From the floor in back, Williams said, ‘When you’re out of the airport, take the left on Tunney Road, I’ll direct you from there.’
One-twenty-seven Further Lane was a bungalow, a one-story mansarded stucco house with porch, on a winding block of mostly larger and newer houses. Darlene Johnson-Ross had spent for the best neighborhood she could afford, not the best house.
The Saab drove by, slowly, seeing no lights, not in that house or any other house nearby. The dashboard clock read 5:27, and this wasn’t a suburb that rose early to deliver the milk. They’d seen one patrolling police car, half a mile or so back, but no other moving vehicles, no pedestrians.
Most of the houses here had attached garages. The bungalow had a garage beside it, in the same style as the house, but not attached. Blacktop led up to it, then a concrete walk crossed in front of the modest plantings to the porch stoop. A black Infiniti stood on the blacktop, nose against the garage door.
As they went by, Parker said, ‘Go around the block, cut the lights when you’re coming back down here, turn in, stop next to the other car.’
‘And then straight in?’
‘Straight in.’
They made the circuit without seeing any people, traffic, or house lights. Mackey slid the Saab up next to the Infiniti, half on blacktop and half on lawn, then the three moved fast out of the car and over to the front door, which Parker kicked in with one flat stomp from the bottom of his foot, the heel hitting next to the knob, the wood of the inside jamb splintering as the lock mechanism tore through.
They didn’t have to search for Johnson-Ross; their entrance had been heard. As they came in, Williams paused to push the door as closed as it would go, and a light switched on toward the rear of the house, showing that they’d entered a living room, with a hall leading back from it. Light spilled from the right side of the hall, most of the way back.
They moved toward the hall, and ahead of them a male voice sounded, high and terrified: ‘Muriel! Oh, my God, it’s Muriel!’
Then a female voice, more angry than frightened: ‘Henry? What are you talkingabout?’
Just entering the hall, Parker stopped and gestured to the other two. Everybody wait. It would be useful to listen to this.
The man’s voice went on, with a broken sound. He was crying. ‘It’s the detectives, I knew we’d never get away with it, you couldn’t be alone tonight, not after How could I have been so stupid,she called Jerome, she knowsI’m here, all those lies’
‘Henry, stop!Muriel doesn’t know anything because Muriel doesn’t wantto know anything! What was that crash?’
‘Private detectives, I knew she’d’
‘Henry, get up and see what that was!’
Now the three moved again, down the hall and into the bedroom, where the couple, both naked, sat up in the bed, he babbling and sobbing, she enraged. They both stopped short when Parker and Mackey and Williams walked in and stood like their worst dream at the foot of the bed.
Parker said, ‘Henry, do we look like private detectives?’
The woman slumped back against the headboard, color drained from her face. ‘Oh, my God,’ she whispered.
Henry, not knowing what was going on if this was some nightmare other than the nightmare he’d been expecting, picked fretfully at the blanket over his knees as though trying to gather lint. ‘What do you’ he started, and ran out of air, and tried again: ‘What do you want?’
Parker looked at the woman. ‘You recognize us, don’t you?’
‘On the news,’ she whispered, still staring, still too pale, but recovering. ‘You’ and her eyes slid toward Williams ‘and you.’
Now Henry caught up: ‘Oh, you’re them,’he cried, and for a second didn’t seem as scared as before. But then he realized he still had reasons to be scared, and shrank back next to the woman. ‘What are you going to do?’
This was Mackey’s game; Parker said to him, ‘Tell Henry what we’re going to do.’
‘We’re going to have a conversation,’ Mackey told them. ‘We’re going to talk about poor little innocent Brenda Fawcett, pining away in a jail cell while you two roll around in your adulterous, isn’t it? adulterous bed.’
5
‘I knewshe was part of the gang!’ the woman cried, forgetting her own fear as she pointed at Mackey in triumph.
‘But she wasn’t,’ Mackey said. He was being very gentle, very calm, in a way that told the two on the bed he was holding some beast down inside himself that they wouldn’t want him to let go.
The woman blinked. ‘Of course she was,’ she said. ‘She was casing the place.’
‘Casing the dance studio?’ Mackey grinned at her, in a way that seemed all teeth. ‘Come on, Darlene,’ he said. ‘You know why she was there.’
‘She’s with you people.’
‘She’s with me,’ Mackey said. ‘Not doing anything, not working,you see what I mean? Just along for the ride.’ He gestured at Henry seated there now with mouth sagging open, like somebody really caught up in an exciting movie. ‘Probably like Muriel,’ Mackey explained, and Henry’s mouth snapped shut, and Mackey said to him, ‘Right, Henry? Muriel’s just along for the ride, not partof what you’re doing, am I right?’
Henry shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Then you’re just not thinking, Henry,’ Mackey told him. In creating this dialogue, rolling it out, taking his time,
