tearful parents threatening to sue the city for another fatal high-speed chase, the sad-faced anchorperson saying, “The funeral services for the little Beckwith children will be at Our Sisters of the Sacred Heart on Sunday.”
The waiter poured the wine, and Jacobi tasted it, pronounced it excellent, and, over the clamor of fat-walleted diners chatting happily all around us, raised his glass to me and Conklin.
“Thanks,” he said, “from the chief, the mayor, and especially from me. I love you guys.”
Jacobi smiled, something I’ve seen him do maybe twice in the last ten years, and he and Conklin tucked into their pan-roasted mussels and rotisserie duck.
I had no appetite.
The muscles in my face had gone rigid, but my mind was whirling around on its brain stem.
Was Henry Wallis really the high-society killer?
Or was he just some loser of an ex-con with something to hide – so he’d freaked out and ended his life?
Did anyone care but me?
Chapter 67
AGAINST EVERYONE’S GOOD JUDGMENT, I found an ADA in her office at nine that night, the indefatigable Kathy Valoy. She called a judge and got us a search warrant for Henry Wallis’s apartment, and now, at midnight, Conklin and I were there.
Wallis had lived in a three-story walk-up on Dolores Street, a few blocks from the Torchlight Bar.
We rang the buzzer until we woke up the building’s owner, a squat man by the name of Maury Silver. He was balding, with loose dentures, bad breath, and a stained work shirt hanging long over his boxers.
Silver looked at our warrant through the cracked door, read every page back and front, and then let us enter the building.
“What happened to Henry?” he asked. “Oh
Wallis’s apartment was on the ground floor, rear.
We flicked on the ceiling lights, closed the door on Mr. Silver, and simply tossed the place. Didn’t take long.
Like a lot of ex-cons, Henry Wallis kept his furniture minimal and his few possessions neat.
Conklin took the bedroom and bath while I searched the small living room and kitchen. We called out to each other from time to time: when Conklin found the plastic-wrapped bricks of pot in the kitty-litter box and when I found a book on tattoos, corners folded down on the pages featuring snakes.
But that was it.
No
No snake figurines, no snake artifacts, no books on snakes.
“No reptiles other than these,” I said, showing Conklin the tattoo book.
He said, “Take a look at this.”
I followed him into the bedroom and checked out his find: a drawerful of XL women’s underwear.
“Unless he had a big girlfriend, and I don’t see any pictures, cosmetics, anything that would indicate that,” Conklin said, “Henry Wallis was a cross-dresser.”
“A cross-dressing drug dealer. Kudos to Sara Needleman for dumping him. Let’s lock this joint up,” I said.
“I live only a few blocks from here,” said Rich as we closed and padlocked the door. “Come have a drink. Talk all this out.”
I said, “Thanks anyway. This has been the longest day of my life, Rich. I need to go home. Get naked. Go to bed.”
Conklin laughed. “Is that an order, Sergeant?”
I laughed along with him as I walked to my car, feeling just a little silly, thinking maybe Dr. Freud was having the
“Okay,” I said, one hand on my door, being very careful when I stepped up on the running board. “One drink only.”
Chapter 68
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN Conklin’s place and Henry Wallis’s dump was extreme. Conklin lived on a similar block, both streets lined with unremarkable two- and three-story houses from the ’50s made of cheap and ordinary materials, but once we were inside, Conklin’s place felt lived-in and warm.
His living room was welcoming: good lighting, deep couches grouped around a fireplace, and the requisite bachelor must-have – a fifty-two-inch plasma- screen TV.
Rich stooped down near the entertainment unit, flipped through a stack of CDs, said, “Van Morrison okay with you?”
I said, “Sure,” and looked at the photos on the wall, black-and-white blowups of sailboats on the bay, their spinnakers full of summer wind, light spangling the waves, three different shots, all of them breathtaking.
“You take these, Rich?”
“ Uh-huh.”
“They’re wonderful.”
Van Morrison was singing “Brown Eyed Girl,” a tune that made me want to sing along. I smiled when Rich handed me a glass of wine, and I watched him sit down on the far end of the couch, put his feet up on a burnished hatch cover he’d turned into a coffee table.
I sipped from the frosty glass of chardonnay, kicked off my shoes, and sat on the
“See, what I’m wondering is, how could this be over?”
Conklin nodded, encouraging me to go on.
“A man is
Conklin laughed, said, “You paint a wonderful word picture.”
I told him, “And you’ve got a great laugh, Rich. I love to hear you laugh.”
He held my eyes until I blinked first.
The only clock in the room was on the DVR, and I was too far from it to read the flashing digits, but I knew that it was late. Had to be somewhere around two in the morning, and I was feeling keyed up, starting to get some ideas about seeing the rest of Rich’s apartment. And maybe the rest of Rich.
My mind and body were overheating, and I don’t think Rich meant to cool me down when he went to the kitchen to retrieve the chilled bottle. While he was gone, I undid a shirt button.
And then another.
In the process, I adjusted my position on the couch, felt something hard and sharp down between the cushions. I wrapped my fingers around the object, pulled it out, and saw a hair clip, a rhinestone barrette between my fingers.
The shock of that two-inch sparkler chilled me to the core. Cindy’s barrette could have found its way to this couch only if Rich and Cindy had been grappling on it.
I placed the barrette on the coffee table, looked up as Rich returned with the bottle. He saw the barrette, saw the look in my eyes. Opened his mouth to say something – but nothing came out.
I averted my eyes, made sure he wouldn’t see my pain.
