But the look of gloom had settled on Leeds’s face again, clouding his eyes, causing his mouth to go slack. He knew what Matthew was thinking, but he wasn’t buying it. Not any of it. His eyes revealed only despair.
“We don’t have to find the real murderer, you know,” Matthew said.
“I know,” Leeds said, and clasped his hands in front of him on the table again.
“We only have to show you couldn’t have done it.”
“Yes.”
“And we’re well on the way to doing that.”
“Are we?”
“Well, sure,” Matthew said. “We’ve got a witness who saw a license plate that doesn’t ex—”
“A dead witness,” Leeds said.
“What Trinh said is still on the record. We have his statement. And his murder only helps our case.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Because whoever killed him may have killed the others as well.”
“The papers are saying it was a copycat.”
“The papers are saying what the State Attorney wants them to say.”
“They hate my father,” Leeds said. “Because he tried to buy them out.”
“I know that. So don’t worry about what the papers are saying. The papers aren’t a judge and jury.”
“It feels like they are.”
He looked down at his clasped hands. Head bent. Behind him the rain kept riddling the palm fronds. His gloom was palpable. Matthew didn’t know what he could say to dispel it.
“We’ve also turned Stubbs around,” he said.
No answer.
“He’s ready to testify that the man who called him wasn’t you.”
No answer.
“Which is very good news. He was one of their best witnesses.”
No answer. Just sat there looking at his hands, the rain falling behind him. And then, without looking up, in a voice so low that Matthew had trouble hearing him, he said, “Be nice if it was Ned, wouldn’t it? But when I think of the victims he picked for himself” — and now he was shaking his head — “not the bank guard, that was just someone who got in his way. But the others” — still shaking his head, looking down at his hands — “an old lady… a retarded girl… that sweet, gentle dog…”
He looked up at last.
His eyes were brimming with tears.
“No, Mr. Hope,” he said. “I don’t think it was Ned. He just doesn’t have the balls.”
There was a message that Mai Chim Lee had called. Matthew looked at his watch. It was a little before noon. Hoping he’d catch her before she left for lunch, he dialed the number she’d left, let it ring six times, and was about to hang up when a woman’s voice said, “Longstreet and Powers, good morning. Or afternoon. Whichever it is.”
“Morning,” Matthew said. “For the next five minutes.”
“Thank God someone has the right time. Is your power still on?”
“Yes,” he said. “Well, I don’t know, just a minute.” He snapped on his desk lamp. “Yes, it is,” he said.
“There are some lines down, we’ve been out since ten this morning,” she said. “But enough of my troubles. How can I help you?”
“May I speak to Miss Lee, please?”
“Mary? Sure, just a minute.”
Mary, he thought, and waited.
“Hello?”
The singsong voice. The somewhat sorrowful lilt of it.
“Mai Chim? It’s Matthew.”
“Oh, hello, Matthew, how are you? I’m so happy you called back.
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes, fine, thank you. Did you read about Mr. Trinh?”
“I did, yes.”
“Such a nice old man,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Matthew, I feel very bad about the other night.”
“Why should you?”
“Because I behaved so foolishly.”
“But you didn’t.”
“So very foolishly.”
“No.”
“Like a child.”
“I didn’t think so at all. Really, Mai Chim…”
“I’m almost thirty-one years old, Matthew.”
“I know that.”
“That’s not a child.”
“I know.”
“Matthew, would you care to have dinner with me tomorrow night?”
“I’d love to have dinner with you,” he said.
“Please understand that I’m the one who’s asking you.”
“Yes, I realize that.”
“Good, then that’s settled. I think I know a very nice place. Can you pick me up at eight?”
“Eight sounds fine.”
“Perhaps we will get to know each other better,” she said, and hung up.
Matthew looked at the mouthpiece.
Warren Chambers’s answering machine had a recording capability that made it relatively simple to tape a conversation without the knowledge of the person on the other end of the line. All you had to do was hit the PLAYBACK button, dial your number, and — when your party started talking — hit the record and start buttons simultaneously. No beeps would sound to alert the party on the other end. The operation was what was known as covert.
He was making his call from the small office that used to belong to Samalson Investigations before Otto Samalson himself went out of business. Otto went out of business because someone shot him dead. Getting shot dead in the private-eye business usually happened only in novels and movies, but Otto had somehow managed the trick in real life. The Chinese lady who’d worked for him — Warren couldn’t remember her name, but she’d been damn good — left for Hawaii shortly afterward, and the office had remained unoccupied until Warren recently took over the lease and bought all the furniture from the man to whom Otto’s children had sold it.
The frosted-glass door to the Chambers Detective Agency opened onto a reception room that measured six by eight feet, into which were crammed a wooden desk with a typewriter on it and a wooden chair behind it, an upholstered easy chair opposite it, green metal filing cabinets and bookshelves, and a Xerox machine and a coatrack, all enclosed by walls now hung with photographs of Warren’s mother and his two sisters and their families back in St. Louis. Warren figured that if someone wasn’t going to hire you because you had pictures of your black family on the walls, then maybe he ought to look across the desk and discover that you were black, too.
Warren did not as yet have a receptionist; his answering machine served that purpose. Whenever he put on temporary help, whichever investigator he hired normally worked out of the reception area. His own private office was larger than the outer office — eight by ten as opposed to six by eight — but just as cluttered. It enjoyed the advantage of a window, however, which, combined with its few extra feet, made it seem spacious by comparison, even if the only view from it was of a bank building across the street.
Rain streaked that window as Warren dialed the number at the Leeds farm. Jessica Leeds herself answered on the third ring. Warren told her who was calling, and they exchanged some small talk about the awful weather, and then he asked if he might speak to Mr. Weaver, please. He did not say, “May I speak to your brother, please?” He felt that allowing her to assume he didn’t yet know this fact was the safest course to follow. She asked him to wait, please. He waited. While he waited, he hit both the record and start buttons. He was now recording dead air. But better that than any telltale click when Weaver came on the line. Rain slithered down the windowpane. He looked across at the bank building. Everything looked grey and bleak and dismal. He kept waiting.
“Hello?”
You’re on the air, he thought.
“Hello, Mr. Weaver?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Warren Chambers, I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time.”