Her car was in the carport, which didn’t mean much since she usually walked most places. He peered in, saw a big box on the passenger seat and next to it her cellphone. He knocked on the door of the house, then opened it. Something that had been stuck in the door fluttered to the ground. He picked it up. Malcolm, it said, I’m at Cafe Roka. Come on down. Kate.
It seemed even stranger that she would just take off for the best restaurant in town – what was she doing, sitting there alone, ordering? Stranger still that she would leave her cellphone in the car. She never left her cellphone anywhere; it was always with her. He went inside.
‘Kate?’ No answer.
He had an urgent need to pee, so he did, then looked around. Sam Adams in the fridge – she didn’t drink the stuff so it was obviously meant for him. Everything was pretty much in order, except one of the chairs on the porch was pushed back further than usual – if he hadn’t had law enforcement training he would never have noticed.
He left the house, checked her car door. It wasn’t locked, so he opened it and got the cellphone. There were his calls under ‘missed calls’. The one from Tucson and the one from Sierra Vista. He hoped to hell she was where her note said she was, ’cause without her cell he didn’t know how he could reach her; but why wouldn’t she be?
He took off, drove downtown to the Cafe Roka.
It was a week night and close to twilight. A few couples lingered on the street; a couple of teenage boys sat on the top of one of the benches in Pedlars Alley, holding their skateboards. Malcolm parked a couple of blocks away and walked back to the restaurant. The windows were lit up with a soft orange glow and at the table by the window a smiling couple raised glasses of wine to each other. Then he realized who the woman was.
Kate, it was Kate, smiling so happily at the man across from her who was—
Hairy Lite.
Hairy Lite – wasn’t that who he’d been protecting her from for days now? Hadn’t she remained unconvinced, despite his, Malcolm’s, assurances, that he’d probably had nothing to do with all the stuff that had been happening to her lately? Now she appeared to have changed her mind. This was good, yes, it was. She looked quite happy in there, quite at ease, not all nervous and full of anxiety as she often was. Happy like she’d been this morning with him, but still happy now – so, obviously, she didn’t need him to be happy. In fact, he might even be an unwelcome interruption to a pleasant interlude.
Doing his best to fight against the sense of betrayal that came over him and losing, Malcolm turned on his heel and went back down the street the way he’d come.
Harry cut off a small portion of the stuffed pepper appetizer he and Kate were sharing, chewed and swallowed. ‘Pretty good,’ he said, ‘for a little town like this.’ He took a sip of red wine. ‘Now.’
‘Now what?’
‘All the stuff you’ve told me: the brakes going out on your car, that trip you took to New Jersey – God – New Jersey of all places.’
‘Sorry,’ said Kate, miffed. ‘Not poetic enough for you?’
‘No, I’m the one who should be sorry.’ Harry reached over and put his hand on hers. ‘I’m being a jerk. It’s such a completely bizarre story. Then Ellen, dead. You may be surprised to know that I’ve met Ellen.’
‘Really?’
‘I knew people back east, not just you. I remember Ellen. Dark-haired. She did some documentary films?’
‘Yes.’
‘She was at some party I went to where there were probably a lot of your old friends. We may even have conversed. Ellen was pretty in a quirky way. I’m sorry to hear that’s she’s dead,’ he added piously.
Kate ate most of a red pepper: it was delicious, stuffed with a creamy white cheese.
The waitress came and cleared the empty plate that had held the peppers.
‘Oh, my goodness,’ Kate said suddenly. ‘Where’s Malcolm? He should be here by now.’
‘The cop,’ Harry said. ‘Are you, um, what? Tight with him?’
‘He’s helped me a lot.’
Harry nodded. ‘Smart move there, Kate. It sounds like you need a cop around.’
‘I left him a note saying where I was,’ she said distractedly. ‘I should call him.’ She fumbled in her purse. ‘Shit. I think I left my cellphone in my car.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ Harry said. ‘After all, like you said, you left him a note. Does he carry a gun at all times?’
‘No.’
‘Oops. I’m being a jerk again. No, what I think is, we can narrow down who might have been doing those things to you. Some old boyfriend. Or even the unfaithful Rick. He’s an artist, fiery temperament and all that.’
‘There’s no reason for him to be mad at me.’
‘Kate, Kate. You can be really shitty to people, you know. Look what you did to me.’
‘We already discussed that. I had every right.’
‘You did, I’m not disputing it: you left me without a second look, without even a goodbye. You made the correct healthy choice under the circumstances.’
The waitress appeared, set down plates of salad. ‘The dressing tonight is a raspberry vinaigrette,’ she announced.
Harry gave her a big smile.
‘Thank you so much,’ said Kate.
‘For all I know,’ Harry went on, ‘you were shitty to Rick and he fled to Hannah’s arms for consolation. But that touch of masochism that led him to you in the first place has resurfaced. The romance cools with this new woman – he wants you back, so she decides to take matters in her own hands. She – what’s her name?’
‘Hannah.’
‘Hannah? Hard-hearted Hannah—’ Harry snapped his fingers – ‘the vamp from—’
‘Never mind, Harry, okay?’
‘Anyway, Hannah sets this whole thing up out of rage and jealousy. Or, wait! There was that guy you told me about,’ Harry went on, ‘that you used to go out with before Rock, I mean, Rick. What was his name? It began with an ‘S’. Stanley, Seymour – no, it was Stuart, I think. Stew. You told me about him – he got so mad when you broke it off he flattened all your tires. So maybe Stew is still, ha ha, stewing.’
‘His name wasn’t Stew,’ said Kate coldly, beginning to realize that leaving Harry the way she had was not only healthy but incredibly healthy.
‘Whatever.’
Malcolm went back to his pickup truck and paused, hand on the door handle. What are you doing, he asked himself, acting like a stupid teenager. He walked back the way he’d come, pushed open the door of the Cafe Roka. The hostess came forward.
‘I’m meeting those people.’ He tilted his head towards Harry and Kate. Right away he could see that Kate was glad to see him.
‘Malcolm!’ Her face lit up, then darkened. ‘What happened to your head? Are you all right?’
He’d forgotten entirely about the bandage. ‘Fine. I had a little run in with a truck.’
‘You must be the famous cop,’ Harry said. He held out his hand. ‘Harry Light.’
Malcolm took his hand. ‘Malcolm,’ he said. He pulled out a chair and sat down.
‘We were just discussing Kate’s dilemma,’ Harry said. ‘Who’s been harassing her? My guess is an old boyfriend. She doesn’t treat them as well as she might. What’s your take on the matter?’
Malcolm and Kate stood on the street outside Kate’s carport, a vantage point from which they could see Harry Light’s gray Volvo. They watched as it backed up—
‘He’s going to hit the railing,’ Malcolm said.
He did.
The Volvo went forward, backed up again, and made a semi-turn turn into a driveway. Then it backed out of the driveway, and they watched the tail lights going down the street until he turned and was gone.
They went inside.
‘Sam Adams?’ Kate asked.
‘Absolutely.’
They sat together at Kate’s dining-room table. Malcolm took a big swig of Sam Adams.
‘Just out of curiosity,’ Malcolm said, ‘what did you ever
see in that guy?’
‘Escape, I guess. I don’t know.’
‘Well, I certainly don’t care if I never see him again. Kate’s dilemma,’ he said scathingly. ‘Aren’t we twee?’
‘Twee,’ Kate said. ‘Sometimes you surprise me.’
‘Why’s that? I was an educated guy before I became a cop.’
‘What did Doctor Sanger have to say?’ Kate asked.
‘Carrie was a big flirt in high school, and he wasn’t the guy with the big black glasses who introduced himself to the security guard as Dr Paul Sanger.’
‘Of course,’ said Kate. ‘Nothing is what it seems. I’m almost getting used to it. Oh, and by the way, Harry knew Ellen. He met her at some party years ago. Do you think that might be relevant to anything?’
‘Who the hell knows?’ Malcolm said.
Later that evening, after it got dark and Malcolm had had a few beers and Kate was still remembering the wine from Cafe Roka, Kate plugged her iPod shuffle into the iPod dock Ian and Sally had given them, and they danced outside in her yard, full of weeds and dusty grass. They danced under a new moon to ‘Fun’, singing about being young. They whirled around together; they twirled around separately. Kate got the giggles and laughed so hard that she lost her balance and had to sit down.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Grackles yelled at Malcolm from the Arizona cypress trees that surrounded the courthouse, and a big black crow seconded their motions. Malcolm went inside through the bronze doors, dumped the contents of his pockets into the plastic bucket and held his hands high while the security guard ran a wand over his body.
‘Hector Rodriguez working today?’ he asked.
‘Sure is.’
Malcolm went up the stairs to Judge Collins’ courtroom. The door to the courtroom was open, but it looked empty. Hector was sitting on one of the chairs outside, staring down at his cellphone. As Malcolm came closer he could just see the game Angry Birds.
‘Morning,’ Malcolm said.
The game vanished. ‘Well, hello there,’ said Hector, standing, looking alert. ‘It’s Mesa PD. How ya doin’?’
‘Okay. Fine. And you?’
‘Can’t complain.’
‘I had a couple of questions for you. Remember the guy at the Flores hearing? The one who said he was there for the victims?’
‘I sure do. Or, at least, his glasses.’ Hector grinned. ‘Big black ugly glasses. Dr Paul Sanger.’
‘Good memory,’ Malcolm said.
‘I try.’ Hector bent his head modestly and brushed at imaginary lint on his shirt.
‘Except he wasn’t Dr Paul Sanger.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. I spoke with Dr Sanger. He wasn’t here that day.’
‘Then who was it?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’
‘Wow. I bet. Rumor has it,’ Hector said, ‘you’re working for the defense right now.’
‘I am. If there’s anything about the guy you can tell me other than the glasses I’d like to hear it.’
‘Just medium,’ Hector said. ‘Medium everything. I mean, his hair was kind of brownish. He wasn’t tall. He wasn’t—’ He stopped, looking over Malcolm’s shoulder. ‘Hey! Veronica!’
Malcolm turned. A pretty dark-haired young woman in a red dress and stiletto heels came over.
‘Veronica here is Judge Collins’ secretary,’ Hector told Malcolm. ‘She had a conversation with the guy.’
‘What guy?’ Veronica said.
‘Dr Paul Sanger. At the Flores hearing. Guess what? That’s not who he was.’
‘Are you sure?’ Veronica asked. ‘But he was very nice, like a doctor. Polite. Gentlemanly.’
‘Really?’ Malcolm said.
‘He said he liked my dress; it was the floral print—’ She glanced at Hector. ‘He said his wife had one just like it.’
‘A name?’ said Malcolm. ‘He didn’t, by any chance, tell you his wife’s name, did he?’
‘Yes, he did. Esmeralda. He said his wife, Esmeralda. Excuse me, I have to run.’
‘Esmeralda,’ Hector said to Malcolm.
‘Esmeralda,’ Malcolm repeated.
‘Yeah.’ Hector laughed. ‘Wanna bet? Interesting. Maybe it doesn’t mean a thing, but still, it’s interesting, huh? Anyway, I’m all for Chico – that’s between you and me, you understand. I remember him from juvie.’
‘From juvie?’
‘Aw, he got in a little trouble with drugs, you know how it is, high-school kids.’
‘Really,’ said Malcolm. ‘Just the once?’
Hector’s face was utterly blank, wiped clean of any expression. ‘Oh, maybe twice, maybe more, I can’t remember.’
Malcolm left the courthouse and sat outside on one of the stone benches, the same bench he realized he’d sat on at the hearing for Chico, when he’d read the file. The grackles cackled, the air smelled rich with pine sap. Had Lupita mentioned that Chico had gotten in trouble for drugs as a juvenile? He couldn’t remember anything specific. Surely he would have remembered. Well, juvenile records were sealed, and it probably didn’t mean anything, anyway.
Were there other things that Lupita hadn’t told him about Chico, things possibly relevant? He needed to talk to her. Maybe Chico had fled to Mexico, to join a drug cartel as one of their major hit men. Maybe killing those tourists was just a way of proving himself.
Slow down.
He also needed to check in with Stuart Ross. He’d been spending way too much time helping out Kate. His cellphone chimed. ‘Malcolm MacGregor here.’
‘Hello, sir, this is Steve Anderson of Evan Bright Realty. I believe you’ve been wanting to talk to me?’
‘Mr Anderson, yes, yes, I have.’
‘Abbie filled me in on the details.’ He chuckled. ‘Man, oh man, what a mess. Only good thing is, no real harm done. Anyway, I’m getting the locks changed; we should have had done it back then when the key went missing. I kept telling myself it had just been misplaced, you know? I guess ’cause I’m a lazy bastard.’
‘Abbie told Kate,’ Malcolm prompted, ‘that there was one guy you felt suspicious about?’
‘Sure was. And that was pretty recent, too. I almost didn’t show it to him ’cause the owner wanted to take it off the market, but I thought, oh, what the hell. He makes me a fantastic offer, the owner might reconsider. Anyway, once we got talking, he seemed kind of interested but not interested, if you know what I mean.’
‘A name,’ said Malcolm, ‘did you get a name?’
‘Matthews, his name was Bill Matthews.’ He paused significantly. ‘Or so he said.’
‘Bill Matthews,’ Malcolm repeated.
‘Yeah.’ Steve Anderson laughed. ‘That should be easy to trace, huh? How many Matthews out there, huh? But here’s the thing, I also remember his car: it was a blue Toyota, and it had out-of-state plates.’
‘What state?’
‘You know, for the life of me, I don’t remember, if I ever knew. It just kind of registered in my mind – out of state. Not New York, though; there’s a million New York plates around here. Bill Matthews, that’s what he said his name was, but I keep thinking of him as Gary Busey. Yeah. Gary Busey.’
‘Gary Busey?’ He said it like a question, but he already knew the answer.
‘The actor, you know, played Buddy Holly in The Buddy Holly Story. ’Cause of the glasses – they were big and black.’
For a moment, Malcolm was struck speechless. He sat on the stone bench under the Arizona Cypress trees and watched the cars and pickup trucks making the turn to the courthouse, coming up the slope to the parking lot, coming from all over the county hoping for a little justice. So there was a connection for sure now between Carrie and Wes’s killer and whoever was after Kate.
But why?
‘Hey, buddy,’ said Steve Anderson, ‘you still there?’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Malcolm. ‘You got a precise date for when you showed the house to this Bill Matthews?’
‘Not reall
y. But it was pretty recent – less than two weeks ago.’
‘Well, Mr Anderson, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it.’
Afterwards, he sat quietly for a moment. Less than two weeks ago, perfect. That would make it just after the murders.
What was it he’d been thinking about before the phone call? Chico. Chico’s juvie record. Well, the hell with that. Things weren’t making sense, but at least the things that weren’t making sense were connecting.
There was one other thing too that had been bugging him – the snapshot Kate had shown him of the woman on the beach at Tall Pines Lake. The only personal item in the whole house. Was it just left behind by mistake by the owners? Or left behind by someone later, maybe someone in big black glasses? But this was all crazy, too crazy.
‘Think. Think,’ said Malcolm to Kate as they sat in her rented house at what passed for her dining-room table, eating nuked pasta that came from a bag and salad that came from a bag too. It was all remarkably good. Everything he ate now, Malcolm reflected, was remarkably good, his appetite whetted by stress. Oh, lovely stress, you felt so alive in it.
‘You don’t have to come up with anything right now,’ he said, ‘but let it sit there in your mind. Everything that transpired between you and Carrie. There might be one small detail – something you didn’t pay attention to at the time.’
‘Maybe I should be hypnotized?’ Kate said brightly.
For a moment Malcolm looked as though he might seriously be considering it. ‘Naw,’ he said. ‘Could be nothing. But the killer might think there’s something. At this point we have to hope he’s feeling safer though. Look, I have to go back there.’
‘Where?’
‘New Jersey.’
‘Why, exactly?’ Kate asked.
‘Steve said out-of-state plates, so there’s a good chance he stayed in one of the motels. I’ve got the date, plus the date you were there. Now there’s a strong connection I need to do a more thorough investigation at the scene. I called Officer Dodds.’
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