Detective Hamilton looked up-as slow at reading as he was at everything else, he’d just finished the newspaper article. “I questioned dem a’ready. Dey ain’ know shit.”
“Might be worth going back, ask them where they were Friday night.”
“Way ahead a ya, G-mon,” said Hamilton. He told them what Mrs. Dr. Epp, as he called her, had said about going to Puerto Rico for some convention this weekend.
“Check it out, verify they were there,” said Coffee. “But don’t ask them directly-we don’t want to alert them. Just ascertain whether they were on the boat, maybe call San Juan, see where the convention was held, find out where they stayed, get check-in and check-out times. If we can’t rule them out as suspects, we’ll bring them in and question them separately.”
“Waste of time,” muttered Hamilton.
“Let’s rule them out anyway.” Coffee turned back to Felix. “Any luck with that picture of the German girl yet?”
“Just came in dis mornin’, Chief-we’re printin’ it up now.”
“When it’s done, I want all available officers canvassing the island with it. Anyone who’s working anything else, pull them off it. Anyone on leave, call them in: all days off are canceled until further notice. If anyone on this island saw that woman even briefly, I want to hear about it. Edgar, do you have anything to add?”
“Just that I’m not at all comfortable with the direction this thing is taking. Our killer has gone from hiding his victims to dropping them off to leaving them at the crime scene. He even left the hand behind this time, which he’s never done before. Plus his cycle seems to be shortening. We had three murders in the last two years, that we know about, and two, possibly three, in the last week. As for your down-islander, Artie: our man is obviously mobile, and he obviously knows St. Luke like the back of his hand, so if he is a down-islander, he’s a down-islander with a vehicle who’s lived here long enough to know his way around like a native.”
“Tell me somet’in I don’ know,” replied Detective Felix.
Sure thing, thought Pender: you’re an incompetent asshole. But Hamilton was worse-apparently Julian busted him down to uniform two, three times a year, but hadn’t yet found anybody better to replace him. It was a ramshackle department, underpaid, and except for Julian and Layla, undertrained.
So after the meeting, alone with Coffee, Pender conceded that it might be time to blow the Garry Owen and call in the cavalry.
“The Bureau, you mean?”
Pender nodded.
“I already did.”
“You asked for help from the Bureau?”
“Yesterday.”
“Without telling me?”
“I didn’t want you to think I’d lost faith in you. Sherbridge said they have every available agent working counterterrorism. He put us on the list-perhaps by November, he said.”
“By November, the bodies are going to be stacked up like cord-wood,” said Pender. “Any chance of getting some help from Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands?”
“There’s no tradition of reciprocity-they look upon tourism as a finite pie. No, Edgar, I’m afraid this one is all ours.”
“Their loss,” said Pender, as if the flop sweat weren’t already flowing again. “We’ll just have to hog all the glory for ourselves.”
3
Nowadays you practically had to be a Hokansson or an Apgard to be buried in the old Lutheran churchyard. The Hokansson plot was prime real estate, nicely situated under a flaming red Never-Be-Thirsty tree, so named because you could squirt drinkable water from the unopened buds. They buried Hokey next to where her parents had been laid to rest-twice, once after their murder and a second time after Hurricane Hugo exhumed several of the twentieth-century occupants in ’95.
The interment itself was restricted to family. By the time the minister finished dust-to-dusting Hokey, Lewis was the soberest he’d been since waking up that morning, which was the soberest he’d been since fleeing the overseer’s house in horror the night before, which was too sober entirely. He couldn’t wait to get to that flask in the glove compartment of the Bentley. Should have put it in his pocket instead-after all, who the hell was going to say anything, grieving widower at his wife’s funeral?
It had shaken him, having the Epps pop up unexpectedly like that, and it hadn’t helped his nerves any when Phil took his hand in the receiving line as the crowd filed out of the church, pulled him close, and whispered into his ear that they needed to talk-ASAP.
But the FBI man, Pender, was watching Lewis from the back pew. “Thank you, I’ll miss her, too,” he’d said loudly, then used the Guv’s technique for moving people along a receiving line-shake their right hand with your right, usher them along with a gentle but firm pressure of your left hand on their elbow or upper arm.
But he couldn’t get it out of his head all during the interment service. Talk? With those ghouls? What did they have to talk about now? He’d fulfilled his end of the bargain-surely the best thing for all of them would be to break off any further contact as quickly and completely as possible, he told himself, as he tossed his ceremonial scoop of earth on the heavy, sealed casket.
The Great House stood silent and empty-Lewis had let it be known there would be no reception. Let the Twelve Danish Families and the Hokansson cousins and the Ladies Who Golf feed their own faces and drink their own booze-Lewis was condolenced out.
What he really wanted to do was get drunk and laid, but he’d reached that point where rum only seemed to sharpen his senses. He kept seeing things he really didn’t want to: the bones in the coffee can; Hokey in the morgue; Bendt’s hand palm up in the ivy, blood-spattered fingers curled.
Of course, getting laid wasn’t a real strong possibility either, Lewis realized as he shucked off his black suit and tossed it in the direction of the hamper. He wasn’t even all that horny-or if he was, it was a strange kind of horny. It wasn’t so much sex he desired as desire itself. He tried unsuccessfully to masturbate in the shower, conjuring up every woman he had ever fucked, or seen fucking, and always coming back to the dick-shriveling thought of Hokey in the shower. Oh how we danced on the night we were wed, oh how we fucked on the night that she died.
After his shower, and a nap that left him more tired than he’d been before he lay down, Lewis changed into shorts, rubber sandals, and a T-shirt and went down to the kitchen to make a sandwich. There was carved ham in the meat bin, sliced Swiss in the cheese bin, and half a loaf of Sally’s homemade bread in the bread box. And in the freezer were two full bottles of white Reserve, one of which had the words MR LEWIS scrawled on the label- apparently his snooty cook wasn’t comfortable sharing a bottle with her boss. Of course with Hokey gone he could fire her now, but he didn’t want to lose Johnny, her husband, as well.
Lewis took his sandwich and his rum out back to the pool. Daylight was fading rapidly-and in the tropics, rapid means rapid. Within half an hour the sky was black straight up, midnight blue around the rim, splashed with fat round stars. He turned on the pool lights-it looked inviting but he wasn’t supposed to get his bandage wet. He kicked off his sandals and sat at the shallow end, dangling his bare feet in the warm water, watching the ripples spreading outward. His mind started flashing on the words
Then a rustle in the oleander bushes. “Hsst. Over here.” Bennie, from next door, crouched in the shrubbery so he couldn’t be seen from the house. “They wanna see you. They say why you no come over.”
“Tell them I think we should stay away from each other for a while. No calls, no visits, until things blow over.”
“You tell ’em.”
“I don’t think you quite have the picture here, Bennie.” Lewis climbed out of the pool, looked around for a towel to dry his feet. “How can I
Bennie gone, mon.
