McCluskey was standing beside him. Reeve turned his back and rubbed at dry, stinging eyes. The boys in the car had stopped playing and were looking at him, too. And now their mother was coming back with a young sibling, and she wanted to know what was happening. Reeve walked quietly back to McCluskey’s unmarked car.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“Deal,” said McCluskey.
They drank one drink apiece in an overpriced hotel bar. Reeve insisted on paying. The detective wanted a beer, and though Reeve knew he wasn’t supposed to touch alcohol, he ordered a whiskey. He knew he must be careful; his medication was back in Scotland. But it was only one whiskey, and he deserved it.
“Why La Jolla?” he asked.
McCluskey shrugged. “I don’t have an answer to that, except maybe why not. Guy rents a car, suicide on his mind. He drives around, and the world looks beautiful to him-so beautiful it makes him sad, which he hadn’t been expecting. And he decides, fuck it, why not now?” He shrugged again.
Reeve was staring at him. “You almost sound like you’ve been there yourself.”
“Maybe I have. Maybe that’s why I take the suicides. Maybe that’s why I like to spend some time with the still-living.” Then he shut up and sipped the beer.
“No note,” Reeve said. “I can’t believe it. The one thing in his life Jim ever loved was words, especially printed ones. I’m sure he’d‘ve left a note; and a long one at that. A manuscript.” He was smiling. “He wouldn’t have wanted to go quietly.”
“Well, he created a news story in La Jolla. Maybe that was his way of saying good-bye, a final front page.”
“Maybe,” Reeve said, half-believing, wanting to believe. He finished the whiskey. It was a large shot, easily a double. He wanted another, so it was definitely time to leave.
“Back to the hotel?” McCluskey suggested.
“The motel,” Reeve corrected. “Jim’s motel.”
The room was as it had been.
They hadn’t bothered to clean it up and relet it, McCluskey said, because James Reeve had paid until the middle of the week, and they knew his brother was coming and would take all the stuff away.
“I don’t want it,” Reeve said, looking at the clothes spilling from the suitcase. “I mean, there may be a couple of things…”
“Well, there are charities who’ll take the rest of it; leave that side of things to me.” McCluskey toured the room with hands in pockets, familiar with the place. Then he sat down on the room’s only chair.
“Jim usually stayed in better than this,” Reeve said. “Money must have been tight.”
“You’d make a fine detective, Mr. Reeve. What line of work are you in?”
“Personnel management.”
But McCluskey wasn’t fooled by that. He smiled. “You’ve been in armed forces though, right?”
“How could you tell?” Reeve checked the bedside table, finding nothing but a copy of Gideon’s Bible.
“You’re not the only detective around here, Mr. Reeve. I know Vietnam vets, guys who were in Panama. I don’t know what it is… maybe you all have the same careful way of moving, like you’re always expecting a trip wire. And yet you’re not afraid. I don’t know.”
Reeve held something up. It had been lying beneath the bed. “AC adapter,” he said.
“Looks like.”
Reeve looked around. “So where’s whatever goes with it?”
McCluskey nodded towards the suitcase. “See that carrier bag there? Half hidden under those trousers.”
Reeve went over and opened the bag. Inside were a small cassette recorder, microphone, and some tapes.
“I listened to the tapes,” McCluskey said. “Blank, mostly. There are a couple of phone calls, sounded like your brother wanted to talk to some people.”
“He was a journalist.”
“So it says on his passport. Was he here covering a story?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t you found any notes? There must be a notebook or something.”
“Not a damned thing. I wondered if maybe that was another reason for the trip to La Jolla.”
“What?”
“To ditch all those kinds of things in the ocean. Clean break, see.”
Reeve nodded. Then he held up the cable and the recorder. “It doesn’t fit,” he said. And he showed the detective that the adapter wouldn’t connect with the small machine. “It just doesn’t fit.”
After the detective had dropped him back at his hotel, Reeve went upstairs to wash. He thought of telephoning Joan, but checked himself. In Scotland, it was the wee small hours of the following morning. He could phone her at 11:00 P.M. his time, but not before. He wasn’t sure he’d still be awake at 11:00 P.M. He turned on the TV, looking for news, and found everything but. Then he made his way back downstairs. He used the stairs rather than the elevator, feeling the need for some exercise. At the bottom, he felt so good he climbed back up to the tenth floor and then descended again.
In the restaurant, he had soup, a steak, and a salad. He looked in at the bar, but decided against a drink. The hotel’s gift shop was still open, though, and he was able to buy a detailed street map of San Diego, better than the tourist offerings he’d so far been given. Back in his room, he found a couple of bulky phone books in one of the dresser drawers, took them to the table, and started working.
FIVE
THE NEXT MORNING, REEVE WOKE UP early but groggy, and went to the window to check. The strange car wasn’t there.
He’d seen it yesterday evening, outside Jim’s motel, and had the feeling it followed McCluskey’s car back here to the hotel. He thought he’d spotted it in the parking lot; a big old American model, something from the sixties or early seventies with spongy suspension and faded metallic-green paint that looked like a respray.
It wasn’t there now, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been there before.
He showered and telephoned Joan, having fallen asleep last night without fulfilling his own promise to himself. They spoke for only a couple of minutes, mostly about Allan. She asked a few questions about the trip, about Jim. Reeve’s replies were terse; Joan would call it denial-she’d read some psychology books in her time. Maybe it was denial, or at least avoidance.
But there wouldn’t be much more avoiding. Today he had to look at the body.
He ate breakfast in a quiet corner of the restaurant. It was buffet-style, with the usual endless coffee. There didn’t seem to be many overnight guests, but a bulletin board in the reception area warned that the hotel would be playing host to a convention and a couple of large-scale civic meetings during the day. After three glasses of fresh orange juice and some cereal and French toast, he felt just about ready. Indeed, he felt so good he thought he might get through the day without throwing up.
He went out to the parking lot, not bothering to have the car brought out front for him. He wanted a good look around. Satisfied, he got into the Blazer and put his map on the passenger seat. He’d marked several locations-today’s destinations. The biggest circle was around his own hotel.
The green car was sitting at the exit ramp of a lot next to the hotel’s. It slid out behind him, keeping too close. Reeve tried to see the driver in his rearview, but the other car’s windshield was murky. He could make out broad shoulders, a bull’s neck, and that was about it.
He kept driving.
The funeral parlor was first. It was out in La Jolla, not too far from where the body had been found. The vestibule was cream satin and fresh flowers and piped music. There were a couple of chairs, one of which he sat on while he waited to be shown through to the viewing room. That was what the quiet-spoken mortician had called it: the viewing room. He didn’t know why he had to wait. Maybe they kept the bodies somewhere else and only hauled them up and dusted them off when somebody wanted to see them.