But sooner or later there would be cops called to the Crosby Street loft, and then you could forget about finding Roger anywhere in the neighborhood. He’d realize he’d missed his chance and he’d get the hell out of there. So the thing to do was go back right now and hope to surprise him there before the cops showed up.
He’d wait, though, until the Jacksonville flight left. Just because he couldn’t spot Roger didn’t mean the man hadn’t found his way to the airport. Suppose he were Roger. Would he hang around the departure gate while the minutes crawled by? Not a chance. He’d show up at the last minute, ticket in hand, and board the flight just before it pulled away from the gate.
So what Keller would do was stay right where he was, keeping an eye out for last-minute travelers, and if Roger turned up…
Then what? If Roger turned up he’d have a ticket and a boarding pass, and he’d get on the plane, and what the hell was Keller going to do about it?
Or suppose Roger was being ultra-cute, which was entirely possible. Suppose Roger had spotted the hitter early on, and had tagged him back to the Woodleigh. How hard would it have been for a resourceful guy like Roger to get into the guy’s hotel room? Say he found a ticket there, knew where his quarry was headed and what flight he’d be on.
Wouldn’t he be tempted to catch another flight, an earlier flight, so he’d be waiting at Jacksonville Airport when the man arrived?
As far as Keller could make out, there was only one way to play this.
Twenty-nine
The flight was sold out in coach, but they had a couple of seats left in first class. They boarded the first-class passengers ahead of everybody else, along with the passengers requiring special assistance and the small children traveling alone. You didn’t have to board ahead of the others, you could bide your time, but Keller didn’t see the advantage. Keller was in the third row. If Roger was there, if he boarded now or at the last minute, he’d have to pass Keller to get to his seat.
Unless he was flying the plane, or artfully disguised as a stewardess.
The passengers filed onto the plane, and Keller checked them out as they came into view. His eyes widened when the man in the black windbreaker appeared, and then he reminded himself that he shouldn’t be surprised to find Maggie’s killer on board. He’d already known the guy was going to be on the flight, and that was why Keller himself was on it.
Keller was somewhat surprised to find out the man was also flying first class, and close enough so that Keller could almost reach out and touch him. Keller was in 3-B, on the aisle, and Maggie’s killer was in 2-E, one row up and on the other side of the aisle.
Suppose they’d been seated side by side. Suppose the guy turned out to be chatty.
That seemed unlikely, but you never knew. But Keller’s seat mate was a woman, middle-aged, and she was already engrossed in the book she’d brought along, and it looked thick enough to see her through a couple of flights around the world. She seemed happy to ignore Keller, and Keller felt free to ignore her in return.
The plane left the gate on schedule. There was one empty seat left in first class, but Roger didn’t show up at the last minute to claim it. Keller leaned back in his wide, comfortable seat, stretched out his legs, and relaxed.
It wasn’t the first time Keller had ever flown first class. He generally avoided it, because the price was ridiculous, and, really, what was the point? You had a wider seat and more legroom and a better meal, and the drinks were free. Big deal. Everybody got there at the same time.
And didn’t it make you more conspicuous? The flight attendants gave you more attention, so wouldn’t they be more likely to remember you?
Keller kept glancing across the aisle, taking the measure of the man in 2-E. Did the son of a bitch fly first class all the time? Keller supposed he could afford it, there was enough money in a job to cover a lot of overhead. He couldn’t remember what they’d arranged to pay this master of disguise to kill Maggie, wasn’t even sure Dot had mentioned a figure, but it stood to reason that it was comparable to what Keller got, and that was enough to pay for a lot of airline tickets.
Son of a bitch liked to spend money, didn’t he? Bought hats and scarves and jackets and just left them behind. Wasn’t it risky, strewing the landscape with your castoff clothing? Well, maybe not, Keller decided. If you bought new items and discarded them when you were done with them, there’d be no laundry marks, nothing that led back to you. Besides, you wouldn’t be leaving anything at the crime scene. If someone found your hat or your jacket, nobody would rush it to a forensic laboratory. It would just get tossed in the trash, or wind up in a thrift shop.
Where this bird would never see it again. Because he wasn’t the type to walk into a thrift shop, was he?
The man was no stamp collector.
Keller grinned at the thought, figuring it put him right up there with Sherlock Holmes. The man flew first class, the man bought and discarded great quantities of clothing, the man spent money like he didn’t know what to do with it. Therefore he wasn’t a stamp collector, because a stamp collector always knew what to do with money. He bought stamps with it. Keller, faced with the choice of tourist and first-class air travel, couldn’t help doing the math and translating the difference into potential philatelic purchases. The difference on this flight, for instance, would pay for a couple of mint high values from the set Canada issued in 1898 for Victoria’s jubilee. Keller, given the choice, would have taken the less comfortable seat and the stamps. The murderer across the aisle wouldn’t have any better use for those stamps than to paste them on a letter.
Keller looked at him again, saw he was wearing a black silk sleep mask. Had his head back, his hands in his lap. He’d killed an innocent girl, and he was sleeping like a lamb.
One thing Keller realized-he was glad the bastard wasn’t a stamp collector.
When they served the meal, the man across the aisle had a good appetite. The murder he’d committed on Crosby Street didn’t seem to have put him off his feed. Keller, fiercely hungry himself, couldn’t fault the guy on that score. For that matter, had he ever had trouble eating after a job?
Not that he could remember.
And the meal they served you was certainly better than what the peasants were making do with in the back of the plane. They even gave you real glasses and china and silverware instead of that plastic crap you got in coach. Well, not silverware, he thought, although people called it that. Stainless, he read on the back of the fork.
Stainless. Were there bloodstains in Maggie’s loft on Crosby Street? Had he shed her blood? It was supposed to look like an accident, but there were all kinds of accidents, and some of them broke the skin.
What difference did it make? Why was he even thinking about it?
He looked across the aisle. The killer had polished off his food and was sipping his wine. They gave you a half-bottle of wine in first class, red or white, and Maggie’s killer had gone for red. He’d had a drink before the meal, too, a scotch on the rocks. Well, why not? His work was done, he was heading for home, and he didn’t have any reason to think he needed to have his wits about him. He didn’t know about Roger.
Keller, who wasn’t crazy about wine in the first place, had turned it down, and for a drink before the meal he’d settled on orange juice. He knew this didn’t make him morally superior to the other man, but that’s how he felt, sitting there, eyeing the fellow, watching him smack his lips over the blood-red wine.
In Jacksonville, Keller managed to be the first one off the plane. He led the way, scanning the gate area for a sign of Roger. He was looking for a tan windbreaker and a cloth cap, but he was also looking for the face he’d seen in the coffee shop.
No sign of the man.
There was a video monitor with a list of upcoming departures, and he pretended to study it while the hitter got off the plane, then tagged him all the way to a Delta gate, where a flight to Atlanta was scheduled to depart in a little less than an hour.