“Not necessarily a wallet. Anything personal.**
“Even so.”
“Something he could plant at the scene. To link the murders to Leeds. It’s easier to get onto a boat than into a house, Warren.”
“Granted.”
“We’ve got to find out how that wallet got at the scene. Because if Leeds himself dropped it there…”
“Goodbye, Charlie,” Warren said.
“Mm,” Matthew said, and nodded gravely. “So what I’d like you to do…”
“Where does he keep the boat?” Warren asked.
In the city of Calusa, Florida, the State Attorney’s office used to be a motel. It still sat across the street from a ballpark that once was used for big-league spring training before the team moved to Sarasota; nowadays, teams sponsored by beer companies played there. The old motel sat behind what used to be the biggest hotel in town. You could still see the twin white towers of the hotel — now an office building — from a courtyard surrounded by what used to be motel units but were now offices for the State Attorney’s staff.
The sun at eleven a.m. that Friday morning beat down unmercifully into the courtyard. The motel-now-office units served to form a sort of wall around the courtyard, preventing any circulation of air, boxing in the area, giving it the feel of a small, suffocatingly hot prison cheerfully planted with palm trees, bougainvillea, and hibiscus the color of blood. The sign outside read:
OFFICE OF THE STATE ATTORNEY
TWELFTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT
Skye Bannister
807 Magnolia Boulevard
Office Hours Monday-Friday
8:30 A.M.-5:00 p.m.
Matthew was relieved to discover that the air-conditioning system in Skye Bannister’s office was working; in Calusa’s government offices, bureaucratic red tape often made a mockery of maintenance. Bannister’s receptionist, a dark-haired girl in her early twenties, asked him if this was about the witness list and statements. Matthew told her it was. The receptionist said the case had been turned over to an Assistant State Attorney and added that Matthew could go next door to see her if he liked, her office was in room 17.
The Assistant S.A. was Patricia Demming.
“Oh dear,” she said.
She looked a lot less wet this morning than she had last night. Long blond hair pulled back into a neat ponytail fastened with a ribbon that matched her blouse, her tailored suit, and her startling blue eyes. She was wearing as well high-heeled blue leather pumps, blue pantyhose (he guessed), and silver earrings with turquoise stones. No mascara or eye shadow here at work, only lipstick. She looked cool and efficient and very State Attorney-ish, albeit enormously surprised to discover that Matthew was defending the man she’d been assigned to prosecute. Matthew was thinking that Skye Bannister had been confident enough of his case to turn it over to an assistant. A new assistant, at that; Matthew came in and out of the State Attorney’s offices on an almost-daily basis, and he’d never seen her here before.
“How’s your car?” she asked, and smiled.
“I’m supposed to hear from the adjustor today,” Matthew said.
“I barely made it home from the party last night. They think I’ll need a new engine.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. How was the party?”
“Very nice. Do you know the Berringers?”
“End of the street. Yes.”
“Nice people.”
“Yes. A doctor, isn’t he?”
“A dentist,” she said, and smiled again. “You’re here about the witness list, I’ll bet. And the statements.”
“Yes,” he said, and took off the gloves. “Miss Demming,” he said, “I have to tell you that I don’t like to be surprised by newspaper stories.”
“I’m awfully sorry about that, really, but…”
“Because, you know. Miss Demming, it’s a little disconcerting to learn that documents are being released to the press…”
“No one released any documents to the…”
“… even before the man’s attorney has seen…”
“Mr. Bannister merely answered some questions put to him by…”
“Is Mr. Bannister prosecuting this case, or are you?”
“I am. As of this morning. But yesterday…”
“But yesterday Mr. Bannister was handing out press releases, right?”
“Wrong. A reporter called to ask if there’d been any witnesses to the…”
“So the State Attorney felt it was okay to release this information before I had the witness list, before I had the witness statements.”
“I admit that may have been premature. Are you looking for a fight, Mr. Hope?”
“I’m looking to protect my client,” Matthew said.
“I was only assigned the case this morning. I didn’t even know you were the defense attorney till you walked in here. In any event, I planned to send the…”
“I’m here now. May I have them please?”
“I’ll ask my secretary to get them,” she said.
“Thank you.”
She picked up the phone receiver, pressed a button in its base, and asked someone named Shirley to bring in the Leeds witness list and statements. Putting the receiver back on its cradle, she looked up at Matthew and said, “It doesn’t have to start this way, you know.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Really. If you like, I’ll ask Mr. Bannister to let me handle any further contact with the press.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“Done.”
“Tell me something.”
“Sure.”
“Why’d he turn the case over to you?”
“Why not? I’m a very good lawyer.”
“I’m sure,” Matthew said, and smiled.
“Besides, it’s a sure thing.”
“All the more reason for Mr. Ambitious to try it himself.”
“Maybe he’s got bigger fish to fry,” she said, and then, immediately, “Oh dear, forgive me. That was unintentional.”
“What can be bigger than a pillar of the community killing three little Vietnamese immigrants?”
“Watch the newspapers,” she said, and smiled secretively.
The door opened.
A redhead came in carrying a sheaf of papers. She put them on the desk, asked if there was anything else before she went to lunch, and then smiled at Matthew and went out again. Matthew looked at the cover sheet on the top batch. The witness list. He glanced at the other stapled papers. Witness statements. Two of them. Asian names on both.
“What nationality are they?” he asked.
“Vietnamese.”
“Do they speak English?”
“No, you’ll need an interpreter. Also, one of them’s out of town just now, visiting his son in Orlando.”
“When will he be back?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know. Would you care for some coffee?”
“Thank you, Miss Demming, but I have an early lunch date.”
“Patricia,” she said.
He looked at her.
“The other stuff is for the movies. We can be antagonists without being enemies, can’t we?”
“I’m sure we can,” he said. “Patricia.”
“Good. What do people call you? Matthew? Matt?”
“Matthew, usually.”
“Is that what you prefer?”
“Actually, yes.”
“May I call you Matthew?”
“Please,” he said.
“Matthew,” she said, “I’m going to put your man in the electric chair.”
From a pay phone on the sidewalk outside, Matthew called his office and asked the firm’s receptionist, Cynthia Huellen, to put him through to Andrew, please. Andrew was Andrew Holmes, twenty-five years old, a recent law-school graduate who had taken his Florida bar exams last month and was now waiting to learn whether he’d passed them or not. Andrew had his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Michigan and was currently earning forty thousand dollars a year as a so-called legal assistant at Summerville and Hope, with the promise that they’d jump him to fifty the moment he was accepted to the bar — a foregone conclusion in that Andrew had been editor of the Law Review at U Mich and had graduated from the school with honors.