“For the record,” the M.E. said, “as if you didn’t know, all three had their jugulars severed. The eyes and the rest of it undoubtedly came later.”
“Skilled or what?”
“The surgery, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“A butcher. By the way, I found all but one of the eyes. They’re in ajar there on the windowsill. You might want to send them along with the bodies.”
Bloom wanted to throw up all over again.
“Take a look at this,” Rawles said, coming over.
He was holding a man’s leather billfold in his hand.
The telephone was ringing when Matthew Hope got out of the shower that Thursday morning. He wrapped a towel around his waist, said, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” and rushed dripping wet into the bedroom. He picked up the receiver just as the answering machine clicked in.
“Hello, you’ve reached 349-3777,” his voice said. “If you’ll…”
“Hang on,” he said, “I’m here.”
“… leave a message…”
“I’m here,” he said.
“… when you hear the beep…”
Damn machine, he thought.
“… I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thank you for calling.”
“I’m still here,” he said. “Please hang on.”
The machine beeped.
“Hello?” he said.
“Dad?”
He visualized her on the other end of the line. Long and lanky and bursting with adolescent energy, hair a brighter gold after a summer in the sun, eyes as blue as a Caribbean lagoon. His daughter, Joanna. Who wanted to be a brain surgeon and who practiced tying knots inside matchboxes. Joanna. Whom he loved to death.
“Hi, honey,” he said, beaming. “I was going to call you later today. How are…?”
“Promises, promises,” she said.
An impish grin on her mouth, no doubt, promises, promises. Fourteen years old and already sounding like a stand-up comic.
“I mean it,” he said. “I’ve got a ten o’clock meeting with a potential client, but I planned to…”
“Still chasing ambulances. Dad?”
The grin again, he was certain of that.
“I gather you’re enjoying your summer,” he said.
“I adore it up here,” she said. “But there are no boys, Dad.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Well, there are two of them. One’s a nerd and the other is twelve. I met a nice girl, though. Her name is Avery, which I think is sort of neat, and she’s on her high-school swimming team in New York. Did you know they had swimming teams in New York? I didn’t. She’s teaching me a lot of things I didn’t know, as for example how to swim in very choppy water. Do you know how cold the water is up here? Well, she’s in the ocean every day for at least an hour, and it doesn’t faze her at all. Waves chopping everywhere around her, she’s an actual shark, Dad, you should see her. Avery Curtis, remember that name, she’s going to win Olympic gold medals one day. Also, she’s a Libra, her birthday’s the fifteenth of October.”
“Birth date of great men,” Matthew said, but did not amplify.
“Mom says to tell you hello, she’s making pancakes.”
“Tell her hello back.”
“Would you like to talk to her?”
“Sure,” Matthew said, “why not?”
“Just a sec.”
Susan Hope, Matthew’s former wife. Dark, brooding eyes in an oval face, brown hair cut in a wedge, a full, pouting mouth that gave an impression of a sullen, spoiled, defiant beauty. To their mutual surprise and delight, he had begun dating her again some years after the divorce. But that was in another country, he thought now, and besides the wench is dead. The other country had been right here in old Calusa, Florida, but it had seemed like shining new terrain, a pristine landscape glistening with promise. And the wench wasn’t really dead, merely gone from his life again. For now, at any rate. Matthew was not the sort of man who took bets on the future. Not concerning Susan, anyway. Not after the tempestuous rekindling of their passion years after the divorce.
“Hello?” she said.
Susan Hope.
“Hi,” he said. “I hear you’re making pancakes.”
“Terrific, huh?” she said, and he visualized her pulling a face. Cooking had never been Susan’s favorite pastime.
“How’s the summer going?” he asked.
“No boys,” she said.
“Pity.”
“Mmm. Why don’t you come up for a weekend? The house is huge.”
“Too dangerous,” he said.
“Who says?”
“You.”
“True.”
“We’d fight in front of the child.”
“Probably.”
“For sure.”
“I sometimes miss you,” she said.
“Me, too.”
“Not often, but sometimes.”
“Me, too.”
“I think it’s sad we can’t get along for any reasonable amount of time.”
“Yes.”
“But I guess it’s better this way.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you think?”
“I do. What’s bothering you, Susan?”
“I don’t know. But we did have some good times together. And this doesn’t seem like a vacation house with just me and Joanna in it.”
“Well,” he said.
“So if you should find yourself up in old Cape Cod one of these days…”
“I don’t think I will.”
“You could get to see me making pancakes.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m wearing only high heels and an apron.”
“Sure,” he said.
But the words had their desired effect. He immediately conjured her in high white patent-leather pumps, a short white apron tied at the waist, the bib partially exposing her breasts, the tails of the sash hanging down over her naked buttocks. She also had a spatula in her hand.
“Put Joanna back on,” he said.
“Chicken,” she said, but he knew she was smiling.
He was smiling, too.
“Did you two get it all out of your systems again?” Joanna asked.
“None of your business.”
“I’ll never understand either of you.”
“Yes, you will,” Matthew promised. “When you’re sixty years old and we’re both dead.”
“Don’t even joke about it!” she said.
“Honey, I have to get dressed, I’ll call you this afternoon, okay?”
“No, Avery and I are going to this dumb social in the vain hope some new boys’ll show up. I’m beginning to think the twelve-year-old is kind of cute, can you believe it?”
“I’m beginning to think you’re kind of cute,” Matthew said.
“Sweet talker,” she said.
Grinning again, he guessed. Like her mother.
“Honey, goodbye,” he said. “I’ll call whenever.”
“Love you, Dad.”
“Love you, too,” he said, and hung up and looked at the dresser clock.
Frantically, he began dressing.
Matthew had never met a man who looked comfortable in jailhouse threads. Stephen Leeds did not look comfortable in them now. A well-built blond man, six feet four inches tall and weighing some two hundred pounds, he seemed straitjacketed in the undersized denim garments the city had provided. Bail had been denied because of the heinous nature of the crimes. He would be dressed this way for quite some time.
This was the sixteenth day of August, two days after Charlie car had responded to a call from a Chinese dishwasher who had stopped by at 1211 Tango to pick up his three friends so they could all drive to work together.
“Did you kill them?” Matthew asked.
“No,” Leeds said.
“At the trial, you threatened to kill them.”
“That was at the trial. That was right after the verdict was read. I was angry. People say things when they’re angry.”