“Mrs. Mayhew, I’m afraid I can’t have you getting in touch with Eddie right now.”

“That’s ridiculous. Give me that phone.”

Trimble sighed. “Mrs. Mayhew, let’s go back upstairs.”

“What? You can’t stop me from calling my husband.”

“Listen,” I said. I almost said, “Listen, Trimble,” but felt using names in front of Mrs. Mayhew might not be advisable. “Let’s just head out there, it won’t take that long.”

“We can’t have her warning him,” Trimble said.

“What do you mean, warning him?” Mrs. Mayhew demanded to know. “And just who are you people, anyway? I think it’s high time that you answered a few of my questions for a change.”

“Upstairs,” Trimble said, the gentleness gone from his voice. He grabbed Mrs. Mayhew by the arm and started dragging her out of the kitchen.

“Hang on!” I said. “What are you going to do?”

“Yeah, what are you going to do?” Mrs. Mayhew asked as Trimble ushered her up the stairs, his gun out and poking her in the side.

I couldn’t stand by and let him kill her, if that was what he planned, although I didn’t know how I’d stop him. The gun I’d borrowed for the evening was out in the car.

I grabbed at his shoulder. “Can’t you just tie her up or something, till you can get to the hotel?”

He looked at me, weighing things. I could see he didn’t want to kill Mrs. Mayhew, but there was a risk in letting her live. Trimble knew Eddie Mayhew would likely be dead by morning, and a police investigation would lead to Mrs. Mayhew and her tale of two nighttime visitors.

“Shit,” he said quietly to himself. He pushed Mrs. Mayhew ahead, back into the bedroom, and went over to the dresser. He rummaged through the drawers and tossed out a couple of pairs of pantyhose onto the bed. He whirled around, looked at me, pointed the gun, and said, “Do it.”

“What?”

“Tie her up.” Mrs. Mayhew’s eyes were darting back and forth between us.

“I hardly know her,” I said.

“Would you rather I shot her?”

Mrs. Mayhew looked back at me. “I’d rather not be shot,” she said, and I proceeded to do as I was asked, tying her wrists together and securing them to the headboard.

Trimble, not trusting my handiwork, double-checked that Mrs. Mayhew was secure, then grabbed the second pair of pantyhose and gagged her.

“Fuck,” he grumbled. “Let’s take a drive.”

33

“TRIMBLE!” I said as we stepped out the door. I had just glanced at my watch. It was one minute past two. “You have to call in! Right now!”

“Let’s get on the road first, then I’ll call.”

“No,” I said, with more forcefulness than I knew I had. “Now.”

“Fine,” he said, and got out his phone. “This is a huge pain. Now that Barbie’s got to prove himself, he’s got all these little plans and procedures. Fucking intercoms and phone-ins and-”

Someone picked up. “Yeah, it’s me, checking in, talk to you in thirty.”

As we walked back to the car he said, “Mayhew must have already made his deal. He’s got his money, and he’s getting out of the country.”

“Am I still driving?” I asked, sounding positive, like I was happy to help, but mostly wanting to make sure Trimble didn’t see the gun down by the accelerator pedal.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, waving his hand.

Once we were both in the car and back on the road, Trimble shook his head. “Man oh man, things are not unfolding the way they should.”

“What?”

He kept shaking his head, made a fist and pounded it repeatedly on the top of the dashboard. I hoped he wouldn’t set off the passenger-side airbag. “We made a big mistake back there. I should have killed her.”

“No, you shouldn’t have killed her.”

“Oh man,” he said, putting his fist back to his mouth. “I’ve really fucked up this time.”

“You couldn’t kill her. There was no way you could kill her.”

“Don’t you see how this is going to play out? Eddie, he’s on borrowed time, it’s all over once Bullock’s had a chance to talk to him. And then when the cops come to interview her, you think she’s not going to talk? That she’s not going to be able to provide a description of me?”

I swallowed. “And me.”

Trimble waved his hand dismissively. At first, I thought that simply meant he cared more about his own skin than mine. But then I realized it was more likely that my being picked out of a lineup by Mrs. Mayhew was never going to happen. I was as unlikely to see the sun come up as Eddie.

“Fuck,” he whispered under his breath. “Fuck.”

“You’ve never had to kill anyone for Bullock, have you?” I asked. “You’ve done lots for him, but never that.”

His silence was as good as a yes.

“So there’s at least one line you have trouble crossing,” I said. “But if you’re not willing to kill for him, how can you stand by and let him kill others? Because that’s what he’s going to do. To Eddie. To me. And to Angie.”

“That’s not for sure.”

I almost laughed. “Well, that’s comforting.”

“I shouldn’t have left her alive back there.”

“I’m not turning around,” I said. “If you tell me to turn around and take you back there so you can kill that woman, I’ll run us off a bridge. I’ll floor it and run us into a tree. But I won’t go back.”

“What about your daughter?” Trimble asked. Not in a threatening way, more like he was just interested.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll try to smash your side of the car, so you’re dead, and I survive, long enough to call the cops, the good ones, see if they can save Angie.”

“Oh, that’s a good plan,” Trimble said. “A carefully engineered car wreck.”

He shook his head a couple more times, stared straight ahead out the window. “God,” he said under his breath. “This is one very deep hole to crawl out of.”

We got back onto the expressway, but instead of driving all the way back into the city, took the highway that skirted the city’s north side and went past the airport.

“Let me ask you this,” I said. “All that shit about his dead sister and weird mother aside, what kind of guy has a Barbie collection like that?”

Trimble must have waited a good ten seconds before he responded. “Fucking nutjob, that’s what,” he said.

We drove awhile longer, neither of us saying anything. Then Trimble said, “Have you been to see Lawrence, in the hospital?”

“Yeah.”

Trimble paused. “How is he?”

“He’s bad.”

And then the car went quiet again.

Nearly half an hour after we left the Mayhew house, we pulled into the parking lot of the airport Ramada. I pointed out the time to Trimble, and he put in a call to Bullock as required to protect Angie. The hotel was dead, no cars going in or out, no one in the lobby. We parked around the side, but it was after midnight, and every access was locked except the main doors out front.

“Just walk in like you own the place, like you’re a guest here,” Trimble said. “Head straight for the elevators.”

We walked through the lobby, the two employees behind the desk paying no attention to us. Once we were at the bank of elevators, we were out of their sight, and Trimble said, “He’s in room 1023. At least he better be.”

The doors opened and we stepped inside. Trimble found the button marked “ 10” and tapped it with his index finger. The doors parted, and Trimble scanned the markers indicating where the rooms were. Suites 1020 to 1034 were down the left hall, so we bore left.

We stood in front of 1023 and Trimble rapped on the door. “Mr. Mayhew?” he called out, friendly like. He rapped a bit harder. “Mr. Mayhew?” He stood right up close to the door, so if Eddie looked through the peephole, he’d wouldn’t see much more than a couple of nostrils.

We heard some stirring inside, then a muffled voice at the door. “Hello?”

“Mr. Mayhew?”

“Yes? Yes? Who is it? Yes?”