I think about her mother, remembering clenched hands over the crinkly, highlighted pages of her Bible. The physical manifestation of her hopes. Then I ponder my own recently dashed hope, the link between her daughter and the girl tied to Octavio Morales’s bed. Given the nature of my work, it’s not the first time my hopes have run perversely counter to the dictates of human decency. Donna Mayhew wants more than anything to see a living, breathing girl walk through the door – a miracle, more or less, under the circumstances – while I wanted nothing less than to establish Hannah’s death, to match her up to the unknown woman who suffered and probably died in our West Bellfort kill house.
She wants her daughter back, and what I wanted was essentially to take Hannah from her. To make her fit into my rubric, the missing puzzle piece. In that sense I’m no better than the rubbernecking voyeurs tuning in for the latest Hannah updates. Probably worse.
“You of all people” – that’s what Ann said at the dinner table. The words take on a special potency, imposing themselves like a mantra onto the haze of music, the noise of the people all around. You of all people, she’d said, as if they – the powers that be – ought to know better than to put me, me of all people, in a spot like this.
Me of all people. They should know better. Or maybe I should know better.
The sudden buzzing in my leg, which I first interpret as an alarming new symptom of the gunshot wound, turns out to be my ringing phone. Even next to my ear I can barely hear it, so I tell the caller to hold on, flick a couple of bills on the table, and head outside.
“Thomson?” I ask.
The caller fumbles his words. “Is this Roland March?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, good, I thought I got the wrong number there for a second. Hey, Roland, it’s just me. I heard about what happened today, man, and I just wanted to check you were all right.”
I struggle to place the voice, then it comes to me. Brad Templeton. I haven’t heard from him in more than a year, not since he realized my string of special assignments weren’t going to yield new book ideas.
“Brad,” I say, “it was nothing.”
“Getting shot is not nothing.”
Standing outside the Paragon weighing the relative seriousness of gunshot wounds is not my idea of a good time.
“You’ve caught me at an awkward moment,” I tell him. “But I appreciate the concern.”
“Listen, I was wondering… they’ll have you riding the desk now, right? Taking a few days off? It’s just, I was kind of hoping you and me could have a talk about this thing you’ve been working on, the Hannah Mayhew case.”
“Why, are you planning to write another book?”
“The thought had occurred to me. So when I heard what happened today, then found out you’d been assigned to the task force, it seemed like a natural – ”
“The thing is, I’ve spent the last five years living down The Kingwood Killing. Not to mention I haven’t exactly solved this thing. As far as Hannah Mayhew is concerned, there may never be a solution, though don’t quote me on that.”
“I hear you, but look… could we at least talk? There is some interest in this thing. I’ve already spoken to my editor about it, and her ears definitely perked up.”
It’s hard to say no to Brad, mainly because of the relationship that developed during the book research. He was part of the family for a while, back when there was a gap to be filled, awkward silences that needed exactly his brand of unselfconscious banter to alleviate the strain. Even the things I take issue with in his book resulted from a kind of hero worship that, at the moment I was its focus, was profoundly gratifying. He’d reacted to our time together the way reflexively leftist journalists in the Iraqi desert responded to being embedded with troops, sloughing off whatever preconceived notions he’d had about law enforcement – and as a result “holding his manhood cheap,” a quote from Shakespeare he kept repeating until I asked him please not to anymore.
I had no idea what the result of that idolization would look like on the page. The Roland March who dominates The Kingwood Killing goes through all the usual routines, but they’re described as if he invented them personally, and had mastered every one. Especially the one chapter, which I’ve never been able to reread, in which the intrepid March, cruising at high speed along the Atchafalaya River Basin, induces the confession of wife-murderer Donald Fauk, using his own tears of grief as a pry bar into the killer’s soul. Distorted by his awe, Brad got all the details right, and at the same time utterly wrong.
“Look,” he says, probing my long silence for an opening. “I know you had mixed feelings about the book. I can respect that. But let’s at least talk, all right? For old times’ sake, if nothing else?”
“This isn’t the right moment.”
“Sure, I understand. I just wanted to see if you were okay. But maybe tomorrow I could give you a call? I could swing by your place, or maybe we could meet up for coffee…?”
Maybe I’m just getting rid of him, or maybe I really will answer his call tomorrow and meet him somewhere. Right now, I really don’t know. I just want to get him off the phone. So I say fine, give me a ring, I’ll look forward to it, then hang up before he has a chance to form an opinion one way or another on my sincerity.
The biggest issue is Thomson, who hasn’t put in an appearance. I don’t know where the man lives, and even if I did, I’ve already done enough on that front. He’ll make contact when he’s ready, and so long as he doesn’t wait too long, I can be patient. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. We’ll see whether it turns out to be true. In the meantime, a thought occurs to me, a little visit I need to make, paid best at the dead of night.
In addition to the nice boat Wilcox told me about, which must be housed on the water somewhere since I see no signs of it now, Tony Salazar owns a quaint mid-century ranch house in Bellaire, with a close-cropped yard edged in solar-powered night-lights. Behind the picture window, a silver arc lamp illuminates a small swath of interior space, a tulip table and some glowing plastic chairs, everything precisely arranged as if for a photo shoot.
From my position down the street, the more telling details are only visible through my field glasses. Motion-sensitive area lights. Discreet video cameras mounted under the roof on one end of the house and the carport on the other. The fastidious little show house is not exactly a fortress, but Salazar has taken the usual precautions to ensure any guests, though uninvited, can never arrive unexpected.
“Is this really such a good idea?” Cavallo asks.
“You keep saying that. It’s almost like you don’t trust me.”
“Bingo.”
She didn’t appreciate the one o’clock wake-up call. But after some coaxing she emerged from her apartment complex near Alabama and Kirby, dressed head to toe in black and gray, like she couldn’t see a way for the evening to end apart from breaking and entering.
Wilcox, equally unimpressed by the late hour, nevertheless coughed up the necessary information. In addition to the address, he volunteered the fact that Salazar lived alone, had paid cash for extensive remodeling to his pad, and owned a restored Chevy Corvair – presumably the tarp-draped form under the carport – and an extended-cab Ford pickup, of which there is currently no sign. I didn’t ask Wilcox why he had these details handy, and he didn’t ask why I wanted them.
“So the plan is what?” Cavallo asks. “To knock on his front door and punch him in the nose?”
“No, Detective. I’m guessing from the absence of light inside and the empty stall under the carport that nobody’s home.”
“People turn off the lights when they go to bed,” she says. “You’d know that if you ever gave it a try.”
“You’re welcome to knock on the door if you want.”