Nudger shoved the lakeside photo across the table for Sanders to look at again, the one where Colt was holding a beer can high in a defiant toast. "And you're sure this is the man?"
Sanders gulped coffee, wiped his mouth as he stared down at the snapshot. "I don't know that from this photo. You tell me it's Colt, I believe you. I am sure the man I saw in the police lineup, the guy I saw in court, was the one that was in the liquor store with the gun. The one that blasted the old guy and his wife."
"But it's the same man."
Sanders shrugged. "Hell, you know photos. You take my picture, I look handsome."
Nudger doubted that, but he nodded and put the snapshot back into his pocket. "Did you see the getaway-car driver?"
"Got a glance, is all. Guy with long darkish hair, leaning over the steering wheel like he was trying to coax more speed outa the car."
"Colt had dark hair, wavy and almost shoulder-length."
Sanders grinned. "I know where you're going with that one, Nudger. Colt's lawyer tried it in court. Tricky little bastard; I gotta give him that. Full of more twists and turns than a double-jointed break dancer. But he couldn't shake me. It was Colt I saw in that liquor store. No doubt whatsoever here. Curtis Colt."
"How do you feel about capital punishment, Mr. Sanders?"
"I believe in it. Human life's the most precious thing there is; you take somebody's and you oughta die for it. And Colt took somebody's life."
"But you didn't recognize him positively in the photograph."
"He wasn't in a photograph when he was in the liquor store."
That was a good point, Nudger conceded, looking at Sanders and thinking that with a wart on his cheek the man really would look like Lincoln.
Sanders shot a glance at his watch. "I gotta get back and grade some tires or I get docked; we're slaves here."
"I suspect someday you'll do something about that," Nudger said.
Sanders looked around furtively and lowered his voice. "You mean the union?"
"Exactly," Nudger said, and thanked him for giving up part of his lunch break and left.
As he drove from Roll-On Recap City's parking lot and turned onto Dorsett Road, Nudger realized that being in the presence of all that glassed-in food had made him hungry. Claudia Bettencourt would be at a faculty meeting today until one o'clock. Nudger phoned her at Stowe High School and asked if she wanted to meet him for lunch. She said sure, at her apartment. Good girl.
Though he was in West County, he was still closer to Claudia's south St. Louis apartment than she was, so he got there first and let himself in with his key.
It was an old, spacious apartment on Wilmington, high- ceilinged and with steam-radiator heat. There was no central air-conditioning. The place was stuffy, with a faint scent of cooking gas mingled with the trapped summer heat. Nudger walked to the window air conditioner in the living room and switched it on. He stood for a moment in its humming, gurgling coolness, turning so the chilled draft dried his shirt where it was stuck to his back. The draperies at the opposite window caught the gentle movement of air and began swaying in slow rhythm like dreamy dance partners.
Claudia had lived in the apartment long enough for it to have taken on a settled appearance. The furniture, some of it new and financed through her job teaching at Stowe School, had adapted to its surroundings and seemed to have grown where it sat on the worn blue carpet. There was a clear glass ashtray with a compressed and bent cigarette butt in it on the coffee table and a stack of outdated newspapers on the floor alongside the sofa. Claudia didn't smoke; Nudger wondered who had snubbed out a cigarette here.
He walked into the kitchen. It was still too warm in there. He got a Budweiser out of the refrigerator, then returned to the cooler living room before popping the tab on the beer can. No need for a glass. He sat in a corner of the sofa where he could feel cool movement of air, found that morning's Post on top of the stack of papers, and checked the front section.
There was a photograph of Scott Scalla grinning while cutting a ribbon in front of a new factory in St. Charles. There was a piece about a county cop who had broken under strain and shot himself and his wife, and next to that a three-column article was advising people how to stay cool in the smothering grip of the present heat wave. There was nothing on Curtis Colt. He was old news and would be until a few days before his execution, when the media would get interested in whether he'd make a last-minute confession or order strawberries and pickles for his final meal. Murderers sure weren't like the rest of us; it was fun and more than a little scary to peek into their minds.
Nudger sighed, sipped beer, and turned to the sports page to read about the Cardinals' fourth straight victory. They'd won last night in extra innings. There was a photograph of Tommy Herr doing his muscular ballet over second base as he pivoted gracefully for the double play. Nudger thought Herr might be even smoother than Scott Scalla.
Claudia opened the door, pivoted neatly herself, and unloaded an armload of books and folders onto the table in the hall.
"Homework," she said, grinning at Nudger. "It's a little- known fact that teachers have more homework than their students. All this stuff has to be graded." She was teaching summer school this year, a heavy schedule.
She looked great, wearing a simple navy-blue dress that set off her long dark hair and brown eyes. Her waist appeared especially slim in the sashed dress; her lean features were perfect except for a narrow nose that some might have found too long but that Nudger thought gave her a noble look and conveyed a subtle but volatile sexiness. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, and Nudger liked to behold, then to hold.
He waited like a patient cobra until she got near enough, then pulled her down onto his lap and kissed her. She was heavy for her leanness, solid and strong. She returned the kiss, using her tongue.
"There are different kinds of homework," Nudger pointed out. "Some on subjects more interesting than the English you teach."
She climbed off his lap and primly straightened her dress. "It's the afternoon."
He glanced at the light streaming through the window and nodded. Afternoon, all right. A sex act might change all that, throw all the time zones out of whack.
"I've got some frozen spaghetti," she said, switching on the dining room air conditioner so it would blow into the kitchen.
Nudger knew enough to give up. For now. "That stuff in the little plastic bags you drop into boiling water?"
She didn't answer. He heard her clattering around in the kitchen. A piece of flatware hit the floor, bounced; water ran.
By the time he'd finished his beer and was done reading about the ballgame, she had two plates of spaghetti, some cloverleaf rolls, Parmesan cheese, and two glasses of red wine on the dining room table. Nudger was glad to see there was no garlic bread.
He sat down across from her at the table. "Did you see the girls this weekend?" The girls were Nora and Joan, her young daughters by her marriage to despicable Ralph Ferris.
Claudia nodded, striking viciously at the spaghetti with her fork. The Ralph effect. He wasn't surprised when she said, "I saw Ralph, too."
"How is he?"
"The same. A deceiving bastard."
Nudger was glad to hear her speak so about Ralph. She used to speak derogatorily about him only infrequently. She'd thought everything that had gone wrong with their marriage, with their children, had been her fault. Ralph had helped her to think that, helped her down into hell. Which was why Ralph was indeed a deceiving bastard.