Flowers stood up, stuffed his hands in his pockets, wandered over and looked at a five-foot-tall wall map of Minnesota. “It's the kind of thing that could piss you off,” he said. “If you're civilized at all.” “Yeah. You can't get crazier than that, except that, for money… you can kind of understand it, in its own insane way. But now they're starting to swat people who just get in the way.”
He peered past Flowers at the wall map. “Where the fuck is Gabriella Coombs? Where are you, honey?”
Lucas was sitting in the den with a drawing pad and pen, trying to figure how to get at Amity Anderson, when his cell phone rang. He slipped it out of his pocket and looked at the caller ID: Shrake. He glanced at his watch: ten minutes after midnight.
Shrake had taken over the surveillance of Amity Anderson, and was due to go home.
He flipped open the phone: “Yeah?”
“What, you put me and Jenkins on the gay patrol, right? We pissed you off, so you sent Jenkins to watch Boy Kline, and now…”
“What are you talking about?”
“Amity Anderson went on a date, lot of kissy-face, had dinner, spent three hours at her date's town house, and now we're headed back to Anderson's house. Soon as I get her in bed, I'm going back to her date's place and see if I can get a date,” Shrake said.
“She is gay?”
“Either that or she's dating the swellest looking guy I've ever seen,” Shrake said.
“World-class ass, and red hair right down to it.”
“Goddamnit. Anderson's supposed to have a boyfriend,” Lucas said.
“I can't help you there, Lucas. Her date tonight definitely wasn't a boy,” Shrake said. “What do you want me to do?”
“Go home.”
“You don't want an overnight?”
“Nah. We're looking for her friends,” Lucas said. “Give it half an hour after lights-out…
Hell, give it an hour… then go on home. Jenkins'll pick her up in the morning.”
In the morning, after Weather and Letty had gone, and the housekeeper had settled in with Sam, Lucas went out to the garage, and walked around the nose of the Porsche to a door in the side wall. The door opened to the flight of steps that went up to what the builders called a “bonus room”-a semi-finished warm-storage loft above the garage.
Lucas had supervised the construction of the house from top to bottom, had driven the builders crazy with questions and unwanted advice, had issued six dozen change orders, and, in the end, had gotten it right; and when the builders had walked away, satisfied, he'd added a couple things on his own.
He looked back over his shoulder to the entry from the house, then knelt on the bottom landing, groped under the edge of the tread of the first step, felt the metal edge.
He worked it for a moment with his fingernail, and it folded out, like the blade of a pocketknife.
He pulled on the blade, hard, and the face of the step popped loose. A drawer. He would have bet that not even a crime-scene crew could have found it. Inside, he kept his special cop stuff: two cold pistols with magazines; a homemade silencer that fit none of his guns, and that he kept meaning to throw away, but never had; an old-fashioned lead-and-leather sap; a hydraulic door-spreader that he'd picked up from a burglary site; five thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bills in a paper bank envelope; an amber-plastic bottle of amphetamines; a box of surgical gloves lifted from Weather's office; and a battery-powered lock rake.
The rake was about the size and shape of an electric toothbrush. He took it out of the drawer, along with a couple of latex gloves, slipped the drawer back in place, pushed the blade-grip back in place, and took the rake and gloves to his truck.
Back inside the house, he got Weather's digital camera, a pocket-sized Canon G7, got his jacket, and told the housekeeper he was leaving. Kissed Sam.
On the phone to Jenkins: “You still got her?”
“Yeah. She just got in the elevator. So what do I do now, sit on my ass?”
“Ah… yeah,” Lucas said. “Go on over and sit in the Starbucks.”
“Listen, if she wants to get out, there's a back stairs that comes out on the other side of the building,” Jenkins said. “Or she can walk down into the Skyways off the elevators on the second floor, or she could come all the way down and walk out the front door. There's too much I can't see, and if I guess wrong, I'll be standing here with my dick in my hand.”
“She shouldn't have any idea that we're watching her, so she's not gonna be sneaking around,” Lucas said.
“I'm just saying,” Jenkins warned. “We either get three or four guys over here, or she could walk on us.”
“I know what you're saying. Just… sit. Call me if you see her moving.”
Her house was two minutes away in the truck. He parked under a young maple tree, a half block out, watched the street for a moment, then slipped the rake in one pocket, the camera and gloves in the other, and walked down to her door. The door was right out in the open, but with tall ornamental cedars on each side. A dental office building was across the street, with not much looking at him.
He rang the doorbell, holding it for a long time, listening to the muffled buzz.
No reaction; no movement, no footfalls. He rang it again, then pulled open the storm door, as if talking to somebody inside, and pushed the lock-snake into the crappy 1950s Yale. The rake chattered for a moment, then the lock turned in his hand. He was in.
“Hello?” he called. “Hello? Amity? Amity?”
Nothing. A little sunlight through the front window, dappling the carpet and the back of the couch; little sparkles of dust in the light of the doorway to the kitchen.
“Amity?”
He stepped inside, shut the door, pulled on the latex gloves, did a quick search for a security system. Got a jolt when he found a keypad inside the closet next to the front door. And then noticed that the '80s-style liquid-crystal read-out was dead.
He pushed a couple of number-buttons: nothing.
He could risk it, he thought. If the cops came, maybe talk his way out of it. But still: move quick. He hurried through the house, looking for anything that might be construed as an antique. Found a music box-was she a music-box collector? That would be interesting. He took a picture of it. Up to the bedroom, taking shots of an oil painting, a rocking chair, a drawing, a chest of drawers that seemed too elegant for the bedroom.
Into the bathroom: big tub, marijuana and scented candle wax, bottles of alprazolam and Ambien in the medicine cabinet. Stress? Under the sink, a kit in a velvet bag.
He'd seen kits like that, from years ago, but what… He opened it: ah, sure. A diaphragm.
So she swung both ways. Or had, at one time.
His cell phone rang, and vibrated at the same time, in his pocket, nearly giving him a heart attack.
Carol: “Mrs. Coombs called. She wants to talk to you. She's really messed up.”
“I'll get back to her later,” Lucas said.
“She's pretty messed up,” Carol said.
Not a goddamn thing he could do about it, either. He snapped: 'Later. Okay?”
Quick through the bedroom closet, through the chest of drawers, under the bed; looked down the basement, called “Hello?” and got nothing but a muffled echo. Back up the stairs, into a ground-floor bedroom used as an office. He'd been inside a long time now- five, six minutes-and the pressure was growing.
The office had an ornate table used as a desk; everything expensive looked like mahogany to Lucas, and this looked like mahogany, with elaborately carved feet. He took a picture of it. The desk had one center drawer, full of junk: paper clips, envelopes, ticket stubs, a collection of old ballpoints, pencils, rubber bands. He had noticed with the upstairs closets that while the visible parts of the house were neatly kept, the out-of-sight areas were a mess.
The office had two file cabinets, both wooden. Neither looked expensive. He opened a drawer: papers, paid bills. Not enough time to check them. Another drawer: taxes, but only going back four years. He pulled them out, quickly, looked at the bottom numbers on the federal returns: all in the fifties. Two more drawers full of warranties, car-maintenance records-looked at the maintenance records, which covered three different cars, all small, no vans-employment stuff and medical records.