She couldn't believe she'd confessed to having a penchant for Bedroom Adventure, and done everything but hang a sign out advertising her marriageability.
Suddenly the awareness of her total turn-on had her blushing prettily right down to her shoes and she looked up to see Hackabee take a sip of water, then lean over close to her ear and say, “Well, I guess this means my favorite leather-elbowed smoking jacket goes to Goodwill.” And he smiled his gorgeous smile into her eyes, and it was a beginning.
Highland Park
She'd never felt like this before. Never so totally open to anyone. Something magical, corny-sounding or not, was flowing between them. They had lingered over dinner as much as they dared, but the serious nature of Ukie's plight had cast a dark shadow over the conviviality that would otherwise have captured the remainder of the evening.
The drive out to Highland Park seemed to take forever. He was following her in a rented car. She'd offered to chauffeur him of course, but he wouldn't hear of it. She could tell he was delighted by her house, which pleased her.
“Gee,” he said jokingly, shaking his head as he took in the vast expanse of rooms, white walls, paintings, sculpture, objets d'art, and eclectics. It was breathtaking. “Maybe someday you'll be able to afford something nice,” in this cute, soft voice. It hit her just right.
“I know,” she confided back to him, “this squalor can really get depressing."
“So empty of objects. Is it always this bleak or did you just move and you haven't unpacked yet?” There was something everywhere you looked. A visual barrage of antiques and Deco and Nouveau and classical and impressionist and neorealist and minimalist all assaulting the eyes in a strangely pleasing hodgepodge that was so unexpected. The overall effect dazzling yet comfortable.
“No. It wouldn't be this bleak but I have a lady who comes in once a week and bleaks it for me."
“Yes.” He made a tsk-tsk sound. “Well, save your pennies. It won't always be this bad."
“That's a comfort.” She laughed. “Seriously,” she asked in a soft, smiling voice, “think it's too ostentatious?” She realized his answer was rather important to her.
“Matter of fact, what I think is"—he moved close to her—"that what you have is one helluva house. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
And he was speaking very low and she felt like he was talking about her, not the house, and she felt like an absolute, utter idiot when he didn't kiss her right then and there, but turned and just walked around admiring things, and she stood there trembling, waiting for him to take her in his arms and knowing that he wanted her too.
It was with the greatest effort of will that she wrenched her mind back to business, after all the man's brother was a mass-murder suspect, and she began going over Ukie's childhood.
When he talked about the closeness of their early years, before they'd started to draw apart, he could sense how special the conversation was to her. She seemed to be identifying so strongly with everything he told her. It was almost as if it was making her high. She was positively owing. Her eyes sparkling. Bright, like a cocaine edge. Switched on.
“Joe,” she told him finally, “I'm so bowled over by all of this."
“Not hard to understand. Twins have that effect on a lot of pe—"
“No. Not that. I mean, I've always felt like something was pulling me to this case but I haven't been able to verbalize my feelings. There was something acting like a magnet for me. I don't know how to say it. I'm a great believer in fate."
He wondered if she might have done some lines, she was so intense. “You believe in God, right?” he asked. She nodded. “Call it, God. A force. Kate. It doesn't matter, I suppose. Whatever guides our destiny—” He shrugged slowly. “I believe in fate too.” And he looked at her so deeply that it spoke volumes. “And I think this was all preordained somehow."
“I want to tell you"—she felt so corny but she had to say it—"that I know your brother is innocent. And I'll help both of you in every way that I can."
He smiled ingenuously, with the easy grace of the very handsome.
Dallas
Jack came in to work badly hung over and with a guilt about his self-indulgent dream fantasies and a paranoia about his sloppy policework of late. The water he'd remembered to put in the bowl outside was still there but the dog food he'd managed to set out was gone. That was the bright spot of the day.
When he got to work, made even more paranoid by the attempted sniping of a Dallas cop car in one of the predominantly black balkanized sectors which had dominated the morning news, the damn guys from the AG's office were all over him like white on rice and he was maneuvered into a room and found himself even before he'd had his morning coffee watching Ukie on videotape:
“Okay. Start it.” To Eichord with a self satisfied, smiling we-told-you-so-but-you-wouldn't-listen type of nod. “Watch this."
“He never lets himself be seen. He stays back. In the shadows. You can see he's tall from the shadows. Tall like a professional basketball nigger. He likes to hur—"
“Stop it. There! See that! Go back,” the one named Sawyer told the man standing by the video playback.
“What?"
“Rewind. Go back.” He was excited, turning to Jack. “Eichord. I want you to watch this. Did you catch it? Go on. Play it."
The other man pressed the play switch and Ukie said, “In the WATER. He showed me under the water. These big—"
“No. Shit. You went too far. Go forward just one second. Okay—STOP. All right. Now.” He pressed play again.
“—don't know.” Ukie was crying and Eichord remembered the incongruousness of the moment, and then Ukie composed himself a bit and continued, “He never lets himself be seen. He stays back. In the shadows.” Eichord watched the very convincing way that Ukie shuddered in fear. “You can see he's tall from the shadows. Tall like a professional basketball nigger.” And they stopped it again.
Eichord thought he knew what they were going for. The shuddering or trembling was a possible tip-off. Either Ukie was one consummate actor or he believed what he was saying.
Sawyer flipped a fluorescent light above them and Eichord, badly hung over, was blinded by it and was blinking like a bat coming out of a dark cave into a flashlight beam as the man excitedly demanded of him, “Well, what about THAT shit?"
“Yeah. It's pretty effective-looking trembling, I'll admit. Hard to know if it's an acting job or not."
“Trembling?” Eichord nodded. “What the hell are you talking about—TREMBLING?” He acted as if Jack had been speaking Swahili.
And Eichord answered like Hackabee, “Trembling, Trepidant. Timorous. Timid ... tremulant?"
“What the shit?"
“You played the video where he shakes. A little dramatic shudder while he tells me he never sees the guy. Pretty good. Method acting, for all I know."
“I don't understand what the fuck this man is talking about,” he said to Wally Michaels, who fought a smile back and gestured innocently as if to say keep me out of this.
“What in the jolly fuck are you talking here, mister? I just showed you where your murder suspect implicates a fucking NIGGER in the fucking surveillance tape and you sit there with some trembling shit that doesn't make a lick of sense. And by the way you've got a piece of fucking TOILET PAPER stuck to your cheek.” The other man snickered under his breath as the AG's man shook his head in disgust.
“Oh,” Eichord mumbled. “I forgot.” He reached and felt the impromptu coagulant on his face. “I cut myself shaving, he mumbled. No shit.
“He never lets himself be seen. He stays back. In the shadows. You can see he's tall from the sh—” The man stopped it with a vengeance and turned to Eichord, who felt himself coming apart. “Pay attention. Listen, goddammit.” Click.