"If it was Dad, then Barbara may have met him before that Parents Day at Hayes. But then I think it was probably some other kid's parents who took me home.
* * * * *
Pam wants to take another look at the Flamingo, see it in hard daylight, she says. She clocks the drive. As we pull into the motel lot, she tells me it has taken just nine minutes to get here from the Fulraine house.
"This time I want to see the room," she says.
At the pool, I spot the same woman and kids who were hanging around when I visited two weeks ago. The woman's wearing the same yellow bikini and sunning herself on the same orange strap chaise and the kids are splashing around the shallow end as before.
As we walk into the courtyard the woman looks up, pulls off her sunglasses, is about to speak, then apparently recognizes me and settles back.
"She's the owner-manager," I whisper to Pam. "Her dad ran the place at the time of the killings. When I came by before, she gave me the once-over like I was some kind of ghoulish crime buff come to jerk off in the murder room."
"Well, you are ghoulish," Pam says.
Johnny Powell's on duty in the office, and, just as before, his geezer's eyes are riveted to a baseball game on the lobby TV.
"Howdy," he says, looking p. "I figured you'd be back."
"Johnny, this is Pam Wells."
"Howdy, Pam. Here to check out old two-oh-one?"
When I nod, he slaps the key down on the counter. Then he looks at me and squints. "Someone's been around asking about you, Mr. Weiss."
Pam and I exchange a look.
"Who?"
A fella. Didn't give his name. Seemed like a cop, but didn't show me a badge or nothin’."
"What did he want?"
"Asked whether I'd seen you. Said your name then showed me your picture. When I shrugged, he flashed the inside of his palm to show me a folded fifty-dollar bill. Being in the motel business, I know better than to talk about other people's business. I told him I didn't know fifty bucks worth of nothin’ and to please leave me alone so I could do my work."
"Then what?"
"He smiled like he understood it was going to take more than fifty to open me up. Then he irked me, started calling me ‘old-timer,’ like ‘He went to 201, didn't he, old-timer? Asked a lot of questions about the old days? Yeah, I figured that. What I want to know is what kinda questions and now much time did he spend up there in the room?’"
"That's an odd thing to ask."
"I thought so. When I told him to get lost, he winked at me like he was onto me somehow. ‘You'll talk to me yet, old-timer,’ he said. Then he turned and shuffled out."
I thank Johnny for keeping my confidence, tip him fifty bucks to make up for what he lost on my account, and ask him to please call me if the nosy guy comes around again.
* * * * *
I feel Ms. Evans's eyes on us as we move across the courtyard. When we're up on the balcony, I glance down. She got her dark glasses back on, but I can tell she's still watching. She smiles slightly and I smile back.
Pam unlocks the door, hesitates, ten walks in. I glance back at Ms. Evans. Though I can't read her eyes, I sense the intensity of her gaze by the set of her mouth and the erect position of her head. She sits still as if interested to observe what I'll do next, whether I'll enter swiftly or with trepidation. There's a moment between us as if each is daring the other to look away, broken by the shrill cry of one of her kids.
"Hey, Mom! Watch this!" the smaller boy shouts, taking a running cannonball leap into the middle of the pool.
I find Pam inside seated on the bed.
After a long silence, she ventures an opinion. "It's just so ordinary." She glances at me. "Or is it, David? Do you feel something weird?"
"I did before, probably because I was alone and I'd done a lot of imagining about this room. I think I'll leave you here a while, give you a chance to take in the vibes."
Pam nods, then starts studying her reflection in the big mirror above the dresser. I quietly slip out, close the door, then lean over the exterior balcony. Ms. Evans, sensing my presence again, looks up at me from her chaise. Again I meet her sunglass-shielded eyes.
Obviously something's on her mind. I nod to her, move quickly to the staircase, descend, then stride over to where she's lying. To my surprise, she doesn't react or sit up, rather continues to lie back as if expecting the intrusion.
"Pardon me — I'm David Weiss," I tell her, crouching beside her, extending my hand.
"I know. I'm Kate Evans."
We shake, then she invites me to sit on the adjacent chaise.
"I couldn't help but notice you've been checking me out."
She smiles slightly. "The other day I asked Johnny who you were. It's been years since anyone asked to see the murder room."
She reaches into her pool bag, pulls out a pack of L&Ms and an elegant, thin, gold lighter. She takes her time lighting up, inhales deeply, then exhales in long, steady plume that hangs like the exhaust trail of a jet in the still, humid air.
"I saw him, you know —the man who did the shooting, saw him clear for a second or two. Then for a long time I saw him in my dreams, not every night or anything like that — maybe two, three times a year for... six, seven years. Scary dreams." She exhales again. "Kinda dreams you wish you could forget."
She points to her boys. "Me and another kid were playing here, splashing around like them. then suddenly — BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!" She smiles, takes another long drag from her cigarette, then crushes it out against the concrete beneath her chaise. "He came running down the stairs, then he saw us. That's when our eyes met." She smiles slightly again. "It was like... we locked. Then he scooted off under the archway and out into the street. I told the cops I saw him. They were nice, asked me to describe him. I did, but then they never showed me any suspect pictures or anything like that."
I feel a surge of excitement bolting through my body.
She saw the shooter! Even after twenty-six years she remembers his face, saw it in her dreams.
"I'm a forensic artist," I tell her casually, though my mind's racing and my heart's thumping away.
"So Johnny said. He said you've been making drawings at the Foster trial."
"Following the case?"
Kate shrugs. "Doesn't interest me much. But I did watch ABC a couple nights just to see your work. Pretty good. Made me feel like I was there."
"Eyewitness drawings are my specialty," I tell her. "The courtroom work's a sideline."
She nods politely.
"Would you be willing to work with me on a sketch of the Flamingo shooter?"
She shrugs, again shows her restrained half-smile. "It's been such a long while."
Though my heart's still pounding, I try my best to appear cool. Having stumbled into this one-in-a-million opportunity, I warn myself not to blow it.
"Your girlfriend's watching us." She says the words so softly that for a moment I don't react. Then I glance up to find Pam leaning over the balcony gazing down at us, curious.
"Hi!" I wave to her.
Pam hesitates, then unenthusiastically waves back.
I introduce them. "Pam — this is Kate. Pam's a reporter for CNN," I tell Kate. "Kate owns the joint," I call up to Pam.
Kate calls up to her. "Wanna swim? I can loan you guys suits."
Her offer seems to melt Pam's frost. "Great kids," she says, indicating Kate's boys. Then she starts toward the stairs.
Kate turns to me. She speaks very softly but with an intensity she hasn't used before.
"Call me in a couple days. If I decide to work with you, it'd be just the two of us, okay?"
* * * * *
"Sexy little number back there," Pam says. "Blondes like her don't take well to the sun. Couple more years of it and she'll start looking like a prune."
We're in my car driving back toward the city, having declined Kate's offer of a swim.
"Are you being catty?"
"She was flirting with you, David."
"She says she saw the killer. She was in the pool during the shootings. Their eyes met when he ran out."
"Okay, that's a different story. Will she work with you?"
"She's going to think about it. It's a real longshot. I don't know of a case where a witness recalled a face after twenty-six years. Even Holocaust survivors. Some, who were able to identify their abusers in court years after the fact, couldn't assist with forensic sketches prior to trial."
"If she saw him, I know you'll come up with a face."
Something about the way she touches me then, touches my arm, the smile on her face as she does it, makes me want to open up to her.
I pull over to the side of the road.
"When we were at the Fulraine house, you said something that really hit me," I tell her.
"About Barbara not wanting to defile the house?"
"Yes... because, you said, that's where the kidnapping took place. I was there twice actually. I told you about Mark's tenth birthday party, but I was also there for his seventh. That's when I saw Belle with Becky, the English au pair, the one who took her, whose torso later washed up on the beach."
Pam is studying me now, her face creased with interest.
"I didn't take much notice of them. We were whooping around like typical seven-year-olds and they were kinda watching from the fringes. But then I wandered into the house to find a bathroom, and that's when I saw them, heard them actually... through an upstairs bathroom door. Becky had one of those British accents that's hard to understand unless you're used to it, so I'm not sure I heard exactly what she said. But her tone was clear. She was balling Belle out. ‘You'll do what I say, understand, Missy?’ — something like that. And Belle protesting: ‘But Mommy says not to do that — it's wrong!" Then a sharp sound like a slap, then Belle crying out in pain. I remember cowering back, upset. Then I heard Becky say something like, ‘Now wipe your face, dearie, we're going back outside.’ Belle was still whimpering. Then Becky said, ‘Come on, dearie. It's not as bad as all that. We'll go out for a drive, meet Ted, have some ice cream —’ or maybe she said ‘Ed’ or ‘Ned’ or some similar name. To which Belle said something like, ‘They're going to serve ice cream here. Cake too.’ ‘Well, then we'll have ice cream twice, nothing wrong with that, is there? And it'll be better this time with Ted’ — or whomever. ‘This time you'll like it, Belle, you'll see.’"
"Jesus!"
"Yeah! Still chills me to the bone. Anyway, when I hear them coming out, I ran into a bedroom and hid there till they passed by the door.
Then I went into the bathroom to do my business. I remember there was some Kleenex or something in the toilet, which, of course, I flushed away." I meet Pam's eyes. "That was the day they disappeared, while Mark's seventh birthday party was going on in the garden. I may have been the last person to ‘see’ them that afternoon."
"Oh, David..."
"They never returned from wherever they went and by the next morning it was all over school — Belle Fulraine and the Fulraines' English au pair were missing and there may have been a kidnapping, though that wasn't clear yet and never would be since there never was a ransom note or even a call. They found the car Becky'd used in a shopping center parking lot a mile away. After that, till Becky's torso washed up, it was like they disappeared off the face of the earth.
"I told my parents what I'd overheard, and of course they called the cops. A tough, old Irish detective came out to the house. I went over it again and again with him, my parents sitting beside me on the couch. He kept asking me questions, circling my story, poking around at it for holes: ‘You never really saw anything, did you?’ ‘If you hid, how could you have seen them pass by the door?’ Questions like that. I guess I started to cry because at one point my father stepped in and stopped the interview and the detective said something like, ‘Well, doctor, I'm sure you can understand we have to make sure the boy's not fibbing to attract attention.’ My father said, ‘My son doesn't lie!’ The detective raised his eyebrows, shrugged, and shortly after that he left."
"That night Dad came into my room. He asked me the same questions the detective asked, in his own gentle, fatherly shrink's way, of course. But no matter how loving he was about it, the subtext was the same — there were inconsistencies, maybe I hadn't really heard what I thought I'd heard, maybe I'd exaggerated or embellished the story. I was after all a highly imaginative kid prone to visualization. No doubt I heard something, then maybe ‘visualized’ it into something else. I loved watching cop shows on TV. Wasn't it a little implausible that Becky slapped Belle without Belle running out to her mother to complain? And wasn't the mysterious ‘Ted’ a standard TV bogeyman and the ‘ice cream’ right out of a TV movie bogeyman story? And did Belle, who was only three, really talk like that?"
I wasn't embellishing or visualizing, at least I didn't think I was, but when I realized people including my own dad thought so, I stopped protesting, bottled it up, admitted maybe they were right, maybe my imagination had gotten the better of me. After that I didn't talk about it anymore. But still I was convinced I'd been a witness — you know, ‘a witness before-the-fact’ — and that made me feel awful. Like I should have told someone what I'd heard right when I heard it, should have gone straight to an adult, Mr. or Mrs. Fulraine, then they would have stopped Becky and Belle wouldn't have been taken."
Oh, David—!" she moans again.
"Thing is, I still don't know whether that's the way it happened or whether I did imagine or embellish it. I do know I visualized it, because I started seeing the scene in my dreams. I dreamt about it for years — seeing all sorts of details, the expression on Becky's face when she slapped Belle, the tears pulsing out of Belle's eyes. And, crazy as it is, there's still a side of me that believes I could have saved her. You’ve accused me of being secretive. Maybe that's the reason. I'm still afraid I won't be believed. That's also the reason I'm so attentive when I work with witnesses. No matter what I feel, I always act as if I believe them, believe totally in everything they tell me. I do that because I never want to undermine a witness's confidence... as mine was undermined.
"So, you see, my involvement with the Fulraine family goes beyond the coincidences that Barbara's sons were classmates, Tom Jessup was a favorite teacher, and my dad was Barbara's shrink. Like you said back at the house, looking at it a certain way, everything that happened can be traced back to the kidnapping. Belle's disappearance, to which I was a naïve, unwitting, and perhaps even an untrustworthy witness, was the seminal event."
* * * * *
Today I move about in a daze. My confession to Pam, if I can rightly call it that, has served to cleanse my soul. She says she understands me better now — my need to draw, imagine scenes, trust witnesses, relive their experiences, get inside their heads. And now the possibility of producing a drawing of the Flamingo shooter is so exciting I can think of nothing else.
I sit at the bar in Waldo's, oblivious to the swirl, relishing the prospect, fantasizing the result: By an incredible stroke of fortune, I'll fulfill Jerry Glickman's and my childhood dream — solve the Flamingo case, surpassing even my achievement on the Zigzag.
Hold on! I tell myself. Kate may decide she doesn't want to help. And even if she does, I may not get a decent ID.
To distract myself I focus on work, turning out a series of sketches that seriously challenge Wash. This effort creates a crisis of loyalty in Pam, who, though my lover, owes a professional allegiance to CNN.
"Why're you suddenly working so hard?" she asks me in the courthouse corridor during afternoon break. "I thought you didn't give a shit about this case."
"Professional pride," I tell her. "I can't let myself be bested by an asshole."
"Wash is a good guy. Everybody likes him."
"Not the judge," I whisper back.
* * * * *
When Mace picks me up at the Townsend, he's more relaxed than at earlier encounters, especially when I hand him a cop of Dad's draft case study of Barbara Fulrai
ne.
"Heavy," he says, weighing it in his hand.
"But unfortunately unfinished," I remind him.
"As he drives, I make an effort to match his affable manner while trying to force the prospect of working with Kate Evans from my mind. But it keeps intruding. After all, I ask myself, how can I not think about it?
Mace drives us out to Covington along the Gold Coast, the south a couple of blocks to Indiana Street, a trendy area of boutiques, artisan shops, bars, coffee houses, and little restaurants. I pick up the scent of affluence here, straight and gay young urban professionals. I also observe the same twinkle in Mace's eyes that Pam detected in mine last week — a smug have-I-got-something-in-store-for-you look.
Fine, I decide, let him play his hand.
The restaurant's called the Spezia. It's a cute storefront place with a three-star review taped to the door. Inside, visible from the street, happy diners are seated at crowded little tables tended by friendly servers.
A tall, lean, erect maître d' with thick, gray, brush-cut hair greets us at the door with a sad, world-weary smile.
"Well... if it isn't our old friend, Inspector Bartel! We've missed you, Inspector. Nice to see you again."
He speaks with a generic continental accent and exhibits an ultrasuave manner that doesn't go with the lack of pretension of the place.
"Our best table, perfect for discreet conversations," he says, showing us to a table in the rear. "You see, Inspector, even after a long absence, we don't forget our clients' special needs."
He whispers something to a waiter, then moves away. Half a minute later, two kirs are delivered. "Compliments of the house," the waiter says.
"Jürgen's the owner," Mace tells me. "You probably ran across his statement in the file."
I glance again at the man, now greeting a group at the door.
"Jürgen Hoff of The Elms?"
Mace nods. "Funny, isn't it, the way he acts? Like he's still running the Cub Room out there. They young crowd here seems to like his style. Makes them feel like their in Europe... or at least New York."
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