“Break in?” suggested Sullivan.
“Gain access to administer aid.”
“She could be at a friend’s house or taking a walk. Maybe she has two cars.”
“Bullshit, bullshit, and bullshit,” said Astor. “She knew we were coming.”
“I’m just making you aware of the situation before we do anything we might regret.”
Astor crossed the lawn and tramped through a flowerbed fronting a bay window. The curtains were not drawn, and he had a clear view into Evans’s living room and past it, into the foyer. The house appeared clean and orderly. There was no sign of activity within. He placed his ear to the glass. He caught a distant rumble that might be voices.
“Anything?” asked Sullivan.
“Maybe something from upstairs. TV or radio.”
Astor continued around the side of the house, opening a latched gate and sliding past the garbage cans, then walking another few feet to the back yard. A portable sprinkler attached to a garden hose irrigated the lawn. The grass was waterlogged and soggy. Water spurted from a leak at the head of the hose, flooding a 10-square-foot expanse of lawn.
“Someone isn’t worried about their water bill,” said Sullivan.
Astor jumped onto the red-brick veranda at the rear of the house. The sliding doors opened easily. “Hello,” he called, sticking his head inside. “Miss Evans?”
Sullivan pushed past him, his service pistol drawn and held at the ready. “Stay behind me,” he commanded. “And don’t touch a thing.”
“Whatever you say, detective.”
Sullivan passed through the dining room and into the foyer. The air inside the house was warm and close. Clipped voices drifted from upstairs.
“Miss Evans? Penelope? This is Robert Astor. Are you home?”
No one replied.
Sullivan started up the stairs, the pistol held stiff-armed in front of him. Astor followed at his shoulder. It was the television that Astor had heard through the window. With every step, the voice of a news commentator grew louder. The master bedroom was situated across a landing at the top of the stairs. The wood floor groaned beneath their steps.
Sullivan halted at the doorway. “Oh boy.”
Astor looked into the room and immediately turned away.
Ten steps away, a woman with long brown hair lay on the floor next to the bed, eyes wide open. She wore only panties and a brassiere. A thin line of blood trickled from a knife wound to her chest.
“Is she…?” asked Astor.
Sullivan knelt down and felt her neck. He nodded, then looked more closely at the wound. “Whoever did this was some kind of pro.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look. There’s relatively little blood. This guy managed to get the knife into her and puncture her heart so quickly it instantly stopped pumping. That takes practice.”
“What do we do?”
“Stay put.” Sullivan checked the bathroom and closets, then ducked into the hall. “No one here.”
Astor stepped inside the bedroom. An open suitcase sat on the bed, half filled with clothing. He looked at the television and noted that it was tuned to CNBC. A magazine lay half hidden beneath the bed covers. He tugged at the corner and saw that it was a professional journal titled Information Technology Today. The journal was opened to an article about something called “application software frameworks in the energy management sector”: “Our platforms allow for building and managing complex monitoring, control, and automation solutions…”
Astor put down the journal, uninterested. He returned his gaze to the dead woman. “Is it her?”
Sullivan picked up a framed photograph on the dresser and compared the radiantly smiling woman to the corpse. “Yes.”
“When?”
Sullivan took hold of Penelope Evans’s body, feeling her arms and neck. “She’s still warm. Less than an hour.”
“We could’ve gotten here.”
“And it could have been us lying there beside her. Whoever did this was good. He got into the house, came upstairs, and killed her without her even knowing he was here. You heard those floorboards. They squeak if an ant walks over them. This guy is a phantom. He floated in here.” Sullivan headed to the door. “We should go.”
Astor grabbed him by the arm. “I think you mean we should call the police.”
“It’s too late to do her any good. I’ll make a call from the city.”
“We can’t just walk away. She deserves better.”
“She’s dead. She doesn’t deserve anything except us trying to find who did this.”
Astor released his grip. “I’m sure we can explain things…”
“You don’t have time for that. Mr. Shank needs you back in the office. Call the Greenwich PD and you’ll be lucky to be home by midnight. There’s a bounty on rich assholes like you these days.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“You think anyone would holler if you spent a few days in the cooler?” Sullivan leaned closer, and when he spoke, it was with the tempered voice of experience. “I spent my whole life as a cop. I know what cops can do. You take this to the police, you’re going to be the lead story on the national evening news. Tomorrow morning your picture’s going to be on the front page of the Post with some kind of headline making it look like you’re the prime suspect. It’ll make you nostalgic for that last gem they ran in the Post about you and your girlfriends at the beach. You want press like that? You want it now?”
Astor gave Sullivan a hard look. He was pretty smart for a dumb cop. “I’m not naive. If I explain that we’re looking into my father’s death…”
“Look at her. Look!” Sullivan forced Astor to step closer and gaze at the body. “She’s hardly wearing a scrap of clothing. One of those cops you have so much faith in is going to pocket a couple of C-notes and allow a photographer to get a shot of her. This stuff sells papers.”
“Even so, we need to stay.”
Sullivan looked at his watch. “From what you’ve told me, I think we can assume that whoever killed your father had a hand in killing this woman. You want to help both of them, start looking around for clues. You can’t do anyone any good from inside a police station, can you?”
Astor considered this. “No, I don’t suppose I can.”
“You got ten minutes.”
26
Concealed in a grove of birch trees on a hilltop across the road, the monk watched the house.
He’d known that Astor and Sullivan were coming. He had been listening as they drove from the city. He was listening now. He could hear them speaking, though their voices were muffled and at times indistinct. This was to be expected, as Astor carried his phone in his pocket.
Wind rustled the branches and made the sound of a flowing river. For a moment he knew serenity. The feeling took him back to his years at the temple. He was there again, a shaven-headed boy running barefoot across the cold stone floors, bowing before his masters, waiting for his commands.
He had arrived at age six, a thin, weak boy. The master had asked him one question: “Are you prepared to eat bitter?”
“Yes,” he responded. And so the training had begun.
For twelve years he rose at dawn and went to bed at midnight. He studied and meditated. He did as he was told. But mostly he trained. Three hours of calisthenics and physical exercise every morning. Four hours of wushu, or martial arts, in the afternoon. His discipline was Baji kung fu, the most rigorous of the schools. He trained until his fists bled and his legs would not carry him. He suffered. He did not complain. He ate bitter.
And in the end, he was awarded the monk’s orange robe.