“There’s only three of us here,” Farrell said. “The high-school kid I got pumping gas don’t come in till after school, three, three-thirty. He’s sixteen years old, and he didn’t break into anybody’s house.”
“How big is he?”
“Why?”
“Because somebody big was wearing Leeds’s jacket and hat on the night of the murders.”
“Danny’s five-seven, and he weighs around a hun’ sixty,” Farrell said. “So I guess he ain’t the one who broke into Leeds’s house and stole his goddamn clothes.”
“Who said his clothes were stolen?”
“If somebody was wearing them, then they were stolen.”
“Who else works here?” Matthew asked.
“I got a mechanic helping me out, that’s all. And he’s six-two, which I guess makes you happy.”
“Where is he?”
“Out gettin’ some coffee for us.”
“I’ll wait for him,” Matthew said.
The computer’s name was Bessie. Alston wondered why somebody had named it Bessie. He also wondered if computers everywhere in the world had women’s names. Fat women’s names. The girl with the legs back there in the deli wouldn’t be caught dead with a name like Bessie. Face that could stop a clock on that girl, but legs he would never forget in his entire lifetime. You didn’t name any computers after a girl with legs like that. Bessie. All right, let’s go, Bessie, let’s see what you’ve got on Mr. Ned Weaver.
He was sitting alone in the Computer Room of the Public Safety Building, the computer screen not a foot and a half from his face, his big hands hovering over the keyboard, the forefingers poised to type. Like a man playing “Chopsticks” on a toy piano, he pecked out the letters that opened the file, and then hit the return key.
The screen asked him which of several categories he wanted searched.
He tapped out the letters CR, for “criminal.”
The machine whirred.
The screen said SELECT ONE:
1) CITYWIDE
2) STATEWIDE
3) NATIONWIDE
4) OTHER SPECIFIC STATE
He knew that if he hit the numeral 3 for the nationwide search, Bessie would tap into FBI files and he’d be sitting here all day. He hit the numeral 4 instead, calling for a specific state search outside Florida, and at the next prompt he typed in the letters ca for California.
The machine whirred again.
A single word appeared on the screen:
YEAR?
He typed? for “unknown.”
SEARCH SPAN?
Chambers had told him the subject was in his late twenties. Alston knew there were kids who got in trouble before they could tie their own shoelaces, but the longer the span, the longer he’d be here. He figured a ten-year search was long enough. Weaver would’ve been sixteen, seventeen years old back then, nice age to run afoul of the law, and the search would continue on up to the current year. He typed in the numerals 1–0, and then hit the return key again.
LAST NAME?
He typed in W-E-A-V-E-R.
FIRST NAME?
He typed in N-E-D.
MIDDLE NAME?
He typed? again.
The screen asked IS NED AN ALIAS? TYPE “Y” OR “N”
He typed N. For no.
The machine whirred.
The words NO CRIMINAL RECORD NED WEAVER STATE OF CALIFORNIA, and then immediately and again asked IS NED AN ALIAS? TYPE “Y” OR “N”
This time he typed Y.
The screen said SELECT ONE:
1) NED for EDMUND
2) NED FOR EDWARD
3) NED FOR NORTON
4) ALL OF ABOVE
He typed 4.
A hundred goddamn Edmund, Edward, and Norton Weavers popped up on the screen.
Alston had his work cut out for him.
Farrell’s mechanic was indeed six feet two inches tall. Wrinkled and sun-browned, swinging his arms, he came ambling past the gasoline pumps toward the office. There was a brown paper bag in his right hand. A cigarette dangled from his mouth. A peaked baseball cap was perched on his head. He was tall for sure. But he was also a scarecrow of a man in his early sixties, and he could not have weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds. Access to house keys or not, it was impossible to believe that this man could have overpowered and murdered — with a knife, no less — three young men.
“This is Avery Shoals,” Farrell said, “Ave, the man here’d like to ask you some questions.”
“Sure thing,” Shoals said. He put the brown paper bag on the counter alongside the cash register, dragged on his cigarette, eyes squinted, and said, “Only bought two coffees, though. Didn’t know we had company.”
“That’s okay,” Farrell said, and smiled. “I don’t think Mr. Hope’ll be staying very long.”
Warren Chambers was waiting for him when he got back to the office at one that afternoon. Neither of the men had yet had lunch. They walked up Main Street toward the new little mall in the reconstructed Burns Building. The size of a tennis court, the mall occupied the street-level floor of a four-story office building, one of the oldest in downtown Calusa, surrounded now by the city’s modest version of skyscrapers. The mall’s restaurants were of the takee-outee variety, except that you didn’t take the food home with you. Instead, you lined up at various counters for your hamburgers or hot dogs or pasta or Mexican or Chinese food, and then you carried the food and your beer or soda or milk shake to these little round tables in a sort of open courtyard. Canned music piped through hidden speakers relentlessly flooded the courtyard, but it was impossible to tell which songs were being played. There was only a sense of music, a constant, low-key, muted background din.
Warren had good news.
Depending upon how you looked at it.
He told Matthew first about the tattoo on Ned Weaver’s arm, and how a large percentage of armed robbers wore tattoos. This happened to be a fact, he said, even though it was news to Matthew. Weaver’s reluctance to discuss his sexy mermaid had piqued Warren’s curiosity, so he had asked a friend of his on the Calusa P.D. to crank up the computer and see if there was anything on a Ned Weaver in San Diego, because this was where Ned Weaver said he’d picked up the tattoo.
What he’d also picked up in San Diego was twenty-two thousand dollars and change from a bank he’d robbed with a buddy of his named Sal Genovese, who was wheelman on the job. Actually, the holdup would have been a great success if, first, one of the bank guards hadn’t been silly enough to draw his pistol while looking down the muzzle of a .44-caliber Magnum. Naturally, Weaver had to shoot him. The man missed death by an ace. The several rounds from Weaver’s weapon ripped into the guard’s left biceps some three inches from his heart and almost tore off his arm.
Even so, and in spite of this slight setback, the job still might have worked out well if, second, the getaway car hadn’t got stuck in downtown traffic. There was another unfortunate shootout between the fleeing bank robbers and the San Diego police, which this time the police won. Norton (which was Ned’s full given name) and his good buddy Salvatore (which was his) both went to prison for a long, long time. The prison’s given name was Soledad. Last summer…
Here it is, Matthew thought.
Last summer. Weaver was paroled and he moved here to Florida.
Exactly what Leeds had told him yesterday. But only after a slight hesitation.
Ned’s been working for us ever since… last summer.
Had he been about to say “ever since he got out of prison”?
Possibly. Which knowledge might have pleased Matthew — as it pleased him now — especially since he already knew that Jessica Leeds had contemplated hiring someone to kill the three men who’d raped her. Her brother hadn’t quite killed that bank guard, but not for lack of trying.