Carver sat thinking about that one. Remembering Romano’s reaction in Atlanta when he’d described the two men he’d talked to in Wesley’s Fort Lauderdale condo. She’d been momentarily shaken. There was no way for her to be sure how the Fort Lauderdale conversation had gone. She was undercover and didn’t like complications that might reveal what she was doing. Not with Butcher in the same room. Carver couldn’t blame her for that. He remembered Butcher’s eyes. Beyond cruel. Psychotic eyes.
Desoto said, “Amigo, you there?”
Carver said, “Me a psycho, huh?”
Desoto said, “I don’t think that’s too strong. Hey, crime calls. I gotta run.”
Carver said, “Run.”
Chapter 21
At just past ten o’clock, Walter Ogden walked into Carver’s office, bringing with him a push of outside heat. He was wearing a pale gray suit, blue shirt, yellow tie. Glossy black slip-on shoes with tassels that had brass on them. His sandy hair was neatly combed except for a clump above his right ear that the ocean breeze had gotten under and caused to stick out at an angle like a crooked wing. He was smiling. Carver knew that meant nothing. Cobras smiled before striking.
As soon as he’d stepped into the office and nodded to Carver, he moved aside. Butcher and Courtney Romano entered, Butcher standing off to one side like a gentleman to let Courtney in first. She was wearing stylish, tight-fitting jeans, heels high enough to be stilts, a low-cut blouse that fit tight around her middle and showed off her breasts. Lots of wild dark hair and mascara. Carver thought she looked a lot like that singer, Gloria Estefan.
Butcher looked like nobody in show business. He was his unique, quietly sadistic self. Features showing no emotion but for his tiny glittering eyes, made to seem even smaller by the pads of flesh around them. He had on white slacks, a silky white shirt open almost all the way to his navel. He was wearing a silver chain around his neck with what looked like a polished white fragment of bone dangling from it. Animal bone, Carver hoped. Other than the bone fragment, Butcher was dressed relatively normally today.
Other than that.
Ogden said, “Well now, I suppose you didn’t expect to see us again so soon.”
“I took you at your word,” Carver said, wondering if he could get to the Colt in the file drawer next to Ogden. “After all, I didn’t pick up the envelope you left for me at the Holiday Inn desk.”
Ogden surprised him. “Forget about the money, Mr. Carver. Apparently you’re a man possessed by ethics.” He spoke of ethics as if they were demons. “Now, that isn’t necessarily all bad.”
Butcher was gazing balefully at Carver, as if he didn’t like the way the conversation was going and wished he could get busy with the blade. Courtney Romano was perspiring just enough to put a soft sheen on her bronze flesh. She was leaning with her hands behind her on the back of the chair near the desk, her arms braced with the elbows in. The pose made her breasts jut aggressively beneath the tight blue blouse. She belonged on the cover of one of those true-crime magazines. Probably knew it. She was rocking back and forth on her very high heels, glancing over at Carver now and then deadpan. Gun moll of the month.
Ogden said pleasantly, “Butcher’s got something for you, Mr. Carver.”
As Butcher advanced, reaching for a pocket, Carver grabbed his cane and levered himself up behind the desk, ready to drive the cane’s tip into Butcher’s gut if he had the chance.
Ogden chewed the inside of his cheek and nodded thoughtfully, obviously impressed by the lame man’s surprising quickness. Carver had to be reassessed again. My, my. Ethics, and now unsuspected physical ability.
Butcher didn’t pull a knife from the pocket. Instead he grinned and withdrew a handful of photographs. They were color shots of the sort taken with an instant camera. Butcher dropped them on the desk and Carver saw that the top photo was of Edwina in her blue bathing suit, standing at the side of the pool behind her house, her arms extended in front of her as if she were poised to dive. She’d already been in the water; her hair was wet and lay flat against the back of her head and neck and shoulders. She was squinting the way people do when they’ve just had an eyeful of pool chemicals.
Butcher said, “Clear shots, huh? Had to get damn near close enough to touch her to get pictures like this.” He gave his grating giggle. “Wouldn’t mind touchin’ her.”
Ogden said, “They were taken just this morning. Less than an hour after you left Miss Talbot.”
Something in Carver drew tight. He knew what this was going to be. He hadn’t snapped at the money in Atlanta, now they were ready to apply another kind of pressure to get him to drop the investigation.
He was right, and then again he was wrong.
Butcher said, “She’s a nice piece, your Edwina Talbot. Great legs and ass.”
“Too pretty a woman to let her get messed up,” Courtney Romano said.
Ogden patted at his hair. Discovered the wayward wing above his right ear and tucked it back deftly with a crooked forefinger. He said, “Butcher told you the truth; we were close enough to touch the young lady this morning, The point is, you don’t want her touched. Neither do I. Now Butcher, here, he’s another story.”
“Another species,” Carver said.
Butcher said, “There goes that sense of humor again. Dangerous.”
“Someday he might die laughing,” Courtney said.
Carver thought, Jesus, don’t egg him on!
Ogden crossed over to the desk so he was standing close to Carver. He was still smiling, but not with a single thermal unit of warmth. He used a manicured finger to spread out the photographs on the desk. There were about a dozen of them, all of Edwina. Edwina in her suit and rubber thongs, walking across the veranda toward the pool, her hair not yet wet. Edwina in the water, head and shoulders visible, right arm slung forward, hand cupped, stroking toward the pool’s edge. Edwina pulling herself up out of the pool, her suit wet and plastered to her body, her buttocks straining against the thin and flexible material. Butcher tapped that photo with his knuckle. “That’n there’s my favorite.”
“We took these photographs,” Ogden said, “to show you how accessible your Miss Talbot is to us. The camera might just as well have been a . . . well, something else.”
Carver said, “I could make sure she wasn’t so accessible.”
“Could you really?” Ogden seemed remotely amused. “For how long? One thing we’ve got is patience. Another is time.”
“He thinks he could move her to another state,” Butcher said, gloating about Carver’s predicament. “Just give her another name and make believe she’s somebody else.”
Courtney said, “We’d find her.” She looked at Carver and he thought he saw something, a momentary soft earnestness, in her eyes. “I mean that. We’d find her.”
“That I promise you,” Ogden said. “And we always keep our promises.”
Carver knew they were right. It wasn’t necessary to kidnap Edwina in order to use her continued well-being for leverage. And they knew she wouldn’t simply give up her life in Del Moray, even if Carver asked her to leave for her own safety. Besides, leaving was no guarantee of a long and untroubled existence. Always there’d be the apprehension, the imagined movement in the corner of vision, the shock of the late-night phone call or doorbell. Not a way for Edwina and Carver to live, holding their breath in Oskaloosa, Iowa, or some such place where they might pretend to be distant and secure, knowing all the time they were pretending.
“You’re telling me to drop my investigation,” Carver said, “or you do something to Edwina.”
“No, no,” Ogden said, shaking his head. “Things have changed.”
“What changed them?”
“Some thoughts we had after our little get-together in your hotel room in Atlanta.”
Carver glanced at Courtney. She was staring straight ahead, nervously kneading the chair back behind her with her square, strong hands.