“You’re not the only detective around here, Mr. Reeve. I know Vietnam vets, guys who were in Panama. I don’t know what it is… maybe you all have the same careful way of moving, like you’re always expecting a trip wire. And yet you’re not afraid. I don’t know.”
Reeve held something up. It had been lying beneath the bed. “AC adapter,” he said.
“Looks like.”
Reeve looked around. “So where’s whatever goes with it?”
McCluskey nodded towards the suitcase. “See that carrier bag there? Half hidden under those trousers.”
Reeve went over and opened the bag. Inside were a small cassette recorder, microphone, and some tapes.
“I listened to the tapes,” McCluskey said. “Blank, mostly. There are a couple of phone calls, sounded like your brother wanted to talk to some people.”
“He was a journalist.”
“So it says on his passport. Was he here covering a story?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t you found any notes? There must be a notebook or something.”
“Not a damned thing. I wondered if maybe that was another reason for the trip to La Jolla.”
“What?”
“To ditch all those kinds of things in the ocean. Clean break, see.”
Reeve nodded. Then he held up the cable and the recorder. “It doesn’t fit,” he said. And he showed the detective that the adapter wouldn’t connect with the small machine. “It just doesn’t fit.”
After the detective had dropped him back at his hotel, Reeve went upstairs to wash. He thought of telephoning Joan, but checked himself. In Scotland, it was the wee small hours of the following morning. He could phone her at 11:00 P.M. his time, but not before. He wasn’t sure he’d still be awake at 11:00 P.M. He turned on the TV, looking for news, and found everything but. Then he made his way back downstairs. He used the stairs rather than the elevator, feeling the need for some exercise. At the bottom, he felt so good he climbed back up to the tenth floor and then descended again.
In the restaurant, he had soup, a steak, and a salad. He looked in at the bar, but decided against a drink. The hotel’s gift shop was still open, though, and he was able to buy a detailed street map of San Diego, better than the tourist offerings he’d so far been given. Back in his room, he found a couple of bulky phone books in one of the dresser drawers, took them to the table, and started working.
FIVE
THE NEXT MORNING, REEVE WOKE UP early but groggy, and went to the window to check. The strange car wasn’t there.
He’d seen it yesterday evening, outside Jim’s motel, and had the feeling it followed McCluskey’s car back here to the hotel. He thought he’d spotted it in the parking lot; a big old American model, something from the sixties or early seventies with spongy suspension and faded metallic-green paint that looked like a respray.
It wasn’t there now, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been there before.
He showered and telephoned Joan, having fallen asleep last night without fulfilling his own promise to himself. They spoke for only a couple of minutes, mostly about Allan. She asked a few questions about the trip, about Jim. Reeve’s replies were terse; Joan would call it denial-she’d read some psychology books in her time. Maybe it was denial, or at least avoidance.
But there wouldn’t be much more avoiding. Today he had to look at the body.
He ate breakfast in a quiet corner of the restaurant. It was buffet-style, with the usual endless coffee. There didn’t seem to be many overnight guests, but a bulletin board in the reception area warned that the hotel would be playing host to a convention and a couple of large-scale civic meetings during the day. After three glasses of fresh orange juice and some cereal and French toast, he felt just about ready. Indeed, he felt so good he thought he might get through the day without throwing up.
He went out to the parking lot, not bothering to have the car brought out front for him. He wanted a good look around. Satisfied, he got into the Blazer and put his map on the passenger seat. He’d marked several locations- today’s destinations. The biggest circle was around his own hotel.
The green car was sitting at the exit ramp of a lot next to the hotel’s. It slid out behind him, keeping too close. Reeve tried to see the driver in his rearview, but the other car’s windshield was murky. He could make out broad shoulders, a bull’s neck, and that was about it.
He kept driving.
The funeral parlor was first. It was out in La Jolla, not too far from where the body had been found. The vestibule was cream satin and fresh flowers and piped music. There were a couple of chairs, one of which he sat on while he waited to be shown through to the viewing room. That was what the quiet-spoken mortician had called it: the viewing room. He didn’t know why he had to wait. Maybe they kept the bodies somewhere else and only hauled them up and dusted them off when somebody wanted to see them.
Finally, the mortician came back and flashed him that closed-lipped professional smile, no hint of teeth. Pleasure was not a factor here. He asked Reeve to follow him through a set of double doors, which had glass panes covered with more cream satin material. All the colors were muted. In fact, the most colorful thing in the place was James Reeve’s face.
There was a single open coffin in the room, lined, naturally, with cream satin. It stood on trestles at the end of the red-carpeted walkway. The corpse was dressed only in a shroud, which made it look bizarrely feminine. The shroud came up over the corpse’s scalp. Reeve knew his brother had swallowed the Browning, angling it up towards the brain, so probably there wouldn’t be much scalp there.
They’d given James’s face the only tan, fake or otherwise, of its life, and there looked like rouge on the cheeks, maybe a little coloring on the thick, pale lips. He looked absurd, like a waxwork dummy. But it was him all right. Reeve had been hoping for a fake, a monstrous practical joke. Maybe Jim was in trouble, he’d thought, had run off, and had somehow duped everybody into thinking he’d killed himself. But now there could be no doubt. Reeve nodded his head and turned away from the coffin. He’d seen enough.
“We have some effects,” the mortician whispered.
“Effects?” Reeve kept walking. He didn’t want to be in the viewing room a second longer. He was angry. He didn’t know why, perhaps because it was more natural to him than grief. He screwed his eyes shut, wishing the mortician would stop whispering at him.
“Effects of your brother’s. Just clothes, really, the ones he was wearing…”
“Burn them.”
“Of course. There are also some papers to sign.”
“I just need a minute.”
“Of course. It’s only natural.”
Reeve turned on the man. “No,” he snarled, “it’s highly
The man went paler than his surroundings. “Why… uh, of course.” Then he walked back into the viewing room, and seemed to count to sixty before coming out again, by which time Reeve had recovered some of his composure. The pink mist was shifting from in front of his eyes. Jesus, and his pills were back in Scotland.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Quite…” The man swallowed back the word
That had been taken care of. The coffin would travel to Heathrow on the same flight Reeve himself was taking, then be transported to the family plot in Scotland. It all seemed so ludicrous-burying a brother, traveling thousands of miles with the physical remains. How would Jim have felt? Suddenly Reeve knew exactly what his brother would have wanted.
“Look,” he said in the vestibule, “is there any way he can be buried here?”
The mortician blinked. “In La Jolla?”
“Or San Diego.”
