him. He’d probably been expecting someone like Jim-taller, skinnier, in less good all-around shape. And Reeve knew that if the eyes were the window on a man’s soul, then his eyes were blackly dangerous. Even Joan told him he had a killer’s stare sometimes.
But then McCluskey wasn’t what Reeve had been expecting either. From the deep growl on the telephone, he’d visualized an older, beefier man, someone a bit more rumpled.
“Hell of a thing,” McCluskey said, after turning down the waitress’s offer of coffee.
“Yes,” Reeve said. Then, to the waitress. “Can I have the bill?”
“We call it a check,” McCluskey told Reeve when they were in the detective’s car, heading out to La Jolla.
“What?”
“We don’t call it a bill, we call it a check.”
“Thanks for the advice. Can I see the police report on my brother’s suicide?”
McCluskey turned his gaze from the windshield. “I guess,” he said. “It’s on the backseat.”
Reeve reached around and picked up the brown cardboard file. While he was reading, a message came over McCluskey’s radio.
“No can do,” McCluskey said into the radio at the end of a short conversation.
“Sorry if I’m taking you away from anything,” Reeve said, not meaning it. “I could probably have done this on my own.”
“No problem,” McCluskey told him.
The report was blunt, cold, factual. Male Caucasian, discovered Sunday morning by two joggers heading for the oceanfront. Body found in a locked rental car, keys in the ignition, Browning pistol still gripped in the decedent’s right hand…
“Where did he get the gun?”
“It’s not hard to get a gun around here. We haven’t found a receipt, so I guess he didn’t buy it at a store. Still leaves plenty of sellers.”
Decedent’s wallet, passport, driver’s license, and so forth were still in his jacket pocket, along with the car rental agreement. Rental company confirmed that male answering the de-scription of James Mark Reeve hired the car on a weekend rate at 7:30 P.M. Saturday night, paying cash up front.
“Jim always used plastic if he could,” Reeve said.
“Well, you know, suicides… they often like to tie up the loose ends before they… uh, you know, they like to make a clean break…” His voice trailed off. Suicides; the next of kin. McCluskey was used to dealing with howling uncontrollable grief, or a preternatural icy calm. But Gordon Reeve was being… the word that sprang to mind was
“Maybe,” Reeve said.
Decedent’s motel room was located and searched. No note was found. Nothing out of the ordinary was found, save small amounts of substances which tested positive as amphetamine and cocaine.
“We’ve had the autopsy done since that report was typed,” McCluskey said. “Your brother had some booze in his system, but no drugs. I don’t know if that makes you feel any better.”
“You didn’t find a note,” Reeve stated.
“No, sir, but fewer suicides than you might think actually bother to leave a note. It looked like there’d been a message of some kind left on the mirror of the motel bathroom. He, uh… looks like it was written with toothpaste, but then wiped off. Might indicate the state of mind he was in.”
“Any obvious reason why he would commit suicide?”
“No, sir, I have to admit I can’t see one. Maybe his career?”
“I wouldn’t know about that, I was only his brother.”
“You weren’t close?”
Reeve shook his head, saying nothing. Soon enough they arrived in La Jolla, passing pleasant bungalow-type houses and then larger, richer residences as they neared the oceanfront. La Jolla ’s main shopping street had parking on both sides of the road, trees sprouting from the sidewalk, and benches for people to sit on. The shops looked exclusive; the pedestrians wore tans, sunglasses, and smiles. McCluskey pulled the car into a parking bay.
“Where?” Reeve asked quietly.
“Two bays along.” McCluskey nodded with his head.
Reeve undid his seat belt and opened the car door. “I’ll be fine on my own,” he told the detective.
There was a car in the second space along. It was a family model, with two kids playing in the back. They were boys, broth-ers. Each held a plastic spaceman; the spacemen were supposed to be battling each other, the boys providing sound effects. They looked at him suspiciously as he stared in at them, so he went and stood on the sidewalk and looked up and down the street. Jim’s body had been found at six o’clock Sunday morning, which meant two o’clock Sunday afternoon in the UK. He’d been on the moor, chased by a group of weekend soldiers. Playing sol-diers: that’s how Jim had summed up his brother’s life. At 2:00 P.M. it had been raining, and Gordon Reeve had been naked again, clothes bundled into his rucksack-naked except for boots and socks, crossing the wetland. And he hadn’t felt a thing; no twinge of forewarning, no sympathetic gut-stab at his broth-er’s agony, no fire in the brain.
McCluskey was standing beside him. Reeve turned his back and rubbed at dry, stinging eyes. The boys in the car had stopped playing and were looking at him, too. And now their mother was coming back with a young sibling, and she wanted to know what was happening. Reeve walked quietly back to McCluskey’s unmarked car.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“Deal,” said McCluskey.
They drank one drink apiece in an overpriced hotel bar. Reeve insisted on paying. The detective wanted a beer, and though Reeve knew he wasn’t supposed to touch alcohol, he ordered a whiskey. He knew he must be careful; his medication was back in Scotland. But it was only one whiskey, and he deserved it.
“Why La Jolla?” he asked.
McCluskey shrugged. “I don’t have an answer to that, except maybe why not. Guy rents a car, suicide on his mind. He drives around, and the world looks beautiful to him-so beautiful it makes him sad, which he hadn’t been expecting. And he decides, fuck it, why not now?” He shrugged again.
Reeve was staring at him. “You almost sound like you’ve been there yourself.”
“Maybe I have. Maybe that’s why I take the suicides. Maybe that’s why I like to spend some time with the still- living.” Then he shut up and sipped the beer.
“No note,” Reeve said. “I can’t believe it. The one thing in his life Jim ever loved was words, especially printed ones. I’m sure he’d‘ve left a note; and a long one at that. A manuscript.” He was smiling. “He wouldn’t have wanted to go quietly.”
“Well, he created a news story in La Jolla. Maybe that was his way of saying good-bye, a final front page.”
“Maybe,” Reeve said, half-believing, wanting to believe. He finished the whiskey. It was a large shot, easily a double. He wanted another, so it was definitely time to leave.
“Back to the hotel?” McCluskey suggested.
“The motel,” Reeve corrected. “Jim’s motel.”
The room was as it had been.
They hadn’t bothered to clean it up and relet it, McCluskey said, because James Reeve had paid until the middle of the week, and they knew his brother was coming and would take all the stuff away.
“I don’t want it,” Reeve said, looking at the clothes spilling from the suitcase. “I mean, there may be a couple of things…”
“Well, there are charities who’ll take the rest of it; leave that side of things to me.” McCluskey toured the room with hands in pockets, familiar with the place. Then he sat down on the room’s only chair.
“Jim usually stayed in better than this,” Reeve said. “Money must have been tight.”
“You’d make a fine detective, Mr. Reeve. What line of work are you in?”
“Personnel management.”
But McCluskey wasn’t fooled by that. He smiled. “You’ve been in armed forces though, right?”
“How could you tell?” Reeve checked the bedside table, finding nothing but a copy of Gideon’s Bible.
