sure other cops have been all over the house. Could I take a look at the room where Stephanie and her friend were… spending time?'
'You mean her bedroom,' Bekker said wryly. 'I don't see why not. Like you said, the carpets are virtually worn-out from the impact of all the flat feet… no offense.'
Lucas laughed in spite of himself, then followed Bekker up the long staircase. 'I'm down there,' Bekker said, when they reached the top. He gestured to the left, but turned to the right. Halfway down the hall, he pushed a door open, reached inside, clicked on a light, stepped back and said, 'Here we are.'
Stephanie Bekker had slept in an old-fashioned double bed with a rough-cut French frame. The quilt, blankets and sheets were in a heap at the foot of the bed, lying across the frame and partially covering an antique steamer trunk. A dozen magazines on home decorating, antiques and art were piled on the trunk. Near the head of the bed, a Princess phone sat on a bedstand, along with a clock, two more magazines and a Stephen King novel.
A door opened to the left. Lucas stuck his head inside and found a compact but complete bathroom, with a vanity, toilet, tub and shower. A ruby-colored bath towel hung from one of two towel racks. There were traces of fingerprint powder on the vanity, toilet handle, shower handles and towel racks. Lucas turned back into the bedroom, noticed another towel on the red-toned Oriental carpet.
'Just like… the night…' Bekker said. 'The laboratory people said they'd call and tell me when I can clean up. Do you have any idea when that might be?'
'Have they filmed it?'
'I think so…'
'I'll check that, too,' Lucas said. He looked at Bekker across the bedroom, measuring him, and asked, 'You didn't do it?'
Bekker looked at him now. 'No,' he said levelly, with the same straightforward, unflinching gaze.
'Well. Nice meeting you,' Lucas said.
Outside, the night had turned colder, sliding into frost. The cold air was welcome on his face after the heat of the house. Lucas strolled up the sidewalk, took a right to the alley, looked around and walked down the alley until he was behind Bekker's house. The killer had probably come in this way.
At the side of the house, a light came on, a long narrow shaft gleaming bright at the edge of a curtain. Struck by a sudden impulse, Lucas pushed the gate in the hurricane fence along the backyard. Locked. He glanced around, then vaulted the fence and walked carefully through the dark backyard, feeling with his feet as much as his eyes, wary of loose garbage can lids and invisible clotheslines…
At the side of the house, he moved by inches to the lighted window, put his back to the outside wall, then slowly rotated his head until he could see through the crack.
Bekker was in the study, nude, lurching from one end to the other, chewing convulsively, his face twisted into a mask of pain, terror or religious ecstasy, his eyes turned so far up into his skull that only the whites were visible. He shuddered, twisted, threw out his arms, then collapsed into a leather chair, his mouth half open. For a minute, then two, he didn't move, and Lucas thought he might have had a heart attack or stroke. Then he moved, his arms and legs uncoiling, smoothing themselves into an upright attitude, like that of a king on a throne. Laughing. Bekker was laughing, a mechanical 'Ha-ha-ha-ha' choking out of his throat. And still his eyes were looking inward, at God.
Lucas dreamed of Bekker's face. Had to be drugs. Had to be. In the dream he kept arguing that point, that it was drugs; but no drugs were found, and Bekker, lightly restrained by two faceless cops in blue uniforms, would swoop up and screech, I'm high on Jesus…
The dream was one of those where Lucas knew he was dreaming but couldn't get out. When the alarm went off, just after one in the afternoon, it was a positive relief. He rolled out, cleaned up and was about to pour a cup of coffee when Del banged on the door.
'You're up,' Del said, when Lucas answered.
'Come on in. What's going on?'
'Got some calls on the tip line. Nothing much.' He shook a no-nicotine, no-tar cigarette out of a crumpled pack and lit it with a Zippo as they walked through the house to the kitchen. 'And Sloan talked to a woman named Beulah Miller this morning-another one of Stephanie Bekker's friends. He asked about the psychologist, and she said, 'Maybe.' '
'But the shrink denies it…'
'So does his wife,' Del said. He settled at the kitchen table, and when Lucas held up a pot of coffee, he nodded. 'Sloan went back and got her alone. She said he'd had an affair, years ago, and she knew about five minutes after it started. There haven't been any since. And she said that after Sloan went away after the first visit, she went straight back to her husband and asked him. He denied it. Still denies it. And she believes him.'
'Has she got a job of her own?' Lucas asked, handing him a cup of hot coffee.
'Sloan thought of that,' Del said. 'And she does-she's a lobbyist for the Taxpayers' Forum and a couple of other conservative interest groups. She's got a law degree, Sloan says, and she probably makes a pretty good buck.'
'So she doesn't need a meal ticket.'
'Guess not. Anyway, she suspected that Stephanie was having an affair. They never talked about it, but there were some pretty heavy hints. And she says she thinks they never talked about it because she probably knew the guy, and maybe the guy's wife, and Stephanie didn't know how she'd react. Like she was afraid Miller'd freak out or something.'
'So she says it's not her husband, but probably somebody they know…'
'Yeah.'
'Did Sloan get a list of possibilities?'
'Naturally. Twenty-two names. But she said some of them were pretty remote possibilities. Sloan's looking at the most likely ones today, the rest of them tomorrow… but he got something else you might be interested in.'
Lucas raised his eyebrows. 'What?'
'Bekker apparently had an affair sometime back, two or three years ago. A nurse. Common talk around the hospital. Sloan got her name and address, went over to see her. She told him to get lost. He pulled the badge, but you know Sloan, he likes people a little too much…'
'Huh. You think…?'
'What I think is, you'd be the perfect guy to talk to her,' Del said.
'Why not you?'
'I'd like to come along, but I don't look right to do it by myself,' Del said, shaking his long black hair. 'I look a little too much like Charlie Manson. People don't let me in the door, even, unless they're assholes. But you-when you put on one of those gray suits, you look like the fuckin' Law.'
Cheryl Clark didn't want to let them in.
'This is about a murder, Miss Clark,' Lucas said, cool and official, his ID in her face. 'You can talk to us, and the chances are about ninety percent that we'll walk away. Or you can refuse to talk, and we'll take you downtown and let you call a lawyer, and we'll talk to you that way.'
'I don't have to talk.'
'Yes you do. You don't have the right to refuse to talk. You have the right not to incriminate yourself. If you think you're going to incriminate yourself, then we'll go downtown, you can call a lawyer, we'll get you a grant of immunity from prosecution-and then we'll talk. Or you'll go to jail for contempt of court,' Lucas said. His voice warmed up a couple of notches. 'Look, we don't want to be jerks-if you haven't done anything criminal, I'm telling you, it'd be a lot easier just to have an informal chat right now.'
'I really don't have anything to say,' she protested. Her eyes skittered past Lucas to Del, who waited at the foot of the stoop, looking at a motorcycle.
'We'd like to ask anyway,' Lucas said.
'Well… all right. Come in. But I might not answer,' she said.
Her apartment was tidy but impersonal, almost like a motel room. A television was the most prominent piece of furniture, dominating one wall, facing a couch. The couch was covered with a thick green baize that might have been taken off a pool table. A sliding door led to a tiny balcony, with a view toward the Mississippi River valley.
