by Thomas Perry
In the morning, Jimmy took the wheel and drove into Cleveland while she rested. They turned in the car at the airport, and rented a new one at another lot. Mae was preparing to drive on again, but he stopped at noon and checked into a hotel.
Mae was delighted. It was a nice hotel, with room service and a beautiful lobby with a marble floor. She determined to make this phase of the trip the very best for him. He might have been distracted and inattentive while he was scared and in pain, but he had recovered enough now so she believed he would remember what she did next. She made herself devote every moment to him. Now that they were in good light, she could examine the wound better and see that it had no signs of infection. She bathed him, changed the dressing, brought him food from the restaurant downstairs, massaged him. On the second day, he asked her to dye his hair again. “The guy who shot me saw that it’s light brown,” he said. “Darken it.”
This time, Mae did something more radical, a gesture for him. After she had colored his hair, she waited until he slept again, and colored her own too. She made it the same as his, but with lighter highlights. When he awoke, he looked at her for a long time without speaking. Then he wordlessly took off her clothes and made love to her.
At ten the next morning, they left the hotel and drove toward Cincinnati. At noon, Jimmy stopped at a restaurant and bought a picnic lunch. They drove for a time looking for a place to stop, until he found a secluded grove of trees near a river. It was quiet and empty and beautiful, and she smiled at him as she ate.
Mae was fascinated by the sight of three birds high up in the sky, circling one another. They seemed to be playing. She couldn’t tell what kind they were. She was just about to turn toward Jimmy to ask if he could tell, but she didn’t, because that was when he brought the blade of the knife across her throat.
A bit later, as Varney dragged her body into the ditch he had dug, he felt himself getting angrier. It was outrageous that Tracy and her stupid sons had done this to him, so that he had needed to kill Mae. He felt this betrayal more strongly than the rest of their offenses. Mae was the part that he held against them most bitterly.
Tracy had let herself get suckered. She was so greedy that all she had needed to hear was a high number, and she was in. He supposed that he should not have been surprised. He had even suspected there was something wrong with the way she was thinking about the job at the moment he had heard of it. Varney had not imagined that Prescott was behind the offer, but that was not the point. A man didn’t have to be clairvoyant to survive, if only people would take reasonable precautions. Well, she was going to have to make reparations.
38
When Prescott was still four blocks away from the office building in Cincinnati, he knew that something had already happened.
The sidewalk in front of the building was roped off with yellow POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS tape. There were three blue-and-white patrol cars parked on the opposite side of the street, three more at the curb just past the tape. There were a number of plain cars, a couple with small insignia on their doors. There were plainclothes cops walking in and out of the building, some of them with tackle boxes that held forensics kits. Prescott turned his car to the right at the next corner so he didn’t have to drive past. He found a gas station where he could see a couple of pay phones, and pulled up to the fence and parked.
He picked up the nearest phone, pumped in some change, and dialed the Los Angeles number. “Millikan,” he said. “I’m in Cincinnati. There’s a crime scene here, and there’s no way the police are going to let me near it. One of us needs to get a look at it.”
It was nearly twelve hours later that Millikan came out of the building, ducked under the tape, and walked down the block to the car where Prescott sat watching.
Prescott walked with him back up the sidewalk, under the police tape, and to the front entrance. A uniformed policeman inside the door nodded to Millikan, then turned his eyes toward Prescott, but Millikan foreclosed the question. “He’s with me.” The two went up the stairs quickly instead of waiting for the elevator, so the cop didn’t have time to stare at Prescott and wonder whether being with a visiting professor from some college was enough to make a man welcome in this particular spot.
The two walked along the upstairs hallway shoulder to shoulder, while Millikan spoke in a low voice. “The family owned the building under the name of the family’s corporation, and charged themselves rent.”
“What about these companies?” He pointed at Crestview Wholesale, and swept his hand toward the row of other doors, all with different names on them.
“All of them—the travel agency, the salon and manicure place, the credit lender—were dba’s: the mother or one of the sons ‘doing business as.’ Half of them connect with the others through doors inside, like hotel suites. You’ll see.”
He opened the door of the wholesale office, stepped around the desk in front, and pointed down at the floor. “It’s a shame you didn’t get to see this before they took the bodies out, but there will be pictures. This is where he did the mother. I think she was sitting in this chair when he came in the door. She swiveled around and took a step to get away, and he was on her. It was sort of like a big cat taking down an antelope—kind of flings his weight onto her back so she just runs into the ground. He grabbed her by the hair with the left hand and sliced the throat with the right, then shoved the face back down into the rug. He’s not hurt as bad as we’d hoped.”
Millikan stepped carefully across the carpet to a door that led off to another room. “Next he goes this way. It’s the travel agency, according to the sign on the door. I don’t know if he made noise doing Mom, or if he knew this one was going to be armed, or what. But as he’s walking, he’s getting out his gun.”
Prescott nodded and waited. Millikan pushed open the door and stood to the side so Prescott could stand where he had been. In the wall at the other side of the room there were three bullet holes with wooden dowels stuck in them. The holes were all spattered with bright spots of blood where they had passed through a body into the wall. Millikan said nothing, only watched Prescott sidestep, bend his knees slightly, and raise his right arm to line up with the three dowels so they pointed up the arm toward his right eye. Prescott held his position for a few seconds, then looked around him to study the room.
The next step came to Prescott immediately, and Millikan could see it happening. He kept his right arm pointed at the three spots on the wall, took three steps diagonally forward, bent over to look at the outline of the body, came to the space at the left side of the door, and crouched.
He glanced at Millikan, and Millikan nodded in agreement. “I think so. I think that’s where he waited for the second son to come to him. He stayed low, and put the shot through the spine just under the jaw.”
Prescott stepped around the wall into the next room, then hesitated. “Was that it? Two sons?”
“Nope. There’s a third body he got in the hallway. It seems he’s a son too.”
Prescott went out the door and stared. The blood was on the end of the hall farthest from the stairs. Prescott said, “Did the cops do all the searching in the big office, or was that him?”
“He did it,” said Millikan.
Prescott stepped along the hall back into the wholesale office, where the first body had been found. The vault at the end of the room was open. Desk drawers were open, papers were thrown on the floor, left that way, apparently, because something the forensics team planned to do had not yet been accomplished. Prescott could see money, too. A few hundred-dollar bills looked as though they had been spilled from a larger pile. “Any idea how much money was in the safe?”
Millikan shook his head. “I don’t even know if that’s where it came from. If you think it was him, though, it must have been a lot. He’s not the kind who would spill eight hundred on the floor and leave it, unless there was so much that carrying it was a problem.”
“It was him,” said Prescott.
“Agreed. He doesn’t
panic, so it had to be the bulk of it. He didn’t take anything but cash. There was jewelry and stuff, but he didn’t touch it.”
“Still here?”
“No,” said Millikan. “They took it downtown to lock it up.”
Prescott walked closer to the desk and knelt beside the pile of papers on the floor. “Did the cops find any kind of customer list?”
“Like a hooker’s trick book?”
“They sent couriers all over, picking up stolen jewelry and stuff, then handing it off to other people. There were sales, consignment deals, trades, It’s kind of complicated to carry in your head.”
Millikan shrugged. “They haven’t found anything like that yet.” He let his eyes settle on the bloodstained carpet near the front desk. “Maybe that’s what the old lady did—bookkeeping.”
“I suppose,” said Prescott absently. He was staring closely at the pile of papers on the floor, craning his neck and leaning over them to read without touching them. He got to his feet and walked to a filing cabinet that had been opened, the contents of one drawer dumped on the floor. He looked closely at the pile, then used a handkerchief to open the other three file drawers, glanced inside, and closed them.
Millikan said, “What is it?”
Prescott was frowning. “This guy comes to this file cabinet. He opens a drawer, goes through it. He dumps papers on the floor. The other three drawers are untouched. What does that say?”
“He found what he wanted. Otherwise, he would have done the same to the others. It was probably the money, or part of it. I have a feeling this wasn’t the kind of operation where the cash is all neatly stacked in the vault. They’ll probably find it squirreled away all over the building.”
Prescott shook his head. “He found what he wanted, but I don’t think it was money. See? The spilled money all fell near that desk. None of it came from over here.” He stared at Millikan thoughtfully. Then he began to search through the papers that had been thrown from the filing cabinet drawer.
“What was in it?”
“Old bills. Power, water, janitorial service, gardening, telephone.”
“What do you suppose he thought he’d find in there?”
“Me. He’s looking for me.”
“And what are you looking for?”
“The most recent telephone bill. There should have been one within the last week or two, and I don’t see it.”
Millikan stepped closer. “Is there any way he could use that?”
Prescott said, “The number of the guy I used as a middleman to hire him is on the older bills, but so are a whole bunch of others. It’s a complicated operation, with a lot of couriers visiting businesses all over the map.” He stopped and squinted at the wall for a moment. “I set the whole thing up almost a month ago. My guy—Dick Hobart—called here and talked to somebody—say it was the mother—and she said she would have to talk to the shooter. A few days later she called Hobart back to say he had agreed.”
“I’m not following this,” said Millikan.
“I set this up so everything would be anonymous. I made Hobart insist that all communication be done on pay telephones. I pretended that was so there would be no record of the calls, and that would protect everybody if something went wrong. It was really to convince the shooter that the job was safe, and to keep him from trying to find out more about the client.”
“So what’s the problem? Didn’t they do it?”
“Yeah, they did it. Otherwise, he would have pulled out.”
“Then what is he going to use to figure out which number on a phone bill belongs to your middleman?”
Prescott said, “He can’t know when Dick Hobart called, and he wouldn’t have any way of getting that number. But he knows what day it was when Mom—or whoever it was—asked him if he wanted to go up to Minnesota and kill somebody. He said yes, and she called Dick Hobart back. Even if he wasn’t here listening, the killer knows when that was, probably to the minute.”
Millikan picked up one of the old telephone bills. “Oh, boy. Number, city, date, hour, time.” He looked up and saw Prescott pick up the telephone receiver on the desk. “Wait, you can’t . . .” but he saw the look on Prescott’s face. “Never mind.”
Prescott finished dialing a number. “Hello?” He was talking loudly, as though the person on the other end was in a noisy place. “Is Dick Hobart in? It’s Bob Greene, and I need to talk to him right away.” He listened, then said, “Do you know where I can reach him?” He paused, then sighed in frustration. “If he comes in, tell him to take the night off, and not come back until I get there.” He pushed down the button with his finger, then dialed a second number quickly. He waited impatiently, then rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Jeanie, this is Bob Greene. I don’t know if you’re scheduled to work tonight or not. I hope you’re in class. Do not go to Nolan’s until you’ve talked to me. It’s really important. Call in sick if you have to.” He hung up.
He took a card out of his wallet and dialed a third number. “Hello. My name is Roy Prescott. I need tickets from Cincinnati to St. Louis on the next available flight.” He looked at Millikan while the person on the other end spoke. “Two. And my companion is an off-duty police officer who will need to fly with a firearm. My card number is . . .”
39
Prescott stood beside the cluster of pay telephones at the edge of the waiting area for gate A-14 and listened to the electronic voice of his answering machine. “No messages,” it said. He had been hoping that the killer would have been angry enough to leave a message that would tell him something. He hung up and looked at the desk to see if the airline people were ready to begin letting passengers onto the plane, then turned to see how Millikan’s calls were coming.
Millikan was already hurrying toward him from the next set of telephones down the concourse. Prescott could see there was news. Millikan pulled him to the wall away from the other travelers, and said quietly, “The police in Louisville have been leaving messages on my phone all day, and I just reached Lieutenant Cowan.”
“Has somebody there seen him?”
“Worse. It’s Carter Rowland—Donna Halsey’s ex-husband. They found him in his house. He was shot in the head, but nobody heard.”
“He’s moving fast.”
Millikan turned to look at him. “You’re not surprised.”
Prescott shook his head. “He’s cutting all the strings. He’s getting everybody who had anything to do with the job that got him into trouble. I was afraid he might do that.”
“But Rowland didn’t do anything to him.”
“Rowland hired him to do the job in the restaurant. He did it, so Rowland was a satisfied customer. How is he supposed to know that Rowland wasn’t the one who told me how to get in touch with the people in Cincinnati? He can’t know, but now he doesn’t have to wonder.”
Millikan shook his head. “Maybe we should exchange our tickets and go to Louisville while we can still get a look at the scene.”
“Too late,” said Prescott. “No point in going where he was this morning. We’ve got to go to the place where he’ll be tonight.”
When the plane arrived in St. Louis, the sun was already low. Prescott and Millikan had barely spoken to each other. Prescott had spent much of the time on the airplane telephone trying to call Hobart, then Jean, then Hobart again. Millikan had, at first, not been able to reach anyone in the St. Louis police department who knew him. He had not convinced anyone else that he was expert enough to be able to predict that a killer could be expected at Nolan’s Paddock Club. Finally, he had managed to get a captain on the phone who seemed to have some sympathy for his reasoning, but the captain had not been willing to describe to Millikan what, precisely, he was going to do.
The two men strode along the boarding tunnel. Millikan said, “I told the captain the flight number and arrival time, so there will probably be somebody here to get a copy of the picture for the plainclothes guys.”
As they emerged from the tunnel into the waiting
area, he pulled Prescott to the side to let the other travelers pass, while he turned his head in every direction, searching for a uniform.
“It doesn’t look like they’re eagerly waiting for us,” said Prescott, and began to walk quickly up the concourse.
Millikan had to trot to catch up. He said, “They could have asked the Buffalo police to fax the picture to them. They might already have it, and be at the bar looking for him.”
“We’ll find out,” said Prescott.
Their pace took them quickly down to the car-rental counter. Prescott had called to reserve a car, so it took only a few minutes before they were on the road. Prescott drove with a quiet determination, always pushing slightly faster than the traffic, weaving in and out when he had to.
When they pulled into sight of the building, all traces of daylight were gone, and the big green sign that said NOLAN’S PADDOCK CLUB was a bright splash of electric color against a black sky. The huge parking lot was already lined with cars, pickup trucks, and utility vehicles. “Is it always this busy?” asked Millikan.
“It’s filling up a little early,” said Prescott. “Let’s hope all the extra cars belong to your undercover cops.”
He pulled into the lot and found a space in nearly the last row of cars facing the side of the building in a dimly lighted sector two hundred feet away. Both men got out. Prescott took another look around the lot, then handed Millikan a few copies of the picture and took a few for himself. He leaned into the car as though he’d forgotten something, but Millikan could see he was collecting the parts of a gun from several places in his suitcase, and assembling it.