of Harry’s address book.
I highlighted all the entries with the T-names and the D-names: Tom, Thomas, Thompson, Tommy, Initial-T, Richard, Rich, Richie, Dick, and so on. There were quite a few marked entries when I’d finished, but one stood out above the rest: Tommy Beck. Beck was the surname that Harry had employed as an alias. It had to be more than coincidence.
I got out the stacks of records from Marquis. There were no Becks in the working pile of Toms, but I’d excluded records of freshmen, sophomores, and people not between the ages of 20 and 30. There were no Becks there either and my disappointment mounted.
But wait, there was one more stack to search: the one with matching middle names. My last coin in the slot machine spun up three bars in a row in the form of the name of Jay Thompson Beck. I’d been annoyed with Ellis for giving me middle names. I mouthed a silent apology.
Beck was a philosophy and religion major in the Divinity School. That piqued some memory cells in my head. I got out my laptop and examined my database. Ashley had noticed an exceptionally large crucifix on Fatboy’s clothes. And there were references to someone named J.T. or J.D. during Ashley’s ordeal. The clincher was that Harry’s mother’s maiden name was Beck. What I now knew dovetailed neatly. Jay Thompson Beck was Harry’s cousin Tommy, a.k.a. Fatboy.
I considered whether Ernest might actually have been Beck. He was more or less the right size, according to Ashley’s description. I wouldn’t describe him as fat the way Ashley had, but in ten years his build could have changed. It would be a pity if they were the same person. I’d been bathed in the man’s DNA, all of which had gone down the drain in the wash.
I had Ellis’s phone number at Marquis. It was nearly five and I hated to bother him near quitting time. If he was annoyed at my call his voice didn’t reveal it. I got the “anything for you, Ms. Jamison” treatment. Would the whole world were of that persuasion. I asked him for all of the information on Jay Thompson Beck he could find. He promised it by ten the next morning.
A short nap before supper seemed like a good idea. Sometimes the more you sleep the more you want to sleep, but it’s self-limiting. One of the hounds got me up around midnight—I’d neglected to let them out before my “nap.” By the time they had gone out and come back in, I found myself wide-awake, a victim of self-induced jetlag. I decided to ring up Charles.
Charles Cranston Clarke is my boyfriend. We live together for three months every summer in his house in Santa Barbara, California. During that time, I work for my brother John. The remainder of the year we spend flying across the country to see each other, often meeting in romantic places between our two cities such as New Orleans. We’re experts at finding cheap airfares. We talk openly about marriage but we value our independence and are tied to our respective cities through our professions.
Charles is an assistant medical examiner. He’s an Englishman, educated at Oxford, and a graduate of the New London Medical College. He speaks uncannily like James Bond. He’s one of the smartest people I know, one of the kindest, and one of the most resourceful. Admittedly, I’m prejudiced.
We met by chance when a client hired me to investigate her friend’s apparent suicide. My client suspected foul play, and Charles, who did the autopsy, found irregularities enough to persuade me that my client might be right.
Boldly for me, for I was still traumatized by my bout with cancer, I asked Charles out the evening of the day that I met him. We hit it off and he became entangled in my investigation when we combined a vacation to San Francisco with my pursuit of the circumstances surrounding the questionable death.
Eventually we found the central cohesive clue in the case on a corpse that had been buried for twenty years—Charles and I exhumed the body early one eerie morning, and he found that the remains bore marks identical to those on the apparent suicide. Thanks to Charles, I cleared up the matter, though not without some additional mayhem, and added to the renown of John’s firm, and, according to Ashley, to my own renown.
Charles answered on the second ring.
I said “Chaaahhles,” imitating his accent.
He said “Daaahhlink,” imitating an east coast accent.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too. I miss you, Dag. What’s happening? How are you?
“How much time do you have?”
I hadn’t spoken with Charles since taking Ashley’s case. He was at a pathologists’ convention in Hawaii for a week, and of course I was in Orlando, and we kept missing each other. I told him of my adventures, careful to keep everyone anonymous so as not to invade my client’s privacy.
“Bloody hell!” he exclaimed when I got to the passing of Ernest. “You purposely rammed a ruddy tree at 90 miles per hour! Fawking junipers! You put a lot of faith in that fawking airbag. You know, Dagny, I study these scenarios. Above 60 miles per hour we see fatalities even with seatbelts and airbags. At 90 you had a 50 percent chance of being killed. You could’ve done at 60 and taken your man out. Good God, your stories give me gray hairs.”
“You’d look quite handsome with a few gray hairs. And anyway, I couldn’t exactly call you from the car to get the optimum speed, could I?”
“Hmm, I suppose I’m uncommonly lucky not to hear you say you bit off this man’s finger to get a DNA sample, aren’t I?”
“What a great idea. I’ll consider it next time. I still need to find two more of these creeps.”
We talked until two in the morning when I became sleepy again. With promises to meet as soon as Ashley’s case had moved forward, we rang off. I little knew then how soon the whole business would bring us together.
The next morning I felt normal. My injury wasn’t bothering me at all. I thought that maybe a half-jog would
only half violate doctor’s orders. I padded into the bathroom and washed my uninjured hand and my face, careful to keep bandaged hand and wrist dry. I stood naked in front of the mirror and had a good look at myself. The scars on my chest, once fiery and angry, had faded to tamer pinks, grays, and whites. They’d be joined by new scars now incubating under the bandages. Add to those a bullet wound, a knife wound, and a nasty burn, and I was favored to compete well in a Raggedy Anne contest.
My face was slightly bruised. There was a perceptible swelling around the eyes and the flesh was discolored. I hadn’t noticed it before because I was focused on the mangled arm. Diagonally across my body, from left shoulder to right hip, was a faint outline of the seat belt I’d been wearing. After having heard Charles recite the statistics on survival, I counted myself more than fortunate to have only these small reminders of the horrific impact. I swore I had more lines radiating from the corners of my eyes than before Orlando, but who’s counting?
It was time for a haircut. I keep my hair close-cropped to prevent assholes like Ernest from dragging me around by it, but it was getting a bit unruly. I snipped away at several of the more errant strands, but doing this left-handed was even riskier than my usual right-handed hack job, and I soon decided to await professional treatment. My body hadn’t been as tanned since I was a teenager, and I had to admit that I liked the look. It made my teeth whiter—those straight white teeth that had cost my parents the price of a used car in orthodontic fees. Too bad I was so fearful of more cancer. I couldn’t see myself maintaining this shade for long.
I managed a mile and a half before my arm started to throb, and I stopped immediately. The greyhounds were surprised at the short duration of our outing but it turned out for the best. I’d only been home for a moment when the phone rang. It was Ellis getting back to me early
J. Thompson Beck was now Dr. J. Thompson Beck, Doctor of Divinity. He had graduated from Marquis with his bachelor’s degree the same year as the attack on Ashley. He was accepted into graduate school and received his D.D. four years later. His last biographical sketch in the Marquis Alumni Magazine stated that he was the director of an orphanage and adoption agency in Istanbul, Turkey. The article credited him with rescuing hundreds of homeless children, many of whom found adoptive homes in the United States and elsewhere. It also mentioned that he was in the “Friends” category of donors, meaning that he gave Marquis at least $1,000 per year.
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