“Right.”
“So why do you two think this guy is your man? Because of the knife?”
“That would be incriminating if it’s the same one in the pictures we have,” Olivia said. “But we have more.”
“Well, let’s see if it is,” Kenny said. He got up, walked to a steel door, and unlocked two locks. He came out with a Jim Bowie replica knife wrapped in plastic film.
“We got the Mobile police lab to take prints off it this afternoon,” he said, “they’re better equipped to do that than we are. They’re also having their expert see if there’s a match between Mr. Daniels’s prints and the ones they took off this.”
He unwrapped the Jim Bowie replica as Matt opened his laptop and turned it on.
“Well, what you have here is a big knife that looks just like the big knife in the picture,” Sergeant Kenny said. “I don’t suppose they made more than five or ten thousand knives just like this.”
“In the photo, Sergeant,” Olivia said, “those… spots, I suppose is the word… on the blade are sperm. We can make a DNA comparison.”
He looked at her for a long moment but said nothing.
“Was there a camera, Sergeant?” Olivia asked.
“Yes, there was. Looked like brand-new. One of those digitals.”
“Our doer left a digital camera at the scene. We took those photographs from it,” Matt said.
“And a mask?”
“A black ski mask.”
“What we believe, and what the psychiatric profiler believes, Sergeant,” Olivia said, “is that our doer has previously done what he did in this case. That is, stalk a young woman until he feels comfortable in breaking into her home. He then ties her to her bed with plastic ties…”
Kenny turned and went to the closet, returning with a Ziploc bag full of plastic ties.
“Like these?”
“Like those,” Matt said.
“… and when she is terrified sufficiently, and her clothing has been cut off,” Olivia went on, “he humiliates her sexually and takes photographs of various stages of the assault.”
“And then kills them?”
“No. We don’t think so,” Matt said. “We think he didn’t mean to kill our victim. It just happened.”
“Would you agree, Sergeant,” Olivia asked, “that there is a similarity in the modus operandi of our doer and what this man was apparently about to do last night?”
“I think you could reasonably conclude something like that,” Kenny said. “So what do we do now?”
“I don’t know,” Matt confessed. “I have no idea what the legal procedure is. But I know there’s enough here to tell my lieutenant about it.”
Sergeant Kenny pointed to the telephone on his desk. Matt started to reach for it, then stopped.
“Would it be possible for us to have a look at this man?” he asked. “I don’t mean interview him. I just have a feeling I ought to have a look at him.”
Olivia looked at him in surprise and disapproval.
Kenny considered Matt’s request a moment, then nodded, stood up, and nodded again, this time toward the door.
“If you’ve got weapons,” he said, as he unholstered his pistol and laid it on his desk, “it’d be better to leave them in here.”
Matt and Olivia laid their pistols on his desk, which gave Matt a chance to take a closer look at Kenny’s shiny revolver. It was, Matt saw, more than a little surprised, a Smith amp; Wesson Model 29 in. 44 Magnum caliber. Identical, except for the five-inch barrel on this one, to the weapon Clint East-wood had made famous in the movies.
Well, hell, why not? As big as Kenny is, he probably doesn’t even feel the recoil.
Sergeant Payne’s experience with jails was limited to those in Philadelphia, and a cell in the Spring Lake, New Jersey, jail in which, at sixteen, he and Mr. Chadwick T. Nesbitt IV, also sixteen, had been confined overnight, charged with disturbing the peace of that seashore community by taking a midnight swim in the Atlantic without bathing attire.
The Daphne jail was like none in his experience. It reminded Matt more of a hospital than a jail. It was spotless. The walls were of white tile. The bars on the six cells were white. The in-cell toilets were of stainless steel, and there was no graffiti on the walls.
The first cell was empty. Sergeant Kenny pointed to the second. It held a large, crew-cutted man wearing white coveralls on the chest of which was embroidered DAPHNE JAIL in red.
Matt stepped in front of the cell and looked in. Olivia stepped up beside him.
Homer C. Daniels, as if he was trying to be friendly, at first smiled-if a little uneasily-at the young couple standing with Sergeant Kenny looking into his cell.
Then the smile vanished.
“Who are you?” he asked, and when there no response, angrily demanded, “Sergeant, who the fuck are these people?”
“Watch your mouth, Mr. Daniels,” Sergeant Kenny said. “You see the lady!”
“I’m Sergeant Payne, Mr. Daniels,” Matt said. “And this is Detective Lassiter. We’re from the Homicide Unit of the Philadelphia police department.”
“What do you want with me?” Daniels asked.
“I’m sorry, sir. But that’s about all I can say to you without your attorney being present.”
He turned and walked toward the door through which he had entered the cell block. He stopped just inside, out of sight of the cell, and gestured almost frantically for Kenny to follow him, but Kenny waited until Olivia had turned away from the cell and started for the door.
They both looked at Matt in bewilderment.
Matt frantically silently mouthed something to Sergeant Kenny. He had to do it three times before Kenny understood, thought it over, shrugged, and then dutifully repeated what Matt had mouthed.
“You think that’s your man, Sergeant?” he said, speaking a little more loudly than he normally did.
“No question about it,” Matt boomed, confidently. “That’s him. It all fits. The knife, the mask, the digital camera. Same modus operandi. All we’ll have to do is match the DNA, and there’s no challenging DNA. I’ll start the extradition paperwork tonight.”
Olivia shook her head in disbelief.
Matt gestured for Olivia and Kenny to go through the door. When they had, he closed it.
“Now we call the Black Buddha,” he said to Olivia.
Olivia rolled her eyes.
Oh, shit! There goes my automatic mouth again.
“ ‘The Black Buddha’ is what we call my lieutenant,” Matt said, “who is an African-American gentleman slightly larger than you, Sergeant, and generally regarded as the best homicide investigator between Bangor, Maine, and Key West, Florida.”
“Bigger than me?” Kenny asked.
“Bigger than you, Sergeant,” Olivia said.
Kenny smiled. “How do you start the extradition paperwork? ”
“I haven’t a clue,” Matt confessed. “I’ll ask Lieutenant Washington.”
“What was that business in there?” Kenny asked.
“When I saw that sonofabitch, the idea of him getting a good night’s sleep, thinking he was going to bail himself out of here tomorrow, annoyed me. And then I remembered what Washington told me-”
“The Black Buddha?” Kenny interrupted.
Matt nodded.
“-about the likelihood of a suspect who has (a) time to reflect on his sins and (b) not had much sleep telling you a lot more than he would if he had had neither.”
“You’re not actually thinking of interviewing him?” Olivia asked.
“I’ll do exactly what Washington tells me to do,” Matt said.
“Hello?” a female voice said. Matt recognized it to be that of Martha Washington.
“Matt, Martha,” Matt said.
“Martha Washington?” Sergeant Kenny asked, smiling. Matt smiled.
“He’s in the shower, Matt. And you, I understand, are in the Deep South?”
“About as deep as you can get,” Matt said. “Stand
ing here with a sergeant who looks like your husband’s twin brother. I really have to talk to him. When should I call back?”
“I’ll just hand him the cellular,” she said. “Hold on.”
“I’m already annoyed with you for not having checked in earlier,” Washington’s voice came over the line. “And I dislike being interrupted when I am in the midst of my ablutions. That said, you may proceed.”
“This is our doer, Jason.”
“You will forgive me for asking, Matthew, but do you believe this because of something more than your intuition? ”
“Sergeant Kenny showed me the knife he had. It’s a twin of the one in the pictures. He had a digital camera-a new one-and a package of plastic ties. He was trying to pry open a window in a young woman’s apartment when the Citizens’ Watch guy caught him.”
“Who is he?”
“His name is Homer C. Daniels. White male, six feet one inch, two hundred pounds, mid-thirties. He’s a dealer in exotic cars, from Las Vegas, and he drives all over the country doing business.”
“On what charges are they-presumably the Daphne police-holding him?”
“Peeping, a misdemeanor, and leaving the scene of an accident, which is a little heavier.”
“Is there a chance, however slight, that he might be allowed to post bail?”
“Not tonight.”
There was a thirty-second pause.
“I will be calling you back shortly, Matthew. May I presume your cell phone battery is fully charged?”
“You may so presume.”
“Splendid,” Washington said, and the line went dead.
Matt hung up the telephone on Sergeant Kenny’s desk. “He’s going to call me back,” Matt said.
“You want to wait here?”
“I think maybe I’d better.”
“We keep a pot of coffee going,” Sergeant Kenny said.
Matt’s cellular buzzed fifteen minutes later.
“I have just spoken with Mrs. Solomon,” Washington said. “Placing what I truly hope is justified confidence in your analysis of the situation, she is dispatching an assistant district attorney-probably, if she decides Peter Wohl will just have to do without his services for a day or two, Steven Cohen, Esq. As we speak, a teletype message is being prepared asking the Daphne authorities to hold Mr. Daniels. Travel arrangements similarly are under way. You will be advised of the details.”
“Yes, sir,” Matt said.
“I devoutly hope this is not premature: Good job, Matt!”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Please share that with Detective Lassiter.”
“Yes, sir.”
EIGHTEEN
We’re going to have to check out of the hotel,” Olivia said, almost as soon as they got into the Mustang. "We never should have gone in there in the first place.”
“The alternative would seem to be sleeping on the beach,” Matt said.
“The alternative was any of the motels we saw when we turned off the interstate into Daphne.”
“Every time I stay in a motel off an interstate, I am invariably denied sleep by the sounds of unbridled passion, a crying baby, or a barking dog-often all of the above-coming from the next cubicle. What’s wrong with where we are?”
“An assistant D.A. is coming tomorrow,” she said. “I don’t want him going back to Philadelphia and saying, ‘When I got down there, Payne has got his squeeze in a plush hotel.’ ”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” Matt confessed. “And the cold fact seems to be that I do seem to have my squeeze in a plush hotel. You’re right, we better get out of there before our shameful secret becomes public knowledge. But in the morning. Not tonight.”
Matt looked at Olivia, expecting a smile. She was not smiling.
“Is that how you think of me, as your squeeze?”
“That was your term, Mother, not mine.”
Neither said anything else for the next ten minutes, until they were off four-lane U.S. 98 and driving through Fairhope.
“Hey, look at that!” Matt said, cheerfully, pointing. “Trattoria.”
“What?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if that was an Italian restaurant, ” he said. “It doesn’t sound Polish. How about it, squeeze? A little linguini, a nice bottle of red, maybe even candles romantically flickering in a bottle covered with dripping wax?”
“Don’t ever call me that again,” she said, coldly.
“Sorry,” Matt said. “I was about to add, ‘Then we can go to the hotel and fool around.’ Does that interest you at all, Detective Lassiter?”
“Just go to the hotel, please.”
“You want to tell me what I’ve done wrong?”
“From your perspective, probably nothing.”
“And from yours?”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“About what?”
“Us.”
“What about ‘us’? This afternoon-Christ, from the time I first laid eyes on you-I thought ‘us’ was nice and dared to think the feeling was reciprocal.”
“It’s happening too fast,” she said. “And you’re dangerous.”
“How the hell am I dangerous?”
“You don’t think, that’s your problem,” she said.
“Give me a for example, Mother.”
“You never should have talked to the doer without permission. ”
“Were you there when I said, ‘I can’t talk to you without your lawyer being present’ or words to that effect?”
When she didn’t reply, he asked,
“Anything else I’ve done dangerously?”
“When you chased the guy in Philadelphia, you were drunk.”
“I wasn’t drunk. And you will recall I caught him.”
“After you fell down twice.”
“I fell over a goddamn wire.”
She snorted.
“And the Highway sergeant gave you mints. He saw you were drunk.”
“Isn’t that what they call the pot calling the kettle black?”
“At least I admit it.”
“Okay. I admit it. I was drunk. Happy?”
“And we never should have gone to the hotel in the first place. You should have thought what it would mean to me if it ever got out.”
“I wasn’t aware that our going to a hotel-in which, by the way, we have separate rooms-was going to see you branded forever with a scarlet A on your forehead.”
“It would damned sure keep me from staying in Homicide, ” Olivia said.
“Look, you better be prepared, Olivia-Christ, you’re naive-for all sorts of clever remarks from the guys in Homicide about our ‘vacation’ in Alabama. Whether we move into some dump of a motel or not, there are going to be suggestions that we fooled around.”
“What they’re going to think, is (a) I walked into Homicide, and (b) took one look at the hotshot sergeant, who calls the first deputy commissioner ‘Uncle Denny,’ and (c) jumped into his bed. And you know it, and you know that’ll keep me from staying in Homicide. And you don’t care.”
“As much as I would like it to be otherwise, I think you have absolutely no chance of staying in Homicide.”
“Is that so?”
“That’s so. The only reason I’m in Homicide is because Mariani had that brainstorm about giving the top-five guys on the sergeant’s exam their choice of assignment.”
“It had nothing to do, right, with your ‘Uncle Denny’ Coughlin?”
“No, goddamn it, it didn’t. He tried to talk me out of it, as a matter of fact.”
She snorted again.
“And he was probably right. There is no one more aware of my limitations as a Homicide investigator than I am.”
“Amazing! That’s the first modest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“Oh, screw you!”
“Fat chance!”
The doorman of the Grand Hotel opened the door for Olivia.
“Olivia, would you like to have dinner with me?
”
“I think I’ll have a sandwich in my room. But thank you just the same.”
She smiled at the doorman and walked into the hotel.
Matt drove back into Fairhope and had linguini with Italian sausage and a bottle of Merlot-all of a bottle of Merlot-in La Trattoria, while considering the differences of the mental processes of the opposite sexes.
And then he drove very carefully back to the Grand Hotel, asked for any messages-there were none-and then went into the hotel’s Bird Cage Lounge, where he sat all by himself in an upholstered chair at a table and had the first of five drinks of Famous Grouse on the rocks. The prospect of a scotch-or even an Irish-martini did not have much appeal.
Between drinks three and four, he used the house phone on the bar to call Miss Olivia Lassiter. The hotel operator said she was sorry, but Miss Lassiter had left word that she didn’t wish to take any more calls tonight.
Between drinks four and five, his cellular buzzed.
It was Detective Joe D’Amata.
“The Black Buddha said to call, Matt. Meet Delta 311 at the Mobile airport-”
“Mobile?”
“That’s what he said. Mobile. Arriving at twelve-thirty-five. ”
“They pronounced that ‘Mow-beel,’ not ‘Mow-bile,’ by the way.”
“No shit?”
“Tell him I’ll be at the ‘Mow-Beel’ airport. Who’s Mrs. Solomon sending down? Did she make up her mind?”
“I dunno,” Joe said. “This is the doer, huh?”
“It sure looks like it, Joe.”
“Good for you, Matt. Having a good time?”
“Absolutely, Joe.”
“Yeah, I bet you are,” D’Amata said, chuckled, and hung up.
After drink five, Matt signaled for the waitress and signed the bill.
“I’ve had all the fun I can stand for one night,” he said to her.
He left a call for half past seven and went to bed.
He woke with a hangover and a clammy undershirt.
He wondered about that and sniffed, and when he first encountered a really foul odor, remembered he had had a nightmare.
I always smell like death warmed over when I have one. And this was one of the better ones:
A Ford van driven by Warren K. Fletcher, white male, five feet ten, thirty-one, of Germantown was backing up toward him with the obvious intention of squashing him between the van and the Porsche. First he couldn’t get the. 38 snub-nose out of its holster no matter how hard he tried, and then when he finally got it out he couldn’t make it fire no matter how hard he pulled on the trigger, and then when he finally got it to fire, he fired five times and missed all five times…
Final Justice boh-8 Page 43