“Protect the teeth while eating. Abrasion wears out more enamel than cavities.”
“You chew with these things on?”
“That idea started out as a way to make your own false teeth. Cheap. Different styles. You know, so you could change them around like clothes. Like, different teeth for different occasions. I called them Occasional Smiles. It was one of those good ideas that aren’t so good when you do them.”
She looked at LaLonde, considered his dentition, then dropped the rubbery gums to the bench.
“You’re a real loser, Lee.”
LaLonde said nothing.
“Where’s Janet Kane’s body?”
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t.”
“We know about Lael Jillson, too.”
“I don’t.”
She nodded. “Tim, please handcuff this dirtbag.”
Hess looked at her, then stood and helped LaLonde off the couch. Merci watched as he handcuffed LaLonde’s wrists behind his back. Hess guided him back down to the couch.
“Thank you,” said Merci. “Lieutenant Hess, why don’t you step outside, pull that door shut behind you. Have a look around out there.”
She waited by the bench as Hess plodded across the shop. He looked at her once on his way past but she couldn’t read the expression. He pulled the door down behind him and Merci listened to the metallic echo.
“Sounds like lockup,” she said.
“It don’t sound like lockup when you can open it anytime you want.”
“They treat you bad inside?”
“What do you expect, a guy like me?”
“I expect bad.”
He nodded, not looking at her.
“You’re always working on something, aren’t you?”
He nodded again. She could feel his irritation rising, just what she expected in the absence of Hess.
“I don’t think you killed her.”
“I didn’t.”
“Get up.”
He stood and Merci turned him around by one shoulder. She was surprised how light he was. With her arm extended she guided him into the bathroom with the tip of her left index finger.
“Kneel down in front of the toilet. Do it.”
LaLonde knelt and looked back and up at her. Merci looked inside the bowclass="underline" pretty bad. The lid was already up.
“Stick your head inside and put your neck on the lip.”
He did.
“Knees together.”
He did that, too.
“Here’s the deal, Lee. You seem like a pretty nice guy to me. I’d hate to arrest you for the murder of Janet Kane, but with your prints on that fuse I don’t have much choice. So spill it — tell me how your prints got on that little glass tube and how the tube got into Janet’s BMW. The reason you’re looking at the toilet is because I want you to think about spending the rest of your life in one. That’s exactly where you’ll be in about one hour if I don’t get the answers I want.”
His head shook back and forth. “I can’t explain it.”
“Broaden your horizons.”
She squatted and used her weight to push his face into the water. He sucked in before he went under, then tried to wait her out. He lasted about half a minute then struggled. She actually imagined Kemp’s head in there, almost smiled. She let him up for one breath then pushed his face back in.
“Lee, you got to tell what you know. I know you’re lying because it was written all over your face.”
He shook his head again then tried to back out. She used his hair this time, a good wad of it, sitting forward and sitting down hard on him. She wanted to flush it but couldn’t without letting go. When she felt the panic of drowning hit him, she let him up again.
He gulped down a big swallow of air. Then another. But no words.
Down again. She kept her knees pushed up tight against his shoulders and her arms extended and her hands locked hard on his neck. It was easy to keep her weight forward and down.
Next came a long one. His neck was wiry and hot. She felt the panic in him, and the strength the panic gave him. Then she let him up.
He was gasping now. The big overlapping breaths came too fast for a full lungful of air to get in. When they started coming one at a time she waited for him to say something and when he didn’t she drove him back under again.
“Next air’s about sixty miles down the road, Lee.”
He writhed hard but her weight was up over his shoulders and she wasn’t about to let go of his neck. He tried to splay his knees and slide out under her, but her legs kept his arms pinned close and the cuffs kept the wrists tight. His voice echoed up from the water but it was just a kind of scream and no words. She looked back and saw his fingers reaching up for her like a hand in a horror movie. It felt good to dominate a creep this totally.
When she let him up he drew a huge breath and blew it out and took another, then another. “I was at. At the swap meet. Marina Park. This guy said could I. Could I build him a thing. A thing that got around car alarms. Because I had. I had the cigar boxes. For die phones. I said I could. Probably. Figure that out. I made him one. Used two 20-amps. He came two weeks. Later and picked it up. Don’t send me back. Back to prison for his. Lady. Lady, I don’t know what he did with. With it. But he came back again about three. Or four months ago. To see me at the swap meet. I’ll tell you what. He looks like. And I’ll help you get him. Just lemme breathe and don’t send me back.”
Merci let go of him and stepped away. Lee LaLonde slumped to the dirty tile.
She went outside and found Hess leaning against the cinder block.
“Interesting sound effects,” he said.
“Maybe there’s an award in it for me.”
From the car she retrieved the artist’s sketch of Kamala Petersen’s heartthrob at the mall.
Back in LaLonde’s bathroom the young man was sitting on the floor, dazed. Hess stood with one foot braced against the wall and his arms crossed, looking down.
She showed LaLonde the drawing. He stared at it for a long moment. Hess looked at it, then at her, and she saw the look of disappointment cross his sharp face.
LaLonde nodded. “That’s him.”
“Name, Lee.”
“Bill Something. He never said his last name.”
“Clean up,” said Merci. “You smell like a sewer. Then we’ll have a talk. Then I’m going to trash this place and find your little gadget. Because I don’t think you made it for some guy named Bill. I think you made it for you.”
Hess helped him up.
Three hours later Merci called off the search. She’d found out more than she wanted to know about Lee LaLonde — his work, his diet, his old clothes, his piles of magazines about inventing.
The mystery girlfriend even came over, unannounced, at 10 A.M., and unhesitatingly repeated LaLonde’s story about them being together, right here, the night Janet Kane left the living. She gave Merci her sister’s number because her sister sat with the kid while Mom was over here.
Hess ran a sheet on her while Merci interrogated her: two pops for drug possession, two drunk-in-publics, one prostitution charge she pled down to loitering.
He took her aside. “The girlfriend’s got narco and prostitution.”
“I’ll get Riverside to surveil them.”
“Merci, if that fuse is really the one our boy used, what’s that tell us?”
“Tells us the gadget isn’t working.”
Merci went back to the inventor and his girlfriend, now seated side by side on the old couch.
“I’m going to leave you here for now,” Merci told him. “You see Bill, you call me. You remember anything about Bill, you call me. You dream about Bill, you call me. Bill shows up here, wanting you to fix his toy, you call me faster than you’ve ever called anyone in your life. That goes for you too, hot pants.”