“Maybe he left Allenby trussed up,” she said. “And then, after he’d killed her and left the tub running to establish the time of death, he went back to the Woodleigh, took the Do Not Disturb sign off the knob, let himself in with the key he’d taken from Allenby on his first visit, hanged the poor bastard with a sheet from his own bed, and wrote out the note.”
“What note?”
“Didn’t I mention that? A note on hotel letterhead. ‘I can’t do this anymore. God forgive me.’ “
“Allenby’s handwriting?”
“How would anybody know?”
He nodded. “The drowning looks like an accident,” he said, “but the client who ordered the job-“
“Which is to say us.”
“-knows it’s a hit, and figures it was one job too many for Allenby, and the guy’s conscience tortured him into ending it all. Either he left Allenby alive while he went down and did Maggie-“
“Risky.”
“-or he killed him the first time, figuring nobody was going to discover the body, and so what if they did? But by coming back he could make a phone call from the dead man’s room, and the phone records would establish time of death regardless of the forensic evidence.”
Keller frowned. “It’s too tricky,” he said. “Too many things could go wrong.”
“Well, he was a tricky guy.”
“Speaking of tricky, didn’t you say he hanged him with a bed sheet? That’s what guys do in prison, but would you hang yourself with a sheet if you had other things to choose from?”
“I wouldn’t hang myself at all, Keller.”
“But a sheet,” he said. “Why not a belt?”
“Maybe Allenby wore suspenders. Or maybe it was part of the game Roger was playing.”
“He liked playing games,” he agreed. “The whole thing was a game, wasn’t it? I mean, chasing around the country to murder other people in the same line of work as yourself. The idea is you increase your income that way, but do you? What you really do is use up a lot of time and spend a ton of money on airfare.”
“Not a good career move, you’re saying.”
“But it made him feel smarter than the rest of us. Smarter than everybody. Switching clothes, pasting on a mustache and peeling it off. All that phony crap. You’d expect it from some jerk in the CIA, but would a pro waste his time like that?”
“He wasn’t perfect, Keller. He killed the couple in Louisville that wound up in your old motel room, and he popped the guy in Boston who stole your coat.”
“I was lucky.”
“And he was a little too cute for his own good. I guess he spotted Allenby easily enough. Well, so did we. Allenby wasn’t worried about being spotted by anybody but the designated victim. And then I guess he got tired of waiting. Well, I can understand that. We were getting pretty sick of it ourselves, as I recall. You even said something about killing them both and getting it over with.”
“I remember.”
“Once he spotted Allenby, why wait? He could just follow him home and take him out, and he did, in his hotel room.”
“He didn’t have to kill Maggie,” Keller said.
“But the contract was always carried out, remember? That was Roger’s trademark, he bided his time until the hitter got the job done, and then he did a job of his own on the hitter. This time the hitter was out of the picture early, so Roger felt it was up to him to do the job. Maybe he thought it was part of being a pro.”
“Maybe.”
“And it got him killed.”
He sat there for a while. She went on talking, going over it, and he let the words wash over him without taking in everything she was saying. He’d avenged Maggie, which had seemed important at the time, for reasons that made no sense at all now. He tried to picture her, and realized that her image was already fading, getting smaller, losing color and definition. Fading into the past, fading the way everything faded.
And Roger was gone. He’d been looking over his shoulder for months, stalked by a faceless killer, and now that threat had been removed. And he’d done it himself. He hadn’t known that was what he was doing, but he’d done it anyway.
“If I’d done the right thing,” he said, “he would have gotten away.”
“Roger.”
“Uh-huh. I’d have turned around and gone home, convinced that Roger wasn’t going to show. And I’d have been letting the real Roger off the hook, and we wouldn’t know anything more about him. Not his name or where he lived. We wouldn’t know any of those things.”
“We still don’t,” she pointed out.
“But now we don’t need to.”
“No.”
“The broker who found Allenby for us says we owe the balance.”
“What did he get, half in advance?”
“And the rest due on completion, and the guy’s point is the job was completed. Woman’s dead and it goes in the books as an accident, so we should be satisfied, right? If Allenby gets pangs of conscience afterward and decides to kill himself, well, what does that have to do with us? He offed himself without blowing the Crosby Street hit, so we got what we ordered.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I wasn’t about to explain what really happened.”
“No, of course not.”
“He thought I had booked this on behalf of a client, and that the client should pay. And I told him I agreed, but on the other hand we both knew the money wasn’t going to Allenby, because Allenby wasn’t alive to collect it.”
“The broker would keep it.”
“Of course. So I said, ‘Look, your guy killed himself, and that’s a shame because he did good work.’ “
“All he did was stand in a doorway.”
“Let me finish, will you? ‘He did good work,’ I said, ‘but he’s dead, and you’re not gonna pay him, and I’m not gonna give my client a refund. So what do you say we split it?’ And I sent him half of the half we owed.”
“That sounds fair.”
“I’m not sure fairness has anything to do with it, but I could live with it and so could he. Keller, we’re out of the woods. The loose ends are tied off and Roger’s dead and gone. You take all that in yet?”
“Just about.”
“You did the absolute right thing,” she said, “for the wrong reason. That’s a whole lot better than the other way around.”
“I guess so.”
“It wasn’t that girl, you know. That’s not why you wanted to kill him. That’s what you told yourself, but that wasn’t it.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No. Be honest, Keller. You don’t care about her, do you?”
“Not now.”
“You never did.”
“Maybe not.”
“You sensed something about that guy. You didn’t know he was Roger, you really thought he was our guy, but you picked up some vibration. And you didn’t like him.”
“I hated the bastard.”
“And how do you feel about him now?”
“Now?” He thought about it. “He’s gone,” he said. “There’s nothing to feel.”
“Same as always, right?”
“Pretty much.”
“Maybe it’s your thumb.”
“Huh?”
“Your murderer’s thumb, Keller. Maybe it gives you good instincts, or maybe it’s just good luck. Either way, I think you should keep it.”
He looked at his thumb. When he’d first become aware of its special quality, he’d gotten so he didn’t like to look at it. It had looked weird to him.
Now it looked just right. Not like everybody else’s thumb, maybe. Not even like his other thumb, for that matter. But it looked as though it belonged on his hand. It looked right for him.
“You buy some stamps in Jacksonville, Keller?”
“Some.”
“Paste them in your album yet?”
“You don’t paste them,” he said. “You’d ruin them if you pasted them.”
“You told me once what it is you do. You mount them, right?”
“Right.”
“Like you’d mount a horse,” she said, “except different. Did you mount these yet?”