Lying back against a half-dozen thick pillows, he reflected on the day's events, particularly the incident at Miguel's.
Stephen York, face red, eyes frightened. He was out of control. He was as crazed as a lunatic.
Of course, he also happened to be one hundred percent right. Ray Trotter had in fact done everything that York accused him of – from approaching Diaz about the alarms to planting the trash on the trunk of Eberhart's car.
Sure, he'd done it all.
But he'd never had any intention of hurting one hair on York 's coiffed, Rogained head.
He'd asked Diaz about York 's security system but the next day had anonymously turned the worker in for drugs (Ray had seen him selling pot to other employees at the landscaping company), in the hopes that he'd spill the information about Ray to the cops. He'd bought the books on sabotage, as well as the one about Mercedes brakes, but would never think about making a bomb or tampering with the businessman's car. The shims at the sauna room he was never going to use. And the chemicals from Southern States he'd never planned to use to make cyanide. He'd sent an order of cigars – nice ones, by the way, and completely poison free. Even the psychologist's reports in the Veterans Administration file were Ray's creation. He'd gone to the VA's office, requested his own file and, pretending to review it, had slipped in several sheets of notes, apparently taken by a counselor during therapy sessions from years ago, documenting his "troubled years" after the service. The report was all a fiction.
Oh, yes, his heart ached for revenge against Stephen A. York. But the payback wasn't exacting physical revenge; it was simply in making the man believe that Trotter was going to kill him – and guaranteeing that York spent a long, long time wallowing in paranoia and misery, waiting for the other shoe to drop: for York's car to explode, his gas line to start leaking, a gunshot to shatter his bedroom window.
Was that just a stomach cramp – or the first symptom of arsenic poisoning? And the offense that had turned Ray into an angel of vengeance?
I don't know what I did to you. Tell me, tell me, tell me…
To Ray's astonishment and amusement, York himself had actually mentioned the very transgression that afternoon at Miguel's, Ray thought back to it now, an autumn day two years ago. His daughter Celeste had returned home from her after-school job, a troubled look on her face.
"What's the matter?" he'd asked.
The sixteen-year-old hadn't answered but had walked immediately to her room, closed the door. These were the days not long after her mother had passed away; occasional moodiness wasn't unusual. But he'd persisted in drawing her out and that night he'd learned the reason she was upset: an incident during her shift at McDonalds.
Celeste confessed that she'd accidentally mixed up two orders and given a man a chicken sandwich when he'd asked for a Big Mac. He'd left, not realizing the mistake, then returned five minutes later, walked up to the counter. He looked over the heavy-set girl and snapped, "So you're not only a fat pig, you're stupid too. I want to see the manager. Now!"
Celeste had tried to be stoic about the incident but as she related it to her father a single tear ran down her cheek. Ray was heartbroken at the sight. The next day he'd learned the identity of the customer from the manager and filed away the name Stephen York.
A single tear…
For some people, perhaps, not even worth a second thought. But because it was his daughter's tear, Ray Trotter decided it was payback time.
He now heard the water stop running, then detected a fragrant smell of perfume wafting from the bathroom. Nancy came to bed, laying her head on his chest.
"You seem happy tonight," she said.
"Do I?"
"When I walked past before and saw you staring at the ceiling you looked… what's the word? Content."
He thought about the word. "That describes it." Ray shut the light out, and putting his arm around his wife, pulled her closer to him.
"I'm glad you're in my life," she whispered.
"Me too," he replied.
Stretching out, Ray considered his next steps. He'd probably give York a month or two of peace. Then, just when the businessman was feeling comfortable, he'd start up again.
What would he do? Maybe an empty medicine vial next to York 's car, along with a bit of harmless Botox on the door handle. That had some appeal to it. He'd have to check if a trace of the cosmetic gave a positive reading for botulism bacteria.
Now that he'd convinced the police that he was innocent and York was paranoid, the businessman could cry wolf as often as he liked and the cops would tune him out completely. The playing field was wide open…
Maybe he could enlist York 's wife. She'd be a willing ally, he believed. In his surveillance Ray had seen how badly the man treated her. He'd overheard York lose his temper at her once when she kept pressuring him to let her apply to a local college to finish her degree. He'd yelled as if she were a teenager. Carole was currently out of town – probably with that English professor she'd met at Arizona State when she was sneaking classes instead of taking tennis lessons. The man had transferred to UCLA but she was still seeing him; they'd meet in LA or Palm Springs. Ray had also followed her to a lawyer's office several times in Scottsdale and assumed she was getting ready to divorce York.
Maybe after it was final she'd be willing to give him some inside information that he could use.
Another idea occurred to him. He could send York an anonymous letter, possibly with a cryptic message on it. The words wouldn't be important. The point would be the smell; he'd sprinkle the paper with almond extract – which gave off the telltale aroma of cyanide. After all, nobody knew that he hadn't made a batch of poison.
Oh, the possibilities were endless…
He rolled onto his side, whispered to his wife that he loved her and in sixty seconds was sound asleep.
Copycat
He'd never revived a cold case in quite this way.
Detective Quentin Altman rocked back, his chair squealing with the telltale caw of ageing government furniture, and eyed the narrow, jittery man sitting across from him. "Go on," the cop said.
"So I check out this book from the library. Just for the fun of it. I never do that, just read a book for the fun of it. I mean, never. I don't get much time off, you know."
Altman hadn't known this, but he could certainly have deduced it. Gordon Wallace was the GreenvilleTribune's sole crime reporter and must've spent sixty, seventy hours a week banging out copy, to judge by the number of stories appearing under his byline every day.
"And I'm reading along and -"
"What is it you're reading?"
"A murder mystery. I'll get to that… I'm reading along and I'm irritated," the reporter continued, "because somebody'd circled some passages. In a library book."
Altman grunted distractedly. He was head of Homicide in a burg with a small-town name but big-city crime statistics. The fifty-something detective was busy and he didn't have much time for reporters with crackpot theories. There were twenty-two folders of current cases on his desk and here Wallace was delivering some elliptical message about defaced books.
"I don't pay much attention at first, but I go back and reread one of the circled paragraphs. It jogs my memory. Anyway, I checked the morgue -"
"Morgue?" Altman frowned, rubbing his wiry red hair, which showed not a strand of gray.
"Our morgue, not yours. In the newspaper office. All the old stories."
"Got it. How 'bout getting to the point?"
"I found the articles about the Kimberly Banning murder."
Altman grew more attentive. Twenty-eight-year-old Kimberly had been strangled to death a year ago. The murder occurred two weeks after a similar killing-of a young female grad student. The two deaths appeared to be the work of the same person, but there were few forensic leads and no motive that anyone could determine. The cases prompted a task-force investigation but eventually the suspects dried up and blew away like maple leaves in October, and soon the case grew cold.