“Doesn’t know!”
“He went to the Palace for a sleazy, X-rated movie and got himself picked up by a hooker. He doesn’t know where they went. He’s from out of town.”
Watkins examined my face as though he thought I was a raving lunatic. “That’s the shakiest goddamned alibi I’ve heard this week!” He turned to Peters. “You agree with him, Detective Peters?”
Peters shifted uneasily under his gaze. “No,” he said at last. “Beau and I differ on that score. I think Carstogi is our prime suspect.”
Watty turned back to me, a look of smug satisfaction spreading over his face. “I’m glad somebody around here has some sense. Majority rules. Now I suggest you get off your ass and nail it down.” He walked away.
Peters looked at me for a reaction. “He asked my opinion, Beau.” It was part apology and part justification.
“That’s why they have two detectives on this case, remember?” We went inside.
The bodies were gone and the crime lab folks were pretty much finished. One of them tossed Peters a bulging manila envelope. “You can cross robbery off the list of motives,” he said. “There’s seventeen thousand dollars in cash in that baby. It was in a bottom drawer in the study. We’re taking it down to the department for safekeeping.”
I went into the study. A well-thumbed and much-marked Bible lay open on the desk. I turned some of the pages. The marked passages were all of a vein similar to what we had heard on the tape. Nothing in Brodie’s selections spoke of forgiveness or loving one’s neighbor, to say nothing of one’s enemies. Faith Tabernacle’s leader had demanded retribution from his followers, had turned a blind eye on adultery. Someone had learned the lessons well and had given Brodie a taste of his own medicine. “Vengeance is mine” was the message. The Lord was excluded from the equation.
A halfhearted prayer service was continuing in the fellowship hall. The few True Believers who held jobs had not gone to work. Like bewildered sheep they huddled together for warmth, locked in a cell of interminable prayer, waiting for direction. Brodie had told them what to do and when to do it for a long time. Without him they had no idea how to function. I felt sorry for them. At the same time I felt repulsed. They had turned their lives and minds over to a monster masquerading as a messiah.
I saw Jeremiah. I tried to catch his eye in hopes I could get him to come talk to me. I think he saw me, but he studiously ignored me. Already someone had taken up Brodie’s mantle and was pulling the strings.
Peters and I hit the street. We went back to Gay Avenue. Like the evidence techs before us, we found nothing. It looked as though no one had been in the house since we had come with Carstogi the day before. As we stepped off the porch to leave, Sophie Czirski hailed us from the concealed gate in her fence.
“Is it true?” she demanded as we approached. “They’re both dead?”
“Yes,” Peters responded.
“Serves ‘em right,” she muttered, “both of ’em.” Her loose dentures clicked in satisfaction.
“You didn’t do it, did you, Sophie?” Peters’ question was a joke more than anything, but Sophie’s face brightened.
“I didn’t,” she said. “Wish I had, though. I was right there in the house from ”Little House on the Prairie‘ to the eleven o’clock news. Then I went to bed. No way to prove it, though. Nobody saw me. You want to take me in?“
Peters grinned. “That won’t be necessary, but you call us if you see anything strange around here, will you?”
Her red hair bobbed up and down. “I will,” she assured us, and we both knew it was true.
We questioned some of the other neighbors and then returned to Faith Tabernacle to canvass that area, looking for leads the whole time. We kept after it all day. For a while it looked as though we were going to come up empty-handed. We were still at it when yellow school buses started discharging passengers in late afternoon. Shortly after that a kid on a bike, probably junior high or so, rode up to where Peters and I were standing.
“You guys detectives?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
“I saw someone on a bike this morning when I was on my paper route. I usually cut through the church parking lot to get to the house across the street. It’s the last one on my route. Someone was just leaving the front of the church. He was in a hurry.”
“Did you get a good look at him?”
He shook his head. “It was too dark. I only saw the reflectors on the bike’s wheels.”
“What time was it?”
Again he shook his head. “I don’t know. My dad gets home from work about two — he’s a janitor — and he wakes me up. I deliver my papers and go back to bed. That way I can have breakfast with everybody else in the morning. I usually get home around three. This is my last house.”
He couldn’t give us much more than that. We took his name, address, and phone number and thanked him.
“Nice kid,” Peters said as we watched him wheel his bike back down the street.
“He came within an inch of getting himself killed this morning. If he’d seen him, I don’t think our killer would’ve hesitated pulling the trigger again.”
About six-thirty we went back to the department to dictate our reports. We finished about an hour later. Peters offered me a ride home, and I accepted. It had been a long day.
The lights were off in the apartment when I came in. I felt a jab of disappointment. I had hoped all day that Anne would be there when I came home. It had been years since someone had been at home waiting to welcome me. I fixed a drink and went to the bedroom to hang up my jacket. Anne was there in my bed, curled up and sound asleep. I beat a hasty retreat to the shower, overwhelmed with gratitude for my good fortune.
Clean-shaven and showered, I slipped into bed beside her. She snuggled against me. When I nuzzled her neck, she stirred. “Good evening, Sleeping Beauty.”
She smiled contentedly as my fingers caressed her breast. “Does that make you Prince Charming?”
“Or his grandfather.”
She laughed. “You’re not that old, are you?”
“I feel that old,” I replied. I studied her. She had to be over thirty, but she looked as young as twenty-five. I could feel my body hardening, wanting her, yet I held back, too. Her fingers trailed through the hair on my chest, drumming a tattoo that reverberated through my head.
“You don’t feel old to me,” she said. The texture of her nipple changed beneath my hand. She pulled her hair to one side, exposing the smooth skin of her bare neck. I kissed her there, feeling her body go taut, her response immediate and palpable. There was an urgency in her kisses, a hungry need that overtook us both. In responding to that need, age was no longer an issue.
Her lovemaking taxed my skill and knowledge, taking me far beyond the gradual experiments Karen and I had evolved together. Anne required nothing less than full satisfaction and gave it as well, her body an exquisitely tuned instrument responding vibrantly to the slightest touch.
It pains me to admit that in things sexual, Anne just flat knew more than I did. Later, as she lay in my arms, satiated and content, I remembered how much she knew and it began to bother me. I began to wonder how she had come to know so much. I began to want to piece together Anne’s romantic past. I was rational enough to know it was none of my business, but that didn’t stop me. It’s a kind of inquisitor mentality that makes me think I’ve been in this business too long. It also makes me realize what a prude I am. I guess deep down, like most men, I wanted the woman I loved to be a virgin. An adept virgin.
Eventually Anne slipped out of bed. “What do you eat around here?” she asked. “I’ve seen better-stocked refrigerators in motel rooms.”
“I don’t cook. I eat out.”
“When? I’m starved.”
“For what?”
“For food. Any kind.”
I thought about the Porsche and the fur jacket. I thought about the Doghouse. I thought about age and sex and money. We were worlds apart, yet I wanted us to end up in the same orbit. “Well, if you’re tough enough, I’ll introduce you to one of my favorite hangouts. Believe me, reservations won’t be necessary.”
