“I wonder where young Ned was on the night of the murders, don’t you?” Warren asked.
“Indeed I do.”
“Because there may be wheels within wheels here, Matthew. As for example, suppose Weaver didn’t like the idea of those three Vietnamese punks getting away with the rape of his sister, and suppose he decided to do something about it. A man spends nine years in prison…”
“Was that it?”
“He was nineteen when he went up. Nine years is a long time behind bars, Matthew, especially for somebody who’s a hothead to begin with. So now he’s out, and he sees these three punks getting away with rape, he thinks ‘Hey, man, this is my sister here!’ This isn’t a bank guard getting in his way, this is three punks who raped his sister. So maybe — I’m only saying maybe — maybe he got it in his head to go after them.”
“Especially if his sister suggested it,” Matthew said.
“Well, we don’t know that she did,” Warren said.
“She explored the possibility with her husband.”
“She did?”
“Yes.”
“Mmm.”
“Mmm is right,” Matthew said.
“So let’s say young Ned did do the job…”
“No, Warren, it won’t wash.”
“Why not?”
“Leeds’s wallet was at the scene.”
Both men were silent for a moment. Warren was eating enchiladas and drinking beer. Matthew was eating a hamburger and drinking a Diet Coke. At a nearby table, two young women were trying to eat with chopsticks. Food kept dropping back onto their plates. They giggled each time another morsel escaped the chopsticks.
“One thing you learn in prison,” Warren said.
Matthew looked up.
“It ain’t good to get caught.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning how did Weaver get along with his brother-in-law?”
“Good question.”
“Because if, let’s say, he didn’t like him so much. then why not set him up? Juke the three punks and make it look like Leeds did it.”
“That would be hurting his sister, too. I don’t think…”
“The man did time,” Warren said. “In the slammer, you learn a code, Matthew, you learn a different kind of law. This law says you rape my sister, I’m gonna get you. This law says I hate my brother-in-law, I’m gonna get him, too. That’s the kind of law you learn in jail, Matthew, and it’s got nothing to do with the kind of law you practice.”
“I’ll talk to Leeds…”
“I’m only saying it’s possible.”
“… try to find out what kind of relationship they had,” Matthew said.
“Because here’s a man can go in and out of that house at will,” Warren said. “Take Leeds’s jacket and hat, he wants to, grab his sister’s car keys, the boat keys, whatever the hell he needs to do the murders and pin a rose on his brother-in-law. But I may be wrong.”
“Can you get me a tape of his telephone voice?” Matthew asked.
It kept bothering Bannion.
The license plate the old gook had seen on the getaway car.
2AB 39C.
No such plate in the state of Florida. But that hadn’t stopped somebody from killing him. Bannion wished he could see eye to eye with his boss on this one, but he just couldn’t accept her belief that this was a copycat murder. Not when the victim was one of the state’s witnesses, nosir. Bannion had been in police work too long not to know the difference between a crazy and a crazy crazy. To his way of thinking, anyone who committed murder was crazy. But the ones who did it without rhyme or reason, those were the crazy crazies.
The person who had killed Trinh Mang Due did not strike Bannion as a certified nut. A copycat murderer wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of seeking out Trinh in Little Asia, and then following him all the way up to Marina Lou’s. Your garden-variety lunatic copycat murderer would’ve settled for any gook walking the streets of Calusa, never mind a witness who had seen the murderer getting into a car with a license plate that did not exist in this state. Any gook would’ve satisfied the need, short, tall, fat, skinny, old, young, it wouldn’t have mattered to the copycat. Grab him from behind, slit the poor bastard’s throat, poke out his eyes, cut off his cock and stick it in his mouth.
But this guy had deliberately sought out Trinh Mang Due.
Had to’ve read his name in the paper, that was the first mistake, you didn’t go putting a witness’s name in the paper. Unless, of course, you already had your alleged murderer behind bars, which happened to be the case here. If he was the right man.
Bannion wasn’t paid to make trouble for his own boss. His job was to compile information that would help her prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the man they’d charged with three counts of murder was the man who’d actually committed those murders. But it was also Bannion’s job — or so he saw it — to make sure Patricia Demming didn’t make a damn fool of herself. And if she had the wrong man in custody while the real murderer was still out there someplace killing a witness who had seen the license plate on his auto—
But there was no such plate.
Not if it was a Florida plate.
Trinh Mang Due had said it was a Florida license plate.
2AB 39C.
Which he had seen through a closed screen door. At night. Well, the moon was still almost full. But the car was parked under a leafy pepper tree. Some distance from where he was standing inside his house looking out through a screen door.
2AB 39C.
So either it wasn’t a Florida plate…
Which was a fairly distinctive plate, orange letters on a white field…
Either it wasn’t a Florida plate, or else Trinh had seen it wrong. Read the numbers and the letters wrong. In which case, why kill him? If he had it wrong, then as a witness he wasn’t worth a rat’s ass. So why bother with him? Let the man live. Unless…
Unless he’d been damn close to what the numbers and letters on that plate actually were. In which case, he might have remembered them correctly if prodded long enough. And if he’d eventually remembered them, those letters and numbers might have led not to the man Patricia Demming had in jail, but to the man or woman who’d actually slit those gooks’ throats. In which case, Trinh had to go. Now. Before he remembered. So long, sir, it was nice having you here in Florida, may your ancestors welcome you with joy and your descendants mourn you eternally.
2AB 39C.
What could he have seen instead?
Bannion picked up a pencil and began writing the numbers and letters over and over again…
… and all at once he realized what it was that Trinh Mang Due had actually seen, and knew in that same instant why it had been necessary to kill the old man.
He pulled the telephone to him and began dialing.
10
The pallor had set in. And so had the gloom.
This was Stephen Leeds’s tenth day in jail, and the routine he had earlier described to Matthew was taking its toll on him. Send this man to prison for any extended length of time, and he would be destroyed as surely as if he were strapped into the electric chair.
He was sitting at the far end of a long table in what was called the P.C.R., the letters standing for Private Consultation Room, a bleak cubicle set aside for prisoner-lawyer conferences. There was a single barred window set high up on the wall behind him. It was raining steadily at nine o’clock that Friday morning. You could hear the rain pelting the fronds of the palm trees that lined the sidewalk outside the jail. The small, tight room felt almost cozy with the rain beating down outside. Leeds’s big hands were clasped on the table in front of him. He was listening intently to Matthew, who was asking him if he and his brother-in-law got along well, or was there—