Armistead's. As soon as Druze got the call, at a remote phone in the theater's control booth, he would call the ticket office with his best California-cool accent. My name is Donaldson Whitney. Elizabeth Armistead said that she would put me on the guest list for two tickets. I'm in a rush through town, but I have time for her play. Could you call her and confirm?
They would call and confirm. They always did. Too many bullshitters trying to get in free. Donaldson Whitney, though, was a theater critic from Los Angeles. Armistead would gush… and the ticket people would remember. That was the point of the exercise: to create a last man to talk to the dead woman, with Druze already in makeup, onstage, warming up… alibied. Druze had suggested it and Bekker had found no way to demur.
He could, however, go early; Druze wouldn't have to know. But the cops would figure it out…
And after doing Armistead, he could call as though he were just leaving his house. Then Druze would make his Donaldson Whitney call, and if Armistead didn't answer the phone when the ticket office called her, well, she simply wasn't home yet. That could hardly be Bekker's fault…
Bekker took it slowly the last few minutes down to Armistead's. He'd cruised her house before, and there were no changes. The lots were small, but the houses were busy. One man coming or going would never be noticed. A light burned in Armistead's house, in the back. Her silver Dodge Omni was at the curb, where it usually was. He parked at the side of the house, under a tree heavy with bursting spring buds, got his equipment, leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.
Like a digital readout: one-two-three-four-five. Easy steps. He let the power out, just a bit; when he looked, the steering wheel was out-of-round. He smiled, thinly, allowed himself to feel the burn in his blood for another moment, then got out of the car, changed the thin smile for a harassed look and walked around the corner to Armistead's house. Rang the doorbell. And again.
Armistead. Larger than he thought, in a robe. Pale oval face; dark hair swept back in a complicated roll, held with a wooden pin. Face slack, as though she'd been sleeping. Door on a chain. She peered out at him, her eyes large and dark. She'd look good on a stage. 'Yes?'
'Gas company. Any odor of gas in the house?'
'No…'
'We show you have gas appliances, a washer and dryer, a hot-water heater?' All that from Druze's reconnaissance at an Armistead party. Bekker glanced down at the clipboard.
'Yes, down in the basement,' she said. His knowledge of her home had confirmed his authority.
'We've had some critical pressure fluctuations up and down the street because of a main valve failure. We have a sniffer here'-Bekker hefted the black box, so she could see the meter-'and we'd like to take some readings in your basement, just in case. There could be a problem with sudden flareups. We had a fire over on the next block, you probably heard the fire trucks.'
'Uh, I've been meditating…' But she was already pulling the chain. 'I'm in a terrible rush, I've got to get to work…'
'Just take a minute or two,' Bekker assured her. And he was in. He slipped his hand in his pocket, gripped the hammer, waited until he heard the door close firmly.
'Through the kitchen and down the stairs,' Armistead said. Her voice was high and clear, but there was an impatient edge to it. A busy woman, interrupted.
'The kitchen?' Bekker glanced around. The drapes had been closed. The smell of prairie flowers was in the air, and spice, and Bekker realized that it must be her herb tea. The power came out now, out of the corner of his head, and his vision went momentarily blue…
'Here. I'll show you,' Armistead said impatiently. She turned her back on him, walking toward the rear of the house. 'I haven't smelled a thing.'
Bekker took a step behind her, began to draw the hammer, and suddenly blood gushed from his nose. He dropped the meter and caught the blood with his hand, and she saw the motion, turned, saw the blood, opened her mouth… to scream?
'No, no,' he said, and her mouth closed, halfway… everything so slow. So slow, now. 'Ah, this is the second time today… Got hit in the nose by my child, just a five-year-old. Can't believe it… Do you have any tissue?'
'Yes…' Her eyes were wide, horrified, as the stream of blood dripped down his coveralls.
They were on the rug in the front room, and she started to pivot, going for the tissue. The power slowed her motion even more and demanded that he savor this. There could be no fights, no struggles, no chances. She couldn't be allowed to scratch him, or bruise him… This was business, but the power knew what it wanted. She was saying, 'Here, in the kitchen…,' she was pivoting, and Bekker, one hand clenched to his face, stepped close again, pulled the hammer from his pocket, swung it like a tennis racket, with a good forehand, got his back and shoulder in it.
The hammer hit with a double shock, hard, then soft, like knocking a hole in a plaster wall, and the impact twisted Armistead. She wasn't dead; her eyes were open wide, saliva sprayed from her mouth, her hips were twisting, her feet were coming off the floor. She went down, dying, but not knowing it, trying to fight, her hands up, her mouth open, and Bekker was on her, straddling her. One hand on her throat, her body bucking. Evading the fingernails, hitting with the blunt head of the hammer, her forehead, once, twice… and done.
He was breathing like a steam engine, the power on him, running him, his heart running, the blood streaming down his face. Can't get any on her… He brushed his bloodied face with the sleeve of his coveralls, looked back down, her eyes half open…
Her eyes.
Bekker, suddenly frightened, turned the hammer.
He'd use the claw…
CHAPTER 9
The evening dragged; the feeling that he was waiting stayed with him.
He thought of calling Jennifer, to ask for an extra visit with their daughter. He reached for the phone once, twice, but never made the call. He wanted to see Sarah, but even more, he wanted to settle with Jennifer. Somehow. End it, or start working toward reconciliation. And that, he thought, was not a process begun with a spur-of-the-moment phone call. Not with Jennifer.
Instead of calling, he sat in front of the television and watched a bad cop movie on Showtime. He switched it off a few minutes before the torturously achieved climax: both the cops and the crooks were cardboard, and he didn't care what happened to any of them. After the late news, he went back to the workroom and began plodding through the game.
Bekker stuck in the back of his head. The investigation was dying. He could sense the waning interest in the other cops. They knew the odds against the case: without eyewitnesses or a clear suspect who had both motive and opportunity, there was almost no chance of an arrest, much less a conviction. Lucas knew of at least two men who had killed their wives and gotten away with it, and a woman who'd killed a lover. There was nothing fancy about any of the murders. No exotic weapons, no tricky alibis, no hired killers. The men had used clubs: a grease gun and an aluminum camera tripod. The woman had used a wooden-handled utility knife from Chicago Cutlery.
I just found her/him like that, they told the answering cops. When the cops read them their rights, all three asked for lawyers. After that, there wasn't anything to go on. The pure, unvarnished and almost unbreakable two-dude defense: Some other dude did it.
Lucas stared at the wall behind the desk. I need this fuckin' case. If the Bekker investigation failed, if the spark of interest diminished and died, he feared, he might slip back into the black hole of the winter's depression. Before the depression, he'd thought of mental illnesses as something suffered by people who were weak, without the will to suppress the problem, or somehow genetically impaired. No more. The depression was as real as a tiger in the jungle, looking for meat. If you let your guard down…
Bekker's beautiful face came up in his mind's eye, like a color slide projected on a screen. Bekker.
At twenty minutes after eleven, the phone rang. He looked at it for a moment, with a ripple of tension. Jennifer? He picked it up.
