Thibadualt sighed deeply.
Flack might want a witness, depending on what he found or didn't find. The impatient man at his side wouldn't be much of a witness, but he would be better than none at all.
Flack moved to the closed door, opened it and reached over to turn on the light.
"Never been in there," said Thibidault. "Not since Melvoy moved it."
A small plywood desk sat in the middle of the room. On top of the desk was a computer that hummed in sleep mode. Against the wall to the right were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Simple. Planks nailed neatly together. Magazines, neatly lined up, were piled on the lower shelves.
On the wall to the left were two old, battered, unmatched display cases with glass windows. Behind the glass windows were neatly displayed knives, none large, most in sheaths or folded closed. There were about two dozen of them. Through the glass panes Flack could see that the blades that were visible were sharp and glistening.
On the back wall was corkboard on which a series of photographs had been pinned with small plastic push pins.
"Who're they?" asked Thibidault.
Flack looked at the photographs of Patricia Mycrant, James Feldt, Timothy Byrold, Ellen Janecek, Paul Sunderland and another woman and four more men. At the bottom left-hand corner of the photographs of this day's victims was a red check mark.
"Some friends of your Mr. Melvoy," said Flack, moving to the bookshelves, Thibidault at his side.
Flack picked up a magazine. Thibidault looked over his shoulder as he flicked through the pages of Beautiful Children magazine.
"Jesus Christ, he's a perv," said Thibidault.
"No, he was doing research."
"Research?"
There was a wireless phone on the desk next to the computer. Flack picked up the phone and pressed the redial button.
"Jeffrey?"
"No, Ellen, it's not Jeffrey," said Flack. "It's Detective Flack."
"My mistake," she said.
"A big one," said Flack. "Did you get a call from Adam Yunkin?"
"No," she said.
"From Jeffrey?"
She didn't answer.
"Did you tell him where you are?"
No answer.
"Get out of that room," said Flack. "Now. There's a policeman outside your door. Get him."
"But…"
"Get him," Flack demanded.
"Wait," she said. "There's someone at the door."
"Don't…" he shouted, but she couldn't hear him. She had put the phone down.
12
CONNOR CUSTUS WOKE UP looking at the ceiling of a dimly lit hospital room. He was feeling no pain but he knew that his lack of agony was only a result of the temporary solace of medication. He didn't know what they had given him, but it was working. His own drug of choice under comparable circumstances in both the recent and past had been morphine.
Connor welcomed the haze, knew that all he had to do was close his eyes and he would be asleep again, but such was not to be. He caught a movement to his right and turned his head to see a vision, a beautiful woman who reminded him of a girl in a Sicilian village whose name escaped him at the moment. The girl in the village was a beauty. So was the drug-induced vision at his bedside.
He began to close his eyes again when a voice said, "Custus."
He recognized the voice, the policewoman who had been at the rim of the pit, Hawkes's partner.
"A mistake has been made," he croaked, throat dry, slightly sore from dampness and the dust of a dead building.
A straw touched his lips. He drank. The water moistened his throat and tongue.
"A mistake?" Stella asked.
"I'm in heaven being served by an angel," he said. "That is certainly a mistake. I belong elsewhere. I'm not complaining, mind you, but if the system fails at this level, than how far behind is total chaos in the universe? I assure you my question is philosophical and not rhetorical."
"You like to talk," said Stella, standing above him.
"It's cultural and genetic," he said. "Most of the people in the inbred town I came from in Australia like to talk, take pride in it, get little work done because they're so enamored of their voices and words."
"Good," she said. "We have a lot to talk about."
"I'd prefer to wait till dawn," he said. "I can promise a greater coherence and willingness then."
"I'd prefer you less coherent and less willing at the moment," she said.
"Let me guess. Irish and Italian," Connor tried.
"I'm Italian and Greek," she said. "And you are not Australian, you're Irish and in trouble."
"Ah, when was I not? How is the good doctor?"
"Doctor Hawkes is fine," she said.
"Send him my regards."
"I'll let you do that yourself tomorrow. Want to tell me what happened?"
"By 'what happened' I assume you mean the murky events of this morning before I was swallowed by the sullen earth."
"That's right."
"Memory fails me," he said, flexing his fingers, starting to feel life in them. "Trauma does that sometimes. I fear I'll never remember. Selective amnesia."
"Then I'll tell you," she said, sitting in an uncomfortable blue naugahide chair.
Custus tried to turn his head toward her, but she was now just out of sight. He could hear her voice as he had in the rain-filled hole, in the darkness just hours ago. Was it hours? How long had he been here? Damn. He was waking up. There would be pain now unless he got more medication, agonizing pain in his broken ankle, numbing pain in his side.
"I'll listen better with something to quell the coming pain in my broken limb and wounded body."
"When I finish," Stella said.
"You're tired," said Custus.
"I'm tired," she agreed. "Want to hear my story?"
"Bedtime story?"
"Something like that."
"Then by all means, though the promise of a powerful narcotic would make me a much more attentive listener," he said. "And I gather that's what you want."
"It's what I want," she said. "I'll call the nurse when I'm done."
"Then by all means launch into your tale."
"You were hired by Doohan to blow up the bar," she said. "He told you the bar would be empty in the morning, that it usually was except for the cook and that the days of rain would keep even determined morning drinkers away. Worse case, Doohan said he'd get rid of the customers, tell the cook to go home because of the weather."
She looked at Custus, who said, "Not quite, but close enough if it were reality and not a tale."
"You planted the explosives the night before. Why didn't you bring the bar down then?"
"If I were telling this fanciful tale," Custus said, "I would say that Mr. Doohan had no alibi for the night, but he had a perfectly good one for the morning when he was supposed to be sitting in the barbaric chair of his dentist, whom he had called with an emergency. The telling touch would be that the dentist would confirm that Doohan did, indeed, have an emergency, a missing filling, an open nerve."
"But…?" said Stella.
"Ah, let's see," said Custus. "What if the dentist were not in, what if the storm of the century canceled his office hours?"
"What if?"
"He might go to the bar as he did every day," said Custus. "He might, if the tale were true, wait for me to come, try to stop me, get me to put off the sweet experience for another day."
"But he didn't," said Stella.
"Let's, to keep the conversation going and not deprive me of the company of a beautiful woman, let's assume he did not? Water?"
Stella reached over, took the water-filled paper cup from the bedside table and held it out to Custus who pursed his dry lips over the straw.
"Refreshing," he said. "So, we return to the tale?"
"So, alibi gone, Doohan hurried back to the bar knowing you were going to bring the place down. You argued in the street. He had a gun, the one Doctor Hawkes found you with. It's registered to Doohan. I'd guess he kept it behind the bar. The two of you argued. You went into the bar. He shot you. You took the gun from him and shot him. A shot hit the wet dynamite. Wet dynamite has been known to go off at the slightest spark, sometimes even spontaneously."