"We'll get him," Bekker said.
"Big, flat, blond Scandinavian face. Head like a milk jug, pale, almost fat. Got pretty good love handles on him, a belly," said Druze.
"We knew a half-dozen people like that," Bekker said. He took a hit on the beer and grimaced. "Most likely he's part of the antiques crowd. That could be tough, 'cause I don't know all of them. There's a possibility that he's with the university. I don't know. This affair is the only thing the bitch ever did that surprised me."
"The bad thing is, antiques people are the kind of people who go to plays. Art people. He could see me."
"Up on the stage, with the makeup, you look different," Bekker said.
"Yeah, but afterwards, when we go out in the lobby and kiss ass with the crowd, he could see me up close. If he ever sees me…"
"We'll figure him out," Bekker said, dumping the last box of photos on the pile. "I'll sort, you look."
There were hundreds of pictures, and the process took longer than Bekker imagined it would. Stephanie with friends, in the woods, shopping, with relatives. No pictures of Bekker…
Halfway through the pile, Druze got to his feet, burped and said, "Keep sorting. I gotta pee."
"Mmm," Bekker nodded. As soon as Druze closed the bathroom door, he stood, waited a minute, then quickly padded across the front room to the kitchen and opened the end drawer on the sink counter. Maps, paid bills, a couple of screwdrivers, matchbooks… He stirred through the mess, found the key, slipped it into his pocket, eased the drawer shut and hurried back to the front room as he heard the toilet flush. He'd been here a few times, waiting for the chance at the key… Now he had it.
"Any more candidates?" Druze asked, stepping out of the bathroom. Bekker was back in the center of the photo pile.
"A couple," Bekker said, looking up. "Come on. We're running late."
There were several large blond men, but this was Minnesota. Twice Druze thought he'd found him, but after a closer look under a reading lamp, he shook his head.
"Maybe you should look at them in person. Discreetly," Bekker suggested.
"They're not the guy," Druze said, shaking his head.
"You're positive?"
"Pretty sure. I didn't get the best look at him, I was on the floor, and he was standing up, but he was heavier than these guys. Fat, almost." He picked up a photo of Stephanie and a blond man, shook his head and spun it sideways back into the pile around Bekker.
"God damn it. I was sure he'd be in here," Bekker said. The photos were scattered around them like piles of autumn leaves; he grabbed a handful and threw them at an empty box, frustrated. "That bitch talked to everybody, took pictures of everybody, never gave anybody a minute's rest. Why wouldn't she have him in here? He's got to be here."
"Maybe he's somebody new. Or maybe she took them out. Have you gone through her stuff?"
"I spent half the morning at it. She had a diaphragm, can you believe it? I found this little plastic pack for it. Cops didn't say anything about that… But there's nothing else. No more pictures."
Druze began scooping the photos together and tossing them into the boxes. "So what do we do? Do we go ahead? With Armistead?"
"There's a risk," Bekker admitted. "If we don't find him, and we do Armistead, he might decide to turn himself in. Especially if he's got an alibi for the time that Armistead gets hit-as far as we know, he's hiding out because he's afraid the cops think he did it."
"If we don't do Armistead pretty soon, she'll dump me," Druze said flatly. "This turkey we're working on now, this Whiteface, won't last. And she hates my ass. We're hurting for payroll and I'll be the first to go."
Bekker took a turn around the rug, thinking. "Listen. If this man, Stephanie's friend, turns himself in to the police, they'll tell me, one way or another. I wouldn't be surprised if they have him come look at me, just to make sure I didn't pull something out in San Francisco. Make sure I wasn't the killer and somebody else was out there… Anyway, if I can find out who he is, before he has a chance to see you, we can take him. So if we take Armistead, and you stay out of sight, except when you're working…"
"And then I'll stay in makeup…"
"Yeah."
"That's what we ought to do," Druze said. "Maybe we can smoke the cocksucker out. If we can't, we can keep working on it…"
"I'll figure him out, sooner or later," Bekker said. "It's only a matter of time."
"How are we going to talk, if the cops stay on you?"
"I've worked that out."
Bekker's neighbor in the pathology department was working in England. Just before he had left, he and Bekker had chatted about their work and Bekker had noticed, idly at the time, that the other man had an answering machine in his bottom desk drawer, an operation manual peeking from beneath it. Late one night, when the office was empty, Bekker had slipped the old-fashioned lock on his neighbor's door, turned the answering machine on and used the instruction manual to work out new access codes for the memo option. He now gave the touch-tone codes to Druze.
"You can call from any touch-tone phone, leave a message. I can do the same to get the message, or leave one for you. You should check every few hours to see if I've left anything."
"Good," Druze said. "But make sure you clean up the tapes…"
"You can erase them remotely, too," Bekker said, and explained.
Druze jotted the code numbers in an address book. "Then we're all set," he said.
"Yes. We should probably stay away from each other for a while."
"And we're gonna do Armistead like we planned?"
Bekker looked at the troll, and a smile touched his face. Druze thought it might be simple joy. "Yes," he said. "We'll do Armistead. We'll do her tonight."
The stained-glass windows in Bekker's parlor came from a North Dakota Lutheran church that had lost its congregation to the attractions of warmer climates and better jobs. Stephanie had bought the windows from the church trustees, trucked them back to the Twin Cities and learned how to work in lead. The restored windows hung above him, dark in the night, ignored. Bekker focused instead on the coil that was unwinding in his stomach.
A dark exhilaration: but too soon.
He suppressed it and sat on a warm wine-and-saffron Oriental carpet with a wet clawhammer and the pile of paper towels. He'd bought the hammer months before and never used it. He'd kept it in the basement, hidden in a drawer. Bekker knew just enough about crime laboratories to fear the possibility that a chemical analysis would pick up something unique to the house-Stephanie's refinishing chemicals, glass dust or lead deposits. There was no point in taking chances. He washed it with dishwashing detergent, then sat on the rug and patted it dry with the paper towels. From now on, he would handle it only wearing gloves. He wrapped the hammer in extra towels and left it on the rug.
Plenty of time, he thought. His eyes skittered around the room and found his sport coat hanging on a chair. He got the pill case from its breast pocket and peered inside, calculating. No Beauty tonight. This needed a cold power. He put a tab of PCP on his tongue, tantalized himself with the bite, then swallowed. And a methamphetamine, for the action; usually the amphetamines were Beauty's ride, but not on top of the other… • • • Elizabeth Armistead was an actress and a member of the board of directors of the Lost River Theater. She'd once played on Broadway.
"Bitch'll never give me a part." Druze had been drunk and raving, the night six months earlier when the deal had occurred to Bekker. "Just like that movie-what was the name? On the train…? She's gonna dump me. She's got the pretty boys lined up. She likes pretty boys. With this face…"