And woke up to late-afternoon sun and a headache.
He showered quickly, changed his clothes, and made a telephone call.
The police detective was very obliging. “I can come to the hotel if you like, or you can come down here.”
“I’d appreciate it if you could come here.”
“Sure, no problem.”
He took the elevator back down to the ground floor and had some coffee in the restaurant, then felt hungry and had a sandwich. It was supposed to be too early for food, but the waitress took pity on him.
“You on vacation?”
“No,” he told her, taking a second cup of coffee.
“Business?”
“Sort of.”
“Where you from?”
“ Scotland.”
“Really?” She sounded thrilled. He examined her; a pretty, tanned face, round and full of life. She wasn’t very tall, but carried herself well, like she didn’t plan to make waitressing a career.
“Ever been there?” His mouth felt rusty. It had been a long time since he’d had to form conversations with strangers, social chitchat. He talked at the weekenders, and he had his family-and that was it. He had no friends to speak of; maybe a few old soldiers like him, but he saw them infrequently and didn’t keep in touch between times.
“No,” she said, like he’d said something humorous. “Never been outside South Cal, ”cept for a few trips across the border and a couple of times to the East Coast.“
“Which border?”
She laughed outright. “Which border? Mexican, of course.”
It struck him how ill-prepared he was for this trip. He hadn’t done any background. He thought of the seven P‘s, how he drilled them into his weekenders. Planning and preparation. How much P &P did you need to pick up the body of your brother?
“What’s wrong?” she said.
He shook his head, not feeling like talking anymore. He got out the map the car-rental man had given him, plus another he’d picked up from a pile at reception, and spread them on the table. He studied a street plan of San Diego, then a map of the surrounding area. His eye moved up the coast: Ocean Beach, Mission Beach, Pacific Beach, and La Jolla.
“What were you doing here, Jim?”
He didn’t realize he’d spoken out loud until he saw the waitress looking at him. She smiled, but a little uncertainly this time. Then she pointed to the coffeepot, and he saw that he’d finished the second cup. He nodded. Caffeine could only help.
“Mr. Reeve?” The man put out his hand. “They told me at reception I’d find you here. I’m Detective Mike McCluskey.”
They shook hands, and McCluskey squeezed into the booth. He was a big fresh-faced man with a missing tooth which he seemed to be trying to conceal by speaking out of the other side of his mouth. There were shoots of stubble on his square chin where the razor hadn’t done its job, and a small rash-line where his shirt collar rubbed his throat. He touched his collar now, as though trying to stretch it.
“I’m hellish sorry, sir,” he said, eyes on the tablecloth. “Wish I could say welcome to San Diego, but I guess you aren’t going to be taking too many happy memories away with you.”
Reeve didn’t know what to say, so he said thanks. He knew McCluskey hadn’t been expecting someone like him. He’d probably been expecting someone like Jim-taller, skinnier, in less good all-around shape. And Reeve knew that if the eyes were the window on a man’s soul, then his eyes were blackly dangerous. Even Joan told him he had a killer’s stare sometimes.
But then McCluskey wasn’t what Reeve had been expecting either. From the deep growl on the telephone, he’d visualized an older, beefier man, someone a bit more rumpled.
“Hell of a thing,” McCluskey said, after turning down the waitress’s offer of coffee.
“Yes,” Reeve said. Then, to the waitress. “Can I have the bill?”
“We call it a check,” McCluskey told Reeve when they were in the detective’s car, heading out to La Jolla.
“What?”
“We don’t call it a bill, we call it a check.”
“Thanks for the advice. Can I see the police report on my brother’s suicide?”
McCluskey turned his gaze from the windshield. “I guess,” he said. “It’s on the backseat.”
Reeve reached around and picked up the brown cardboard file. While he was reading, a message came over McCluskey’s radio.
“No can do,” McCluskey said into the radio at the end of a short conversation.
“Sorry if I’m taking you away from anything,” Reeve said, not meaning it. “I could probably have done this on my own.”
“No problem,” McCluskey told him.
The report was blunt, cold, factual. Male Caucasian, discovered Sunday morning by two joggers heading for the oceanfront. Body found in a locked rental car, keys in the ignition, Browning pistol still gripped in the decedent’s right hand…
“Where did he get the gun?”
“It’s not hard to get a gun around here. We haven’t found a receipt, so I guess he didn’t buy it at a store. Still leaves plenty of sellers.”
Decedent’s wallet, passport, driver’s license, and so forth were still in his jacket pocket, along with the car rental agreement. Rental company confirmed that male answering the de-scription of James Mark Reeve hired the car on a weekend rate at 7:30 P.M. Saturday night, paying cash up front.
“Jim always used plastic if he could,” Reeve said.
“Well, you know, suicides… they often like to tie up the loose ends before they… uh, you know, they like to make a clean break…” His voice trailed off. Suicides; the next of kin. McCluskey was used to dealing with howling uncontrollable grief, or a preternatural icy calm. But Gordon Reeve was being… the word that sprang to mind was methodical. Or businesslike.
“Maybe,” Reeve said.
Decedent’s motel room was located and searched. No note was found. Nothing out of the ordinary was found, save small amounts of substances which tested positive as amphetamine and cocaine.
“We’ve had the autopsy done since that report was typed,” McCluskey said. “Your brother had some booze in his system, but no drugs. I don’t know if that makes you feel any better.”
“You didn’t find a note,” Reeve stated.
“No, sir, but fewer suicides than you might think actually bother to leave a note. It looked like there’d been a message of some kind left on the mirror of the motel bathroom. He, uh… looks like it was written with toothpaste, but then wiped off. Might indicate the state of mind he was in.”
“Any obvious reason why he would commit suicide?”
“No, sir, I have to admit I can’t see one. Maybe his career?”
“I wouldn’t know about that, I was only his brother.”
“You weren’t close?”
Reeve shook his head, saying nothing. Soon enough they arrived in La Jolla, passing pleasant bungalow-type houses and then larger, richer residences as they neared the oceanfront. La Jolla ’s main shopping street had parking on both sides of the road, trees sprouting from the sidewalk, and benches for people to sit on. The shops looked exclusive; the pedestrians wore tans, sunglasses, and smiles. McCluskey pulled the car into a parking bay.
“Where?” Reeve asked quietly.
“Two bays along.” McCluskey nodded with his head.
Reeve undid his seat belt and opened the car door. “I’ll be fine on my own,” he told the detective.
There was a car in the second space along. It was a family model, with two kids playing in the back. They were boys, broth-ers. Each held a plastic spaceman; the spacemen were supposed to be battling each other, the boys providing sound effects. They looked at him suspiciously as he stared in at them, so he went and stood on the sidewalk and looked up and down the street. Jim’s body had been found at six o’clock Sunday morning, which meant two o’clock Sunday afternoon in the UK. He’d been on the moor, chased by a group of weekend soldiers. Playing sol-diers: that’s how Jim had summed up his brother’s life. At 2:00 P.M. it had been raining, and Gordon Reeve had been naked again, clothes bundled into his rucksack-naked except for boots and socks, crossing the wetland. And he hadn’t felt a thing; no twinge of forewarning, no sympathetic gut-stab at his broth-er’s agony, no fire in the brain.