Knockout punch. Paris doesn’t even bother getting off the emotional canvas. “Okay. Just be careful, all right?”
Beth salutes him, then gives him a hug. “Missy loved her present from you, by the way. She thought it was cool.”
He had returned the perfume and gotten her a gift certificate to Abercrombie amp; Fitch, hoping it was still in the realm of cool for girls his daughter’s age.
Beth leaves the room for a moment, then returns, a gift-wrapped shirt box in hand. Missy’s gift to him. He takes the box, opens it. There, inside, is a white Calvin Klein dress shirt, spread collar. A very nice tie as well, clearly his weakest suit when picking out dress clothes.
But, also in the box, is a smaller box, something that looks like a jewelry case. Paris glances at Beth, knowing that she broke the rules. The shirt may be from Missy, but whatever is in the leatherette jewelry box is from Beth.
“No fair,” Paris says. “I thought we had an agreement.”
“Just open it, Jack. You’ll understand.”
“But we agreed,” Paris says, feeling like an idiot for not having the brains to have brought a contingency present for Beth in case this happened.
“I know,” Beth says. “But if you’d just open it, you’d understand.”
Paris opens the small, square jewelry box to find a pair of beautiful silver cuff links.
Beth says: “It’s a French cuff shirt. Completely useless without cuff links, right?”
After an early dinner at his mother’s-the usual belt-loosening holiday spread that includes a primi piatti of homemade gnocchi, followed by a main course of roast capon, followed by warm hazelnut biscotti-Paris spends the remainder of the day reading the Web Cam for Dummies book Carla had given him, addressing it in a manner in which he addresses most technical material, that being with one perfectly glazed eye. At eleven, with the book tented over his eyes, he falls asleep on the living room couch.
Usually, whenever he pays a visit to his ex-wife’s apartment, he has the standard dream about Beth, one where she spends a pleasant day with him, laughing and touching and hugging, only to say good-bye forever at the end, breaking his heart anew every morning. But this time he doesn’t dream about his ex-wife and their long-cooled love affair.
This night he dreams about a beautiful young woman with burnished bronze hair.
35
The day after Christmas in most major cities brings a brief respite in violent crimes. If people are going to kill each other around the holidays they seem to get their licks in on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Or they wait until New Year’s Eve.
At noon, on December 26, the halls of the sixth floor at the Justice Center are quiet.
Paris and Carla Davis are meeting with Greg Ebersole in Greg’s office. Greg looks like a beaten man. The benefit for Max Ebersole had gone well, but not as well as Greg had hoped, Paris had learned. It is the holidays, they all said, a reassuring hand on Greg’s shoulder. A lot of people are out of town. A lot of people are simply tapped out. Paris considers the possibility that Greg had not been to sleep for more than an hour or two at a time since leaving the Caprice that night.
Greg says: “I’ve got a sketch coming this afternoon. Composite of a woman that Willis Walker was seen with at the bar at Vernelle’s on the night he was killed. White woman.”
Paris and Carla exchange a glance. “White woman? Anybody recognize her from before?” Carla asks.
“No,” Greg says. “And they all say that they would remember. The men anyway. They said she was all that and a bag of chips, you know?”
Carla laughs. “You say that pretty good for such a doughboy, Greg.”
Greg goes red.
“Get us copies the minute you see them,” Paris says.
“You got it.”
Greg stands, puts on his coat.
“Where are you off to?” Carla asks.
“Gonna interview the night clerk at the Dream-A-Dream again. He was three sheets to the wind the first time I talked to him. He’s on days now. Maybe he hasn’t started drinking yet and I’ll get a straight answer from him. If you see me back here in an hour dragging a screaming and kicking redneck by the hair, you’ll know it didn’t go well.”
“How’s Max?” Carla asks.
“Max is good, Carla. Max is tough.”
“If I don’t see you later, tell him I said hi.”
“I sure will. See you guys.”
“Careful,” Carla says.
“Always,” Greg replies and takes his leave.
Paris and Carla exchange a different kind of look now, one laden with concern for a fellow officer who might be on the very edge of the very edge, a precipice that can lead to many places, all bad. Paris asks: “What did you get this morning?”
Carla says: “I visited Fayette Martin’s Internet service provider. OhioNet Services on Buckeye. Got a fix on where she went online the day she was killed.”
“Where’d she go?”
“She logged on three times, went three different places on the Web,” Carla says. “But I think we need to be concerned with only one of them.”
“Which one?”
“The site is called CyberGents. I’ve traced the ownership to an address in University Heights. The website is run by a company called NeTrix, Inc.”
“What is CyberGents exactly?”
“Like I said, if there was a live, pay-per-view videoconferencing site devoted to straight females, I’d find it. This is one. And it’s local. As soon as the street address came I up, I knew I’d been right about these people.”
“What do you mean? What people?”
“I’ve been working this pleasant group of folks for six months. I knew there was something beyond the usual swapping. I think I can get us an invite.”
“An invite?”
“It’s a group of east-side swingers.”
“So, you’re saying that Fayette Martin may have called in online to this CyberGents in University Heights?”
“I know she did.”
“And that they have men there who do things online?”
“Yep.”
“In University Heights?”
“Well, they may not be right there at the house in University Heights. The men could be anywhere. But someone has to clear the credit-card transactions. Someone has to set up the session with the performers, either by phone or by e-mail. Unless they’re routing the calls elsewhere, I’d bet that they do it there.”
“So how do we get in?”
“Well, I know for a fact that they meet three times a month for parties. They’re having one tonight.”
“What kind of parties?”
“Hard to say exactly what goes on there,” Carla replies. “But I think I can get us in.”
“How are you going to do that?” Paris asks.
Carla lowers her head, then raises her eyes. “Are you serious?”
At two-thirty, Paris walks to the Cleveland Public Library at Superior Avenue and East Fourth Street. He had
