I couldn't see it, but I could tell there was a length of piano wire wrapped around Albert's neck, and it was very likely the same piece of wire that had been used to perform a mastectomy upon Pam Cassidy, and perhaps upon Leila Alvarez as well. In the present instance it had not been as surgically precise, having encountered bone and cartilage instead of the unresisting flesh it had met before. Still, it had done its work. Albert's head had swelled grotesquely, as blood had been able to flow in but not out again. His face was a moon face turned the color of a bruise, and his eyes were bulging out of their sockets. I had seen a garrote victim before so I knew right away what I was looking at, but nothing really prepares you for it. It was as awful a sight as I had ever seen in my life.
But it did lower the odds.
* * *
KENAN had another look through the kitchen window and couldn't see a gun anywhere. I had a feeling Callander had put it away.
He hadn't brandished a gun in any of the abductions, had used it in the cemetery only to back up the knife at Lucia's throat, and had rejected it in favor of the garrote when he dissolved his partnership with Albert.
The logistical problem lay in the time it took to get from any of the doors to where Callander was counting his money. If you went in the back or side door, you had to rush up half a flight of stairs to the kitchen.
If you went in in front, from the porch, you had to go all the way to the rear of the house.
Kenan suggested we go in quietly through the front. There'd be no creaking stairs that way, and the front door was the farthest from where he was sitting; as engrossed as he was in his counting, he might not hear the glass break.
'Tape it,' Peter said. 'It breaks but it doesn't fall on the floor. Lot less noise.'
'Things you learn bein' a junkie,' Kenan said.
But we didn't have any tape, and any stores in the neighborhood that would carry it had long since closed. TJ pointed out that there was sure to be suitable tape on the workbench or hanging above it, but we'd have had to break a window to get to it, so that limited its usefulness.
Peter made another trip to the porch and reported that the floor in the living room was carpeted. We looked at each other and shrugged. 'What the hell,' somebody said.
I boosted TJ up, and he watched through the kitchen window while Peter broke the glass in the front door. We couldn't hear it from where we stood, and apparently Callander couldn't hear it, either. We all went around to the front and in the door, stepping carefully over the broken glass, waiting, listening, then moving slowly and quietly through the still house.
I was in the lead when we got to the kitchen door, with Kenan right at my side. We both had guns in our hands. Raymond Callander was seated so that we were seeing him in profile. He had a stack of bills in one hand, a pencil in the other. Lethal weapons in the hands of a good accountant, I understand, but a lot less intimidating than guns or knives.
I don't know how long I waited. Probably no more than fifteen or twenty seconds, if that, but it seemed longer. I waited until something changed in the set of his shoulders, showing that an awareness of our presence had somehow reached him.
I said, 'Police. Don't move.'
He didn't move, didn't even turn his eyes toward the sound of my voice. He just sat there as one phase of his life ended and another began.
Then he did turn to look at me, and his expression showed neither fear nor anger, just profound disappointment.
'You said a week,' he said. 'You promised.'
THE money all seemed to be there. We filled one suitcase. The other was in the basement, and nobody much wanted to go get it. 'I'd say for TJ to go,' Kenan said, 'but I know how he got in the cemetery, so I guess it'd spook him too much to go down there with a dead body.'
'You just sayin' that so I'll go. Tryin' to psyche me out.'
'Yeah,' Kenan said. 'I figured you'd say something like that.'
TJ rolled his eyes, then went for the suitcase. He came back with it and said, 'Man, it stinks pretty powerful down there. Dead people always smell that bad? I ever kill somebody, remind me to do it from a distance.'
It was curious. We worked around Callander, treating him as if he weren't there, and he made such treatment easier than it might have been by staying put and keeping his mouth shut. He looked smaller sitting there, and weak and ineffectual. I knew him to be none of those things, but his blank passivity gave that impression.
'All packed up,' Kenan said, fastening the hasps of the second suitcase. 'Can go right back to Yuri.'
Peter said, 'All Yuri wanted was to get his kid back.'
'Well, tonight's his lucky night. He gets the money, too.'
'Said he didn't care about the money,' Peter said dreamily. 'The money didn't matter.'
'Petey, are you saying something without saying it?'
'He don't know we came here.'
'No.'
'Just a thought.'
'No.'
'Whole lot of money, babe. And you been takin' a bath lately. That hash deal's gonna go down the tubes, isn't it?'
'So?'
