Mountain, and there'd be very little late-night traffic on the roads during or after a storm. I wouldn't have to carry the body far to conceal it. But the disadvantages outweighed the advantages. It would mean parking on a turnout or overlook—I couldn't just leave the Mini in the middle of the road—and what if a passing police patrol stopped to investigate? Snakes, prowling animals, unseen hazards made a night foray into a tropical jungle dangerous. And even if I managed that part of it, there was no guarantee the remains would stay hidden. Turnout and overlook areas were magnets for road crews, curious tourists, hikers. Dead flesh attracted scavenging animals and carrion birds. If just one human bone surfaced, the rest could be tracked down and identified through forensic means. Even a cold trail might someday lead back to me. I'd always be afraid something like that would happen.
Still, I might have to do it that way. The only other solution I could think of was to cut up the body, get rid of it piecemeal. I liked the irony in that, given the bastard's name, but I knew I didn't have the stomach for such grisly work. Or for that matter, any idea of how to go about it.
I didn't waste any thought on the other two problems. They were secondary concerns until I dealt with the major one. Annalise? No. I wasn't ready to think about her yet. Dangerous to let myself think about her. An emotional overload was what had led me to smash the decanter into Cutter's skull; I couldn't afford to let it happen again and interfere with the job ahead. For the next several hours I had to be as disciplined as I'd been at any time in my life.
The longer I sat there, the icier my resolve and the clearer my thinking. The combination produced another solution to the disposal problem. The best one, if a potential obstacle didn't stand in the way. Bold, clever, audacious—all the adjectives the newspapers had applied to the Amthor crime. I knew I was going to try it. If I were successful, I would have no cause to worry about Fred Cutter's body ever being found.
The blow started shortly after nine. Gusty winds that whipped the trees into a frenzy, scraped palm fronds across the roof tiles, hammered at the closed doors and shutters as if clamoring for admittance; mutters of thunder, flashes of lightning, driving torrents of rain. Even with the jalousies closed I could smell ozone mixed with the sweet fragrances of white ginger and hibiscus.
I had just finished emptying the thing's pockets and rolling it into the yawl's old storm jib that I'd brought home and hadn't gotten around to restitching.
I'd also found a roll of duct tape in the garage and I used strips of it to tightly bind the sail in the middle and on both ends so there would be no leaks. The dead weight put a strain on my arms when I lifted it, lugged it into the kitchen. I'd have to use a fireman's carry after this, I thought as I lowered it to the floor near the side door that led out to the garage.
The storage closet yielded a plastic bucket, some rags, a pair of rubber kitchen gloves. I filled the bucket with warm water and dish soap, found a can of cleanser under the sink. In the living room I cleaned off the decanter first and replaced it on the sideboard. There was still some Arundel inside and I badly wanted a drink, but I didn't let myself have one. No more liquor until after the job was done.
On my hands and knees, I scrubbed the red and gray-white spatters, the spilled rum, off the tiles and the chair and table legs. A few blood spots stained the chair fabric; I couldn't get them out no matter how much elbow grease I used. No sense in worrying about it. People spill things on furniture that leave dark stains; the fabric was a brownish weave and you couldn't tell that the spots were blood. No sense in worrying about the gouge in the floor tile, either. If the real estate agent or his cleaning staff noticed the minor damage, the cleaning deposit would cover it.
When I finished, the wind was still howling but the rain had already let up. Fast-moving storm. The worst of it would be over an hour or so past midnight. I emptied the bucket, rinsed it out, washed off the gloves, put the rags in the washing machine with my stained shirt and pants. Then I went into the bedroom and sat on the bed to look through what I'd taken from Cutter's pockets.
Wallet. Folded piece of paper with a crude map and directions to the villa written in Annalise's backslanting hand—all the proof I needed of her duplicity. Folder of traveler's checks. Handful of change. Room key attached to a piece of plastic with Hotel Caribbean embossed on it. The package of cheroots and a book of matches. That was all. No other keys, and no return airline ticket; those things must be in his hotel room.
The wallet contained $72, three snapshots, and a driver's license, social security card, and U.S. Post Office ID all in the name of Frederick Coder. The address on the Ucense was Hollyoak Street in Yonkers, New York, but the license had been issued in 1977 and the address might or might not be current. There was no street address on the postal identification, but the city was the same.
So his name had been Coder, not Cutter. A small, sly deception in case I had any intention of trying to track him down.
And he'd worked for the Post Office. A mailman? The fact struck me funny. Annalise and a mailman! Some progression she'd gone through. From an accountant and embezzler to a cheating divorce lawyer to a manufacturer of women's clothing to . . . a mailman. From San Francisco to Chicago to Charlotte Amalie to New York City to . . . Yonkers. From a department store buyer to accomplice in a major embezzlement to thief to blackmailer to . . . what? What next, Annalise? Shoplifter, bag lady, hooker? Somebody else's mistress—a truck driver's, a garbage collector's, a pimp's? Yonkers to Harlem or the Bowery? How low can you sink? Not low enough to suit me. Hell wouldn't be low enough to suit me.
It wasn't funny any longer; the anger had begun to burn hot and bitter again. I forced it down, forced the thoughts of her out of my mind. Cold focus. Rigid control.
None of the snapshots was of Annalise. One depicted a much younger Coder (I had to think of him by his real name) in a dark blue suit, and an attractive redheaded woman wearing a white gown and holding a bouquet of flowers. Another in color was of the same redhead, older, heavier, staring at the camera with a tight little leer on her mouth and her middle finger upraised just below the point of her chin. The third was an old black-and-white portrait of a graying, sad-eyed woman. Written on the back of that one in ballpoint pen was 'Mom, '62.' Fred Coder, the sentimental blackmailer.
Was he still married, screwing Annalise on the side? Possibly, but he hadn't been wearing a wedding ring and he'd implied that he lived alone. And a man would be more likely to keep a photo of an ex-wife giving him the finger than of a current wife making that gesture. Much better for me if he'd been divorced. A wife would likely try to find him when he failed to come home; an ex might never know he'd disappeared, or care if she did know.
I flipped through the folder of traveler's checks. Seven altogether, each in the amount of $50. Except for the 'F' and the 'C,' his signature was an illiterate squiggle like the up-and-down lines on a seismograph or a lie detector graph I'd seen once in a movie. I studied the signature for a time, then located a pen and a pad of paper and tried to duplicate it. The first few attempts, the initials didn't look right, but then I got the hang of it. After a dozen or so, I was able to match the scrawls on the checks fairly closely.
Fatigue had given me a headache, put an abrading graininess in my eyes. I set the alarm clock for two A.M., stripped, shut off the light, and sprawled naked on the bed. I was out in less than a minute.
The alarm dragged me up out of a sticky, restless sleep. I put on the nightstand lamp long enough to take an old pair of blue pants and a dark-blue long-sleeved pullover out of the closet. I dressed in the dark, then rummaged up a clean pair of shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. In the kitchen I reviewed the mental list of items I would need from the house. The flashlight I'd used in the garage earlier. The rubber gloves. A plastic garbage bag. A handful of clean rags. I gathered everything, shut off the light, and went outside.
The wind still blew in noisy glists but it was no longer raining. Some of the humidity was gone; the air had a fresh, sweet taste, the way it does after a storm has passed. Clouds moved sluggishly across the sky now, thick piles of them—cumulonimbus, not rain-swollen cumulus. Here and there you could see a random star shining faintly in a ragged patch of clear. The only lights showing in the neighboring houses were night lights, tiny islands surrounded by restless dark. It would be another couple of hours, I judged, before the cloud cover broke up enough to free the moon and stars.
I shut myself inside the garage. Gloves, garbage bag, rags, and the change of clothes went into the Mini's trunk. The flash beam picked out a folded section of sailcloth I'd planned to use for patching, and the largest shovel among the gardening tools against the back wall. I added the shovel and the torch to the other stuff in the trunk, put the sailcloth on the roof, and left the passenger door standing open.
Back to the house. It was a struggle getting the thing hoisted and slung over my shoulder. Its joints had
