'All right.' As they got back in the car, Rinker slipped the gun out of her girdle, pulled the clip, jacked the shell out of the chamber, pushed it back into the clip and handed the pistol to Carmel. 'There you go. Be careful.'
'I will be… Are you gone then?'
'Yeah. I gotta move: I'll be out of the country in a week. And I've got to make a few stops. I've got money stashed all over the place.'
Back at the parking ramp, Rinker and Carmel shook hands: good friends, who'd been through a lot together. 'If I don't see you again, I'll remember you,'
Carmel said.
'See you in Mexico, Halloween,' Rinker said. 'Hey – and don't forget to check that phone tape, and erase it, if there's anything on it.'
'Top of my list,' Carmel said.
She walked back through the building, let herself into the office suite, unplugged the answering machine, and listened to her messages. The call from
Hale's house had something on it, but she doubted that anyone could tell what it was. She was taking no chances, though. She replaced the phone tape with a new one, stripped the tape out of the cartridge, and burned it. The little fire left a nasty odor in the office and she opened an outside window, to air it.
She could see three or four cars parked up and down the street. At least a couple of them, she thought, were loaded with cops.
With the answered phone call, and the watching cops, she had the perfect alibi.
She should wait a few minutes, cool out, and get back home, she thought.
And maybe have a good cry. Although she didn't feel much like crying; she was more excited than saddened.
Man, that was something else.
He was right there and Whack! Whack! Whack!
Alive, then dead. Something else.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Allen's body was found by his secretary, who first called Carmel to find out if she'd seen him.
'Well, no, I haven't,' Carmel said. She felt a crawling sensation on the back of her neck: this was it, the beginning of the end game. 'Not since day before yesterday – I had to work last night. I did talk to him last night, though.
Sometime about 11 o'clock, I think.'
'Well, I don't know what to do,' the secretary said. 'He missed a closing this morning, and people are upset. He could miss another one if he's not here in die next twenty minutes. That's not like him.'
'How about his cell phone? That's permanently attached to him.'
'It rings, but there's no answer.'
'Huh. Well, maybe we ought to check with a neighbor or something,' Carmel said.
'I'd go, but I don't have a key, and I do have a court date.'
'I've got a key,' the secretary said, the concern right on the surface of her voice. 'He keeps an emergency key in his desk drawer. I can go over…'
'You don't think anything's happened, do you?' Carmel asked. She put concern in her own voice. 'I bet he just lost track of time somewhere, he was talking about buying a new sport coat…'
'He was supposed to be here at nine o'clock. That's a lot of time,' the secretary said.
'Now you've got me worried,' Carmel said. 'Keep me posted.'
As the secretary, whose name was Alice Miller, hung up, it occurred to her she'd just had her most congenial conversation with Carmel Loan, who tended to treat secretaries like unavoidable morons. Allen, she thought, was known for a certain mellowing effect he had on women…
When Allen didn't show up for the next closing, she apologized for him, told the participants that she was very concerned, that he hadn't been heard from; that she was going to his house to check on him. She felt increasing concern as she drove out to Allen's house. And once there, she called back to the firm to make sure he hadn't shown up in the meantime. He hadn't.
Miller got out of the car and looked up the driveway. Remembered what had happened to Allen's wife; started up the drive. The house felt occupied, but quiet: a bad vibration. She stopped in the driveway and said, 'Oh, God,' and crossed herself.
The front door was open an inch, and she called, 'Hale? It's Alice. Hale?'
No answer. She stepped inside, and some atavistic cell deep in Alice Miller's brain, a cell that had never before been called upon, triggered, and Alice Miller smelled human blood.
Knew what it was, somehow, deep in the brain. Clutched her purse to her breasts and took three more steps into the house, leaned sideways, looked into the hall. ..
At Hale Allen's shattered skull.
She may have screamed there, inside the house. Later, she couldn't remember. For sure, she turned and ran toward the front door, still clutching her purse, turned just before she got to the door to look back, to see that Hale Allen's corpse wasn't following her, and ran straight into the door jamb.
The blow nearly knocked her down. She dropped the purse, dazed, struck out, and pushed her hand through the glass window on the storm door. Now she did scream, a low wavering cry, and clutching her bleeding arm, she managed to get outside, where she ran down the driveway. A man was walking his dog along the curb, and she ran at him, whimpering, bleeding badly from the arm cuts.
'Help me,' she cried. 'Please please please…'
The responding cops thought Alice Miller probably had something to do with the shooting, as cut up as she was. But the patrol sergeant who was second at the scene took a moment to walk through the house, to note the drying blood on the floor and the fresh blood on the door. He listened to Alice as she sat on the grass next to the squad car, and finally said, 'Call
Davenport. And somebody ride this lady into the hospital.'
Sherrill and Black got to Hale Allen's house five minutes before Lucas. Black looked at Allen's body and said, 'Totally awesome. Somebody shot the shit out of him.'
'Poor guy,' Sherrill said. Her lip trembled, and Black patted her on the back.
'How long was Carmel loose last night?' Black asked. 'You didn't go back, did you?'
'No, but John Hosta did. She came downstairs at one o'clock and went right home.'
'This is a little different than the other ones,' Black said, looking closer at the gunshot pattern. 'Not a. 22 for one thing. Bigger caliber. Still not huge, but bigger. And whoever shot him, really unloaded…'
'Lover's quarrel,' Sherrill said.
'Jesus, if we hadn't been watching Carmel, she could be in trouble,' Black said.
'I don't know,' Sherrill said. 'To tell you the truth, they were still running pretty hot. I don't think they were at the shooting stage.'
'Maybe he blew her off, maybe…'
A cop at the door called in to them: 'Davenport's here.'
'All right,' Sherrill said. 'Let's talk.'
Lucas was in a cold rage: he should have thought of this. He should have understood that Hale Allen might be in trouble. Had Allen discovered something? Had Carmel told him something in pillow talk? Something that led to accusations?
Sherrill walked him through the house, watching him. 'Take it easy,' she said, once. 'You're gonna have a goddamned heart attack.'
'I'm not gonna have a goddamned heart attack,' Lucas grated.
'Your blood pressure is about two hundred over two hundred. I know the signs, remember?'
'Off my case,' he said. 'And tell me about Carmel.'
'She was loose for a while last night,' Sherrill said. 'More than an hour.'
