He gives this a great deal of thought. It continues bothering him. He cannot risk George Harper finally catching up with him. He knows what will happen once that gorilla finds him. But how can he possibly avoid him forever? Sooner or later—
And then the idea occurs to him.
What if Michelle was... murdered?
Moreover, what if Harper was blamed for the murder, the same way he was blamed for the beating?
Wasn’t it possible to work it in a way that would make it seem Harper had done it? Make sure Harper was put away for good, or else fried in the electric chair? Either way, Harper would be out of the picture, and Davis himself would be home free.
Monday, November 16.
Harper is still in Miami, searching for his wife’s lover. Davis goes to the Harper house, lets himself in with his key again, apologizes to Michelle for what he did to her the night before, ascertains that she has already been to the police to blame the beating on her husband, and then suggests that they take a little drive out to Whisper Key, make a nice fire on the beach maybe, patch up whatever quarrel’s still between them, just the two of them, like it used to be in Bonn. Little kissy-facey by a roaring fire, okay? Maybe a little kinky sex on the beach, okay? In preparation for the kinky sex he has suggested, he takes from the glove compartment of his Thunderbird a pair of black leather gloves. He is wearing these when he removes the five-gallon can of gasoline from the shelf in Harper’s garage. He is wearing them when he takes a pair of wire hangers from one of Harper’s clothes racks. When Michelle asks him what he needs the hangers for, he replies, “To poke the fire with, honey.”
On the beach at Whisper Key, when he tries to bind her hands with the hangers (“Little kinky sex, right, Michelle? You always were into kink”), she recognizes his full intent at last, and runs from him in fear. She is already naked, their “patching up” of the quarrel between them has already proceeded that far. He chases after her, drags her back up the beach, slaps her until she is limp and can no longer resist, binds her hands and feet with the wire hangers, douses her with gasoline, strikes the fatal match, and runs off into the night.
“Home free,” he says.
At least until Thanksgiving Day.
On Thanksgiving Day, George Harper breaks jail, and Davis is forced to go into hiding again. He comes back to Calusa. But he has not reckoned with Sally Owen. At Sally’s house on Monday afternoon, November 30, she tells Davis she suspects he’s the one who killed Michelle. She says, moreover, that she might just go to the police one of these days to tell them all about it. He does not know whether she is teasing him or not. They are in bed together, she has just given him a blow job worthy of Michelle herself. Is she serious? He simply doesn’t know. But neither can he take a chance. He leaves the house “to go pick up some fried chicken” for their supper. Instead, he goes down the street to the Harper house, lets himself into the garage, and looks for a weapon there, something belonging to Harper, something that will link Harper to the second murder he has already decided to commit. When he finds the hammer with Harper’s initials on it, he grins from ear to ear. He takes out his handkerchief, wraps it around the handle of the hammer, and then goes back to Sally’s house again. She is at the kitchen sink when he comes in, filling a kettle with water for coffee. She does not turn when he says, “Hi, honey, I’m back.” It is his belief now that she never even knew what hit her. The first blow crushed her skull, and the next one — as she was falling to the floor — she probably never even felt.
“I dropped the hammer on the floor,” he tells us. “Another one for Georgie, I figured. My insurance.” He looks up. He stares first at Bloom and then at me, and then he says, “I really blew it, didn’t I? I mean, we had it all going for us, didn’t we? How else in this town can blacks and whites really get together? Except in bed? I mean, Jesus, we’d found the answer, am I right?”
And suddenly, he is weeping again.
The state’s attorney — Skye Bannister himself this time — arrived at the Public Safety Building a half hour after the typed confession had been signed by Davis. Bloom was still there, of course. So was I. He was an exceptionally tall man, Skye Bannister, perhaps six four or five, with the appearance of a basketball player, reedy and pale, with wheat-colored hair and eyes the color of his name. He read the transcript in silence. Then he looked up.
“I never did believe that fisherman’s identification,” he said. “Man with veins on his nose is a drinker for sure.”
“Will the confession hold?” Bloom asked.
“Can’t see why not,” Bannister said. “What are you thinking?”
“Entrapment,” Bloom said.
“No, you were both very clever,” Bannister said. He turned to me. “You thinking of entering the practice of criminal law, Mr. Hope?”
“Not particularly,” I said.
“Don’t,” Bannister advised. “Got enough trouble getting convictions as it is.” He smiled, and then turned back to Bloom.
“I’ll have a man here in half an hour or so, do the formal Q and A. Good-bye gentlemen. You did good.”
We were alone in the office again, Bloom and I.
“So,” he said, “it wasn’t Harper after all, was it? Davis was the beast we wanted.”
“Was he?” I said. “Or was the beast really beauty?”
“What?”
“Michelle,” I said, and then I left for the airport to pick up my daughter and Dale.