“More active stuff” turned out to be the captain’s euphemism. “You probably feel sometimes like you don’t fit in.”
He’s probably home humping his calculator...
“We’ve all felt that way sometimes. Honest. But being out in the field’s not what it’s cracked up to be. Not like TV, you know. And you’re the best at what you do, Tal. Statistician. Man, that’s a hard job. An important job. Let’s face it—” Lowering his voice. “—guys like Greg wouldn’t know a number if it jumped out and bit ’em on the ass. You’ve got a real special talent.”
Tal weathered the condescension with a faint smile, which obscured the anger beneath his flushed face. The speech was clearly out of a personnel management training manual. Dempsey had just plugged in “statistician” for “traffic detail” or “receptionist.”
“Okay, now, don’t you have some numbers to crunch? We’ve got that midyear assignment meeting coming up and nobody can put together a report like you, my friend.”
Monday evening’s drive to the Whitleys’ house took considerably longer than his Headless Horseman race night before, since he drove the way he usually did: within the speed limit and perfectly centered in his lane (and with the belt firmly clasped this time).
Noting with a grimace how completely he’d destroyed the shrubs last night, Tal parked in front of the door and ducked under the crime scene tape. He stepped inside, smelling again the sweet, poignant scent of the woodsmoke from the couple’s last cocktail hour.
Inside their house, he pulled on latex gloves he’d bought at a drugstore on the way here (thinking only when he got to the checkout lane: Damn, they probably have hundreds of these back in the Detective pen). Then he began working his way though the house, picking up anything that Crime Scene had missed that might shed some light on the mystery of the Whitleys’ deaths.
Greg LaTour’s bluntness and Captain Dempsey’s pep talk, in other words, had no effect on him. All intellectually honest mathematicians welcome the disproving of their theorems as much as the proving. But the more LaTour had laid out the evidence that the 2124 was wrong, the more Tal’s resolve grew to get to the bottom of the deaths.
There was an odd perfect number out there, and there was something unusual about the deaths of the Bensons and the Whitleys; Tal was determined to write the proof.
Address books, Day Timers, receipts, letters, stacks of papers, piles of business cards for lawyers, repairmen, restaurants, investment advisors, accountants. He felt a chill as he read one for some new age organization, the Lotus Research Foundation for Alternative Treatment, tucked in with all the practical and mundane cards — evidence of the desperation of rational people frightened by impending death.
A snap of floorboard, a faint clunk. A metallic sound. It startled him and he felt uneasy — vulnerable. He’d parked in the front of the house; whoever’d arrived would know he was here. The police tape and crime scene notice were clear about forbidding entry; he doubted that the visitor was a cop.
And, alarmed, he realized that a corollary of his theorem that the Whitleys had been murdered was, of course, that there had to be a murderer.
He reached for his hip and realized, to his dismay, that he’d left his pistol in his desk at the office. The only suspects Tal had ever met face to face were benign accountants or investment bankers and even then the confrontation was usually in court. He never carried the gun — about the only regulation he ever broke. Palms sweating, Tal looked around for something he could use to protect himself. He was in the bedroom, surrounded by books, clothes, furniture. Nothing he could use as a weapon.
He looked out the window.
A twenty-foot drop to the flagstone patio.
Was he too proud to hide under the bed?
Footsteps sounded closer, walking up the stairs. The carpet muted them but the old floorboards creaked as the intruder got closer.
No, he decided, he wasn’t too proud for the bed. But that didn’t seem to be the wisest choice. Escape was better.
Out the window.
Tal opened it, swung the leaded-glass panes outward. No grass below; just a flagstone deck dotted with booby traps of patio furniture.
He heard the metallic click of a gun. The steps grew closer, making directly for the bedroom.
Okay, jump. He glanced down. Aim for the padded lawn divan. You’ll sprain your ankle but you won’t get shot.
He put his hand on the windowsill, was about to boost himself over when a voice filled the room, a woman’s voice. “Who the hell’re you?”
Tal turned fast, observing a slim blonde in her mid or late thirties, eyes narrow. She was smoking a cigarette and putting a gold lighter back into her purse — the metallic sound he’d assumed was a gun. There was something familiar — and troubling — about her and he realized that, yes, he’d seen her face — in the snapshots on the walls. “You’re their daughter.”
“Who are you?” she repeated in a gravelly voice.
“You shouldn’t be in here. It’s a crime scene.”
“You’re a cop? Let me see some ID.” She glanced at his latex-gloved hand on the window, undoubtedly wondering what he’d been about to do.
He offered her the badge and identification card.
She glanced at them carefully. “You’re the one who did it?”
“What?”
“You had them taken to the morgue? Had them goddamn butchered?”
“I had some questions about their deaths. I followed procedures.”
More or less.
“So you were the one. Detective Talbot Simms.” She’d memorized his name from the brief look at his ID. “I’ll want to be sure you’re personally named in the suit.”
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Tal repeated. “The scene hasn’t been released yet.”
He remembered this from a cop show on TV.
“Fuck your scene.”
A different response than on the TV show.
“Let me see some ID,” Tal said stepping forward, feeling more confident now.
The staring match began.
He added cheerfully, “I’m happy to call some officers to take you downtown.” This — from another show — was a bit inaccurate; the Westbrook Sheriff’s Department wasn’t downtown at all. It was in a strip mall next to a large Stop ‘N’ Shop grocery.
She reluctantly showed him her driver’s license. Sandra Kaye Whitley, thirty-six. He recognized the address, a very exclusive part of the county.
“What was so fucking mysterious about their deaths? They killed themselves.”
Tal observed something interesting about her. Yes, she was angry. But she wasn’t sad.
“We can’t talk about an open case.”
“What case?” Sandra snapped. “You keep saying that.”
“Well, it was a murder, you know.”
Her hand paused then continued carrying her cigarette to her lips. She asked coolly, “Murder?”
Tal said, “Your father turned the car ignition on. Technically he murdered your mother.”
“That’s bullshit.”
Probably it was. But he sidestepped the issue. “Had they ever had a history of depression?”
She debated for a moment then answered. “My father’s disease was serious. And my mother didn’t want to live without him.”
“But his illness wasn’t terminal, was it?”
“Not exactly. But he was going to die. And he wanted to do it with dignity.”
Tal felt he was losing this contest; she kept him on the defensive. He tried to think more like Greg LaTour. “What exactly’re you doing here?”
“It’s my family’s house,” she snapped. “My house. I grew up here. I wanted to see it. They were my parents, you know.”