“Shut your mouth, fool. If your body wasn’t attached to a brain, we’d get along much better.”
Even with her bad Spanish, the woman could joke with him. That’s the way Solaris took it: This is how close we’ve become.
There was something different in her manner. She was rushed, a critical woman more critical than usual. And the hairy Russian shadowed her movements, but from a distance, his attention swiveling from Dasha to the Chinaman who was now sitting in the backseat of the limo with Mr. Sweet.
There was an energy in the air, volatile.
More than once, he heard the name Applebee mentioned-the disgusting little man who’d cried like a baby because he had to ride in the helicopter.
“I would spit on such a man!” Solaris had once bragged to Dasha. “Why bring such a person to Cuba? What use could he be?”
He was testing. Wanted to see how she reacted. He could picture the blond woman and Applebee off by themselves, whispering. The Chinaman had told him Applebee was there to confirm there were tiny creatures in the South African crates the doctor was buying, and also to test the local water supply.
The woman didn’t discuss business with Solaris, so she surprised him, replying, “He’s going to make me rich; that’s his use. He’s finding a cure for a parasite. A sort of worm.”
“What kind of worm?”
“The kind of worm people will pay anything to get rid of.”
That peculiar little guy with a microscope. It was impossible for Solaris to compete. “A man who cries isn’t a man. He’s worthless!”
“Worthless?” The woman’s tone was cutting-yes, her way of joking, he decided. “You’d be an expert on that”
Later, as he died, Solaris realized he’d misread more than just her sense of humor.
Never saw it coming.
7
By 11:30, I’d finished giving my edited statement to detectives. During the interview I told them that, because I’d left my cell phone with Applebee, I’d checked the log. The last two numbers dialed were unfamiliar. They’d been made while I was chasing the bad guys.
“It was either Applebee or whoever killed him.”
The cops were not pleased that I’d retrieved the phone. They said I’d maybe screwed up any chance of fingerprints. They copied the numbers, letting me see they were pissed off.
So maybe that’s the reason they told me I couldn’t leave: a mild punishment.
At twenty minutes before midnight, and with nothing else to do, I took aside an investigator from the Bartram County Medical Examiner’s Office to ask if she’d come to any conclusions about Jobe’s death. I’d assumed murder, but realized there was another possibility.
The investigator, whose ironic name was Rona Graves, replied, “Are you a relative? A close friend?”
“No. His sister’s a friend. I’d never met him.”
“Are you wondering suicide or murder? It’s really impossible to say right now. Too soon. Too much to sort out.”
We were standing outside, Applebee’s porch light casting tree shadows on sand, stars beyond the tree canopy, the two of us separated from a handful of curious neighbors by yellow crime scene tape. Ms. Graves, in jeans and a blue blouse with rolled-up sleeves, was an interesting-looking woman, with her Appalachian face, Latina cocoa skin, wild black surfer-boy hair cropped short. She had all the professional mannerisms, didn’t have to think about it: the voice, the wording, body language that served as a barrier. She’d been in the business for a while. But she could also wrinkle her nose to show you how hard she was thinking, or brush an elbow. Ways of letting you know there was a human in there.
She was wrinkling her nose now, tapping thoughtfully on a clipboard. “I probably shouldn’t discuss this any more than that. We’re all going to have to wait for the autopsy.”
I nodded and looked toward the house-silhouettes of busy cops-then down a sand trail that led to more dilapidated houses. This island was prime for one of the big developers to move in, get the title problems resolved, then start all over demanding really big bucks.
It would happen.
“This could be a really nice place.”
I said, “Lots of waterfront, good trees. Yeah.” Startled we’d shifted to a similar pattern of thought.
“When the nightshade blooms here, it’s like snowdrifts. All those white blooms. But you’ve got to be careful, especially with kids. The berries are poisonous. We’ve done several of those cases.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Two died.”
She was still tapping on the clipboard. I got the impression she was marking time, just like me. Her preliminary examination was done. Now she was waiting for detectives to finish so she could bag the body and be on her way.
“Do you have any nonrelated questions, Dr. Ford?”
“Just Ford. Or Marion.”
“Okay. Ford. Anything else I can do for you?”
There was something else on my mind. I was concerned about the young constable.
I said, “The teenage girl who was here, the one the EMTs treated for shock? Her name’s Melinda Voigt. Local girl. She’s never been through anything like this. I think she’s going to need some help.”
“I haven’t met Melinda, but I know who she is. What kind of help?”
“Maybe a couple of visits with your shrink buddy. Better yet, the kind of help where someone with some authority-like you-tells the girl a small lie. A lie of kindness. I think someone needs to get the girl off alone and tell her that Applebee was dead before she arrived here.”
“She feels responsible?”
“The girl was on his porch when I arrived. She hadn’t gone in. She refused to let me in. After we found the body, she started wondering if maybe she could have saved him. If she hadn’t waited. Behaved a little more human and a little less hard-ass.”
“She played the role, huh? The big boss in charge.”
“That’s right.”
“I’m not surprised. The cops tell me she’s a pompous ass. Even before she got elected constable, they say she was a pompous ass. Do you know what the vote was? Four to three. Only seven island voters. She’d cooked up the constable idea herself. A title, some power. I hear she comes from big money.”
“Acting like a pompous ass is one of the stages most of us go through, isn’t it, Ms. Graves?”
“I’m not so sure. Are you including yourself?”
“Sure. I’ve got lots of experience. Not just the pompous ass stage, either. On a regular basis, I invent all kinds of ways to behave like an ass. Thoughtless ass. Clumsy ass. Dumb ass. Myopic ass. Name one.”
She was grinning as I added, “The kind of guilt Melinda’s starting to feel could become permanent. The kind too heavy even for us experienced asses to deal with. She told me she’s only twenty. A small lie of kindness might help.”
Graves thought about it for a moment, letting me see that her professional side was uneasy with the idea, before she said, “From what I was told, Applebee was still alive at a little after nine when you telephoned 911. Slightly more than an hour later, you called to say that he was dead. What time did the girl arrive on scene?”
“Nine-forty. That’s what Melinda told me. I showed up about twenty minutes later.”
The woman was shaking her head. “The window’s too small. We can’t pinpoint the time of death that closely.”
“I’ve read there’s a way by measuring the body’s core temperature-”
“Yes, I’ve already done that, but not with any…” She paused to organize her explanation. “Let me put it this way. After somatic death-that’s when the body as a whole stops functioning-a corpse’s core temperature can remain normal for one, even two, hours afterward, depending on conditions. Then it drops by one to one and a half degrees per hour. That’s what you’re talking about. I did my preliminary examination at eleven-thirty. Applebee’s temp was thirty-five Celsius, which is only two degrees below norm. See what I mean?”