She was carrying the briefcase.
He hurried to the Olds and climbed in and followed her, first to the Florida Federal Bank of Del Moray on Blue Heron Drive, then to Burnair and Crosley.
39
Carver drove to his office and fielded phone calls and correspondence until almost four o’clock. It was cool and quiet and peaceful there. The view out the window was of the wind off the sea ruffling the tall palm trees beyond the buildings on the other side of Magellan so they looked like towering, absurdly thin women shaking their heads so their hair flew. The only sound was the soft, monotonous hum of the air conditioner doing full battle with the relentless heat and winning for the moment. He almost would have resented a prospective client walking in.
He sat staring at the glaring view beyond the window, thinking about how he seemed to be learning more about the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Donna and Mark Winship, and about how little of what he’d learned was sufficient proof for an indictment. A sharp attorney would call most of it circumstantial, hearsay, and assumption. The sharp attorney would be right.
But that same attorney would have difficulty explaining the relationships of the people involved, the dead and the survivors. Somewhere in those relationships lay the impetus for suicide and the motive for murder, if only it could all be reasoned out.
Explaining it wasn’t a job for an attorney, Carver had to concede. It was his job. And he was sure that if he didn’t do it well, there would be at least one more murder.
He hated all violent death, but especially homicide. Hated the arrogant presumption, the loosing of chaos, and then the ruins that inevitably spawned more tragedy, that were always pieces of the puzzle of murder. He hated the sudden transformation of someone alive into something no more animate than a piece of furniture. He hated the death of beauty and the return to dust.
Another thing he didn’t like was the workable parts of his lower body falling asleep. His pelvis and the base of his spine were numb from sitting too long in his chair. He stood up, leaning first on the desk and then on his cane, and waited for the tingling of returning circulation to stop and full feeling to return to his lower extremities.
He was standing that way, staring across Magellan at two potbellied elderly men in white slacks and pastel golf shirts talking animatedly with each other, maybe arguing, when the phone rang.
He didn’t move, letting the answering machine pick up the call after the fourth ring.
Beep!
“Beth here, Fred. When you get a chance call me at the cottage. Or if you happen to be in the office-”
He lifted the receiver and sat back down in his chair simultaneously, cutting in on the machine to speak direct: “I’m here, Beth.”
“Seen the evening edition of the Gazette-Dispatch?” she asked. The Dispatch was the newspaper of choice in Del Moray, after the Miami Herald, which covered much more than the Dispatch’s regional news.
Dreading what she might tell him, he said he hadn’t read a paper since this morning. Across Magellan, one of the elderly men was emphasizing a point by rhythmically poking the other in the chest with a forefinger. The other man stood calmly with his hands at his sides, like a fixed object in a flooded wild stream, waiting patiently for the water to recede.
“You were right about who hired that photographer, Fred. Looks like it was Cindy Sue, and she didn’t waste any time. She filed for divorce from Reverend Devine this morning. She must have been waiting to move as soon as the film was developed.”
“Were the photographs mentioned?”
“No. Cindy Sue claimed incompatibility. No details. It’s a small item on page six of the front section, a sidebar to a story about Reverend Devine and his flock obstructing entry into a high school that was scheduled to show a sex-education film titled Sex in and out of Marriage.” Beth paused, then chuckled with satisfaction. “Don’t you just love irony?”
“Unless I’m the one getting ironed.”
“Well, even a hypocrite’s private life should remain private, unless he or she makes a hypocritical public issue of it. Then the rules change. Reverend Devine is getting what he deserves, and I hope his wife makes those photos public.”
“You’re an uncompromising woman.”
“Way I feel about it, Fred.”
“I think I’ll always be honest with you.”
“Wisest choice.”
After hanging up, he went outside to buy a newspaper from the vending machine on the corner. He inserted a quarter, wrestled a Gazette-Dispatch out of its blue steel enclosure, then carried the newspaper back to the office to read.
The news item was as Beth had described. And there was a photo of Devine that had been shot at some sort of protest demonstration. A man and two women behind him were leaning angrily toward the camera with their mouths open, snarling something at the photographer. The man and one of the women had what looked like stick handles of signs resting on their shoulders. In the photograph’s background was a parked car and a blurred flurry of activity involving several people moving fast in the same direction. Devine looked younger than he had the night Carver had glimpsed him at the motel, a sternly smiling man with a slightly bulbous nose and the gaze of a crusader. There was also a photo of Cindy Sue, a round-faced brunette who was attractive despite a hairdo that resembled a Buckingham Palace guardsman’s tall headgear.
Carver folded the newspaper in half and laid it on the desk.
He understood now what Nightlinks was really all about. Something so simple, even if devious, that it was a miracle it wasn’t done more often. Or maybe it was, and only some of those involved were aware of it.
Carver now understood why Donna and Mark had died, and why Gretch had been made to follow them in death.
And he knew what his next move should be and didn’t like it. Not completely.
After using his cane to slide the phone across the desk to him, he called McGregor at Del Moray police headquarters.
He felt like a man reaching into a hole for a snake.
40
“Odd,” McGregor said, “you phoning me. Usually I’ve gotta run you to ground and yank conversation outa you like it was back molars.”
Outside the office window a huge motor home lumbered past on Magellan. There were suitcases and bicycles strapped to its roof and it was towing a small car whose windows displayed clothes and boxes stuffed inside. Florida attracted people who found it impossible to travel light.
“We had a deal,” Carver said, turning away from the window. “I’m honoring it.”
“I don’t understand that.”
“No surprise there.”
“I mean about the honor part. That’s the kinda word politicians toss around like Frisbees. I do understand why you’re making good on what I forced you to agree to; it’s because you know for sure I’ll skin you slow and hang your hide out to dry if you don’t. You might be stupid, but you are yellow.”
“You’re not making this easy,” Carver said.
“Life’s never easy. It only seems like it sometimes, just before the bottom falls out. What have you got to tell me, dick-head? Go ahead and unburden yourself.”
“Harvey Sincliff.”
“The human cesspool that owns Nightlinks?”
“The very cesspool.”
“If you’ve got something that’ll stick to Harvey Sincliff, we definitely can talk a while. We’ve been after him and his escort service for years, but he knows the ropes and always wraps them around our necks. Yeah, we can sure have a chat about Sincliff. Him and his fucking high-price lawyers are a disease.”
“You can be the doctor who finds the cure,” Carver said. “I can give him to you.”
He knew how McGregor must be salivating. Not so much over collaring Sincliff and shutting down Nightlinks as over the inevitable news coverage and celebrity status for the police officer who got credit for the investigation and arrest. He’d be a hero. Heroes got kisses and prizes. Heroes got promoted.