'You can say that without seeing it?' Lucas' eyebrows went up.
'Of course. Because it can't be Carmel's name.' 'Okay,' Lucas said, mildly. 'If that's your story.' 'It is, and we're sticking to it,' Carlton said.
The search continued. Sloan, one of the more mild-mannered of the homicide cops, mentioned to Carmel, in passing, that they knew about her connection with Clark at law school. Lucas, outside the bedroom when Sloan and Carmel were talking, heard Carmel spluttering, 'She was a secretary, for Christ's sake.'
And Sloan answered, 'C'mon, Carmel, we know she took that legal writing course the same time you did.'
'If she did, I didn't know about it.'
'Ah, c'mon,' Sloan said. 'You guys go way back. You even did that Halloween Ball together. It's right on the program.'
'Jesus… you guys.' But she was scared, now. More angry than scared, but scared nevertheless.
At six o'clock, with Carlton glancing at his watch every two minutes, the search team began breaking up. A crime-scene crew had been brought in to take samples from Carmel's bed, the guestroom bed, and to dust the guestroom for fingerprints. They began packing their gear, and Sloan told Lucas he was heading home. Then two more detectives checked out, and Carlton asked Lucas, 'I assume you're not planning anything else dramatic? No new papers to serve…'
Lucas shook his head: 'No. We're about done. I'm gonna take one last cruise through the place…'
Carlton went to Carmel and said, 'I'm chairing a bar meeting at seven o'clock.
Will you be all right here?'
'Sure. It's all over.'
And Sherrill, her voice low, asked Lucas, 'Got the shell?'
'Yeah. Take off as soon as Carlton's out of here.'
'I'll be across the street with Sloan. Franklin and Del are headed for your house.'
Carlton left, Sherrill looked at her watch: 'You want me to stay?' she asked
Lucas. 'I'm kind of in a rush.'
'Take off,' Lucas said. 'I'll say good-bye to Carmel, make sure nobody left anything behind.'
Carmel shouted at Sherrill, as she left, 'Good riddance to all of ya. Fuck ya.
Fuck ya…'
Sherrill flashed her the finger, over her shoulder, and Carmel's eyes widened and she took a step after Sherrill, and Lucas stepped between them and said,
'Hey, hey…' Then, to Sherrill, 'Knock it off, okay?' At the same time, he winked at her.
'Yeah, yeah…' And she was gone, too, and Lucas and Carmel were left alone in the fabulous apartment.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Carmel asked, 'Are you wearing a wire?' They were still standing in the living room, by the open door to the hallway.
'No. Should I be?' Lucas stepped over to the door and pushed it shut.
'When I think about it, I don't really care,' Carmel said. 'I'm gonna get you for this, Davenport, I swear to God. I'm gonna dedicate my life to it.'
'Gonna take a lot of dedication, if you're out at the women's prison for thirty years,' Lucas said.
She flushed, and he could see her eye-teeth, bared, as she spoke: 'There's not gonna be any prison. Not for me. Could be for you, when we're done with you.
You've got nothing.'
Lucas shook his head and said, 'They're arguing about that over at the courthouse. Some of the guys think we've got enough, some of them don't. Gonna be close.' He drifted across the living room as he talked, poked his head into the guestroom, then continued to her bedroom, Carmel following him down the hall. 'What do you want in here?' she demanded.
'I'm just closing the place down, making sure nobody left anything behind,' he said. The shell was between two shoes in the open part of the closet. 'I'll tell you something, Carmel. Just between you and me – and I don't care if you're wearing a wire. I know you were involved in these killings. I know it. I know you were involved in the first one, Barbara
Allen, and I think you did it because you wanted Hale. You were screwing him before the body was in the ground.'
'You don't know that.'
'I do know that. Hale told me that.'
'Hale?' Her hand went to her throat.
'Yeah. We had a long talk about you. I know all about you, about your sexual preferences, about what you like to talk about in bed. And you know what? You scared the shit out of Hale. He didn't have the courage to stop you, but he did have the courage to come in and talk to me, and I taped it. Hale telling me about how you hated Barbara, about how she was holding him back, about how he was lucky to be rid of her.' Lucas was adding that last bit on, but he bet it was true.
'That sonofabitch,' she said.
'Naw. He was just a dummy. Worked hard, liked women, not too much upstairs. Not a lot of guts, either – but he was just trying to get through life. He felt guilty about Louise Clark, but a lot of guys who love their wives have affairs.
And Louise was something else in bed. He couldn't stop talking about her. He said she could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch: that's the way he put it. He said that compared to
Clark, you were like the Roman Army, just grinding him down.'
'He never said that,' Carmel shouted. But there were tears streaking her face now, and she hated it, and screamed louder, 'Hale never said that.'
'Yeah, he did, and I think you know it, because it rings right,' Lucas said. He felt odd, standing in the cool, professionally-feminine bedroom, alone with this tear-streaked woman, hands in his pants pocket, almost abashed: he felt cruel.
He pushed on. 'He said you were like some kind of machine, marching all over him. But he was afraid to dump you, because he was… afraid. Because he thought you may have killed his wife.'
'Louise Clark killed her… and him.'
'Oh, please,' Lucas said, sounding in his own ears like a character in a New
York TV comedy. 'Louise Clark had him. He was going to marry her, as soon as he could get rid of you. And Louise Clark, to tell you the truth, was a good match for him. Smart enough, but not exactly the wizard of the western world. But a nice woman. And good in bed. And as far as we can tell from talking to all of her friends, Louise Clark had never fired a gun in her life, right up to the day when we found her in the middle of that phony suicide tableau in her bedroom.'
'Fuck you, Davenport,' Carmel said, crossing her arms over her chest. 'Get out of my house.'
Lucas said, 'Yeah, I'm going: I'll scout the…' It seemed a little faked, he didn't do it quite right, the frown, the near double-take, but Carmel was tired, stretched out of shape. 'What is that?'
'What?' Carmel was confused.
'Here,' Lucas said. He brushed past her, pushed the sliding door back so he could get a better look at the shoe. 'Goddamnit.'
He stood up, took Carmel by the arm and said, 'Come out here,' tugging her toward the living room.
'Let go of me…' She tried to pull away.
'I just want you out in the living room with me…' And in the living room he shouted, 'Hello? Hey, anybody here? Goddamnit…'
Carmel took a step back toward the bedroom and Lucas said, 'No.' And he said it with bite, and she stopped. He looked around, stepped into the kitchen, got a roll of SaranWrap from the kitchen counter and carried it back toward the bedroom. She followed behind him and he knelt by the closet door and pushed the shoe away and,
