“Jesus. You were a bitch.”
She nodded-once, a simple affirmative. “I actually didn’t realize how much it would hurt him till after I’d done it. Ray was devastated.”
Cardinal turned on his side and put a hand on her shoulder. “Why are you telling me this? Are you trying to warn me off?”
“Maybe.” She gave a wan smile. “I just-you’re so different from me, that’s all. Loyal to the same woman for thirty years. I’m envious-not just of her, your wife, but of you. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be that stable.”
“Boring, most of the time.”
“I don’t think so. Not in your case. But I don’t seem able to sit still. Every time life hands me something that looks like it might be steady, comfortable-something that might last longer than a few months-I manage to destroy it.”
“But you didn’t do that entirely on your own. His so-called friend helped.”
She shook her head. “It actually doesn’t take two, John. Believe me, I’ve done it many times.”
“There you go, warning me again.”
“Or maybe I’m just trying to talk myself into being a better person. Maybe you’re worth changing for.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“And pretty soon you won’t want to know me.”
“Now we’re getting melodramatic.”
She put her arms around him and held him close. A hot tear slid onto his chest and cooled there.
“People can change,” Cardinal said. “I’ve seen it happen. People turn their whole lives around.”
She sighed, and reached up to touch his face. “What a lovely story.”
31
By the time Cardinal got out of the shower in the morning, Donna was gone.
After the morning meeting, he checked his phone messages and returned a few calls. Even though he had something of a mental block about responding to e-mail, he spent the time while he was waiting for Mendelsohn answering as many as he could. Of course, Mendelsohn couldn’t call to explain why he was so late; his cellphone was on the bottom of Trout Lake.
At ten o’clock, he called the Highlands. No answer in Mendelsohn’s room. The FBI man struck Cardinal as a little eccentric, a bit of a klutz, but also completely reliable. Not the sort who says nine a.m. when he means ten- thirty or eleven. Cardinal grabbed his coat and drove to the Highlands and parked next to Mendelsohn’s Alero. A maintenance man was pushing a snow blower, blasting geysers of white into the blue of the sky.
Young Mr. Dee was not happy to see Cardinal again. Across the front desk, he radiated clouds of Scope- scented dismay.
“I need to visit one of your guests,” Cardinal said.
“Certainly, Detective. What name?”
“Mendelsohn.”
The manager checked his computer and got the room number and dialed it. He kept the phone clamped between his ear and shoulder and continued typing away at something the whole time. He put down the phone. “I’m sorry, Mr. Mendelsohn must have stepped out.” He pointed toward the house phones. “Would you like to leave a message?”
“I need to see his room.”
“Oh, I don’t think we can…” He scanned Cardinal’s face and whatever he saw there changed his mind. “I’ll look after it.”
In the elevator, he said, “Please tell me this investigation will be over soon.”
“It won’t.”
He led Cardinal down the second-floor corridor to room 218 and rapped smartly on the door. “Weird thing is, our bookings for the next two months are actually up, year over year.”
“I wouldn’t have thought a double murder was great publicity.”
“Me either.” He rapped again.
“Open it.”
“Please-we’re not going to have that discussion again, are we?”
“No,” Cardinal said. “We’re not.”
The manager took out his pass card and opened the door. He took up the same position as last time, back against the door, holding it open. “Sounds like he’s in the shower.”
The mirrors, the windows, even the TV screen, were fogged with steam.
“Mendelsohn?” Cardinal stepped farther into the room and stopped.
Mendelsohn was on the floor between the toilet and the sink, in a half-curled position. Blood had formed a pool above his head in the shape of a thought cloud in a comic book. Cardinal placed a hand on his shoulder. Dead some time.
He knelt down to get a better look. There was a dark hole above Mendelsohn’s right eyebrow and an exit wound at the back of the skull that had taken a good chunk of bone and brain with it before it hit the wall above the toilet. Another entry wound below the Highlands logo on his bathrobe seemed to have produced no exit wound that Cardinal could see. That one would explain the hole through the bathroom door. It was about waist-high if you were standing, but if you were sitting on the toilet, as Mendelsohn clearly had been, it was about level with your right lung. That was like him, to get himself murdered while he’s about to take a dump.
Cardinal called it in. It was only when he got off his cell that he remembered Mr. Dee, paler than before, but still at his post by the doorway.
“We’re going to need your security tapes again.”
“That’s going to be a problem.”
“Why?”
“In response to the last incident, we’re having an expert do a thorough review of our security system. The cameras have been down the past three days.”
“Fabulous.”
“This is going to be another loud, messy business, isn’t it?”
“You might be in for a few cancellations.”
–
While he was waiting, Cardinal turned off the shower and stood in the bathroom trying to picture how it had all transpired. Mendelsohn must have turned on the water to let it get hot before showering. Then he’d sat down on the toilet.
The bullet that had caught him in the chest, after passing through the door, was telling Cardinal something. He spoke, barely above a whisper. “You’re in the hallway and listening at the door and you hear the shower running. Somehow you get past the lock and step inside. The shower is running, the door is closed. Why do you shoot straight through the door? Why did you aim straight for the seated position?”
Gloved, Cardinal stepped out and pulled the bathroom door shut. There was barely an eighth of an inch clearance, and even that was obscured by the deep pile of the carpet.
He opened the door again, avoiding the sight of Mendelsohn. “No. You knew he was sitting down. The door must have been open.”
He turned to look at the folding closet doors that faced the bathroom. Mirrored from floor to ceiling. The door on the left was closed flat and reflected Cardinal’s image and Mendelsohn’s lower legs curled on the floor. The other door was ajar. Cardinal could see the shoulder of Mendelsohn’s trench coat in the space between the two doors. The angled mirror on the right reflected the bed and part of a nightstand.
“You were under the bed,” Cardinal said. He went to stand beside it. The closet door now reflected the toilet and Mendelsohn’s bare feet.
“He leaves the door open to let some of the steam out. Then he decides to use the toilet. He sits down, but
