SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (42 page)

“Looks like murder-suicide. Wife, husband. Hubby, though, he's holding the pistol.”

“Yeah?”

“In the wrong hand.”

“Yeah?” Now it was making sense.

Epstein paused with one palm on the men's room door. “Sister showed up. Got hysterical. Said hubby was right-handed.”

“The gun's in his left,” Mitchell supplied, way ahead of the story.

“See you. I got gas.” Epstein opened the door and disappeared.

On the way out one of the taco-eating detectives offered an extra one to Mitchell, holding it like a cracker smeared with caviar. “Want soma this?”

“You think I care to die? Not on Wednesday.” Mitchell moved on past, the scent of fried meat, taco seasoning, and hot sauce in his nostrils. Then what he'd said hit him. Wednesday. Christ, he was having lunch downtown with Patty. He'd almost forgotten. How was he going to make it if he got hung up with a murder-suicide?

He'd have to try. He'd stood Patty up once too often lately and she was complaining loud enough to make his balls crawl up his legs.

By twelve-fifteen he had wrapped the scene, had them bag the male victim's hands to check for residue, taken all his notes, and sighed at the work ahead of him. It definitely looked like a set-up. The sister insisted her brother wouldn't do this—he loved his wife, he loved life. Didn't he pull down a hundred thousand a year selling Houston real estate? And the way he held that gun, he didn't do it, she kept telling him. He wasn't a lefty. Didn't she know her own flesh and blood?

He figured she did. The murder scene stunk. It was way too perfect. The bullet entrance angles were correct. But the wife was on the sofa, slumped to the right, and there was no sign of a struggle. Give me a wife, Mitchell thought, who sees Hubby Boy coming for her with a gun, and tell me she's going to sit still for it. She'd be off that sofa and fighting for her life, not content to let it happen. A magazine she had been leafing through had not even fallen to the floor! Then hubby went to the easy chair facing the TV and put the gun to his left forehead. And him a righty.

Nope. Someone had it in for Mr. Real Estate, that was obvious. He was just too clean with it, though. Made it look too packaged. And he hadn't done his homework if he messed up on hubby's gun hand. Lab results would show if the victim had even pulled the trigger.

Now there might be months of intense investigation before Mitchell ferreted out Mr. Real Estate's enemy, but he'd do it. There were a lot of cases that were so cold when he got to them, he never dredged up the facts. But this one was going to make him happy. It was going to give Epstein cause for applause. He just had to find the motive—women, money, or sour business deals—and he'd find the person who had hired the contract killer.

He checked his watch and made for the door. “Wrap it up,” he told Donaldson. “I have an appointment.” Donaldson lifted one side of his upper lip in resentment. The crime scene men gathered their baggies and equipment.

Mitchell made it to lunch with Patty only half an hour late, but she was there, drumming her nails on the table top, drinking white wine, looking like a pissed-off dream.

“I'm sorry . . .” he began, unbuttoning his coat, pulling out the chair.

“You've already made me late for a meeting.”

“I imagine. I said I was sorry. Murder-suicide.”

“What?”

He had to start again. He was still talking shorthand like Epstein. “I was out all morning on a murder-suicide case. Except it isn't. Murder-suicide, I mean. It's plain shoot-the-poor-bastards-in-the-head murder.”

Patty's upper lip stiffened. He knew what that meant. She didn't like to hear about his cases. Crime insulted her. She said the city was turning into the Bangladesh of Villainy. That's how she talked. Her job with the housing authority was “the Cape Canaveral of City Politics.” His job was “the Marketplace of Lost Souls.”

Just a quirk she had. If she wasn't so pretty, he'd tell her that silly, pompous, creative mouth of hers should be used for the “Sucking of Big Dicks.” But she was, so he didn't.

Mitchell ordered what Patty was having. It turned out to be cold salmon with cream sauce and he hated it. He should have taken the taco at the station. While he poked the flaky fish apart with a fork, she told him how her mother thought it was time to see a printer for the invitation cards. Mitchell hadn't been listening that closely so he asked, “For what? You throwing a party?”

She gave him a squinty look. “For the wedding. Or had you forgotten all about that?”

He shrugged and, to keep from replying, took a big bite of the fish. It sat in his mouth like cold raw hamburger. Why the hell didn't they warm this fish up, for Pete’s sake?

“Mitchell, I don't know what's wrong with you lately. It's not like I asked you to marry me. Is it? My memory tells me you did the asking. If we're going to do it, it has to be done right. And to do it right, we have to pick out invitations, hire a photographer, make up a guest list, decide on a tux . . .

He nearly choked. He swallowed noisily and groped for the wineglass. God, what were people doing eating cold creamy fish? The world had collectively lost its mind. And if she thought she was going to get him in a tux . . .

“Well? You want to back out?”

She was tapping her nails again. And that pretty squint wasn't all that pretty now.

“Uh . I never said . . . you know, about a tux . . . they . . . uh . . . I don't really . . .”

“Forget all about it.” She stood, folding the napkin from her lap into a rectangle with sharp edges. “Just forget I ever said anything. I knew this was coming. I've known it for months, Mitchell. You never wanted to get married. Cops hate marriage. You even admitted it yourself. Your last marriage didn't last two years. I wasn't going through with it anyway, how do you like that?”

She was into it now, boy, was she into it. Her color was high and her shoulders were back. Her voice went up another register and pretty soon he'd have wine in his face. He stood with her, reached for her arm, hoping to soothe the beast he'd unleashed.

She was right, of course, he didn't want to get married. It had been a mistake to ask her. He must have gone round-the-bend la-la romantic, and she was terrific in bed, but there was no way he could live with a squinty, nail-tapping woman who preferred cold fish for lunch. And there was no way in this life he was ever going to don a tux and pick out invitations just to please another mother-in-law. Fuck that dull American-made-dream shit.

“Patty, it's not like that.” He came in close, hoping to head off the big scene in the restaurant, the one that always got out of hand and wound up incredibly messy. Oddly, he couldn't get the dead couple out of his mind, that woman slumped over sideways on the sofa, a fine stream of blackish blood curling down over her brow like a trail of hair dye. Had she insisted on invitations and a tuxedo? Did she ever want children? Had she loved her pudgy husband with his salesman gift of gab? That was marriage, wasn't it? If you didn't die of murder, you could probably find a way to die of boredom.

“Let me go!” Patty tore his hand from her arm and turned her back on him. He watched her high heels click across the fashionably tiled floor. He loved how she swung her ass when she was angry.

That bolted him from the spot where he'd been glued. He braced her in the lobby, turning her to face him. She was too good for him, that was the problem. He didn't deserve as good as this. “Patty, I don't want you to hate me. I care a lot for you. I never meant to hurt you. It's just that one bad marriage scared me shitless. I'm so afraid . . .”

She didn't let him finish. “You are the royal asshole of the universe. Don't bother calling.”

As she left him, swinging that great body through the door with enough energy to shatter the glass, he thought he could see his title all in capitals. ROYAL ASSHOLE OF THE UNIVERSE. And at that moment he thought he probably was. If he'd been an honest man, he would have straightened out that marriage-proposal fiasco long before now. He couldn't think how it had ever happened. Maybe in bed one night she had brought up the subject and he had said sure, fine, anything you want, while his mind wasn't on her words so much as it was on her body.

She had gone so far as thinking of wedding plans; she probably had two hundred and fifty people on a list at home. She might even have rolls of stamps ready to lick, and a dress picked out, and a wedding bouquet. He never should have let this thing slide until she believed it so much.

At home, after his shift that ended at eleven p.m., Pavlov met him at the door with a pillow in his teeth, grinning. Polyester clumps were stuck in his ears and covered the floor like snowfall. Mitchell dropped his keys on an end table. His wallet and badge joined them there. He hoisted his coat and gun holster off to the floor. Then he knelt, made Pavlov drop his prize, and hugged him around the neck while the dog slobbered kisses on his face.

“A man and his dog,” he whispered. “What do we need with women, anyway?”

Yet his words were hollow and his stomach did a flop act that not even Pavlov's unconditional love could cure.

Eleven

Son walked slowly around the perimeter of the front lawn looking for ant beds to poison. He hated red ants worse than anything—except maybe roaches. Once red ants took over a lawn, they owned it. They were nearly impossible to eradicate.

He stepped right into the crumbling center of a small bed, his shoe sinking, and ants surged over the worn Reebok, swarming up his sock. He stomped and brushed at them, but was bitten half a dozen times before saving himself. “Bastards!” he said. “Little sons of bitches!”

Rather than using the scoop provided with the ant poison, he took the round container and poured a pound of the contents directly onto the teeming pile. The ants were supposed to take the minute pellets into the nest and kill off the colony. To make sure, he picked up the shovel and dug into the bed's center, dumping even more of the poison inside.

Before moving on around the yard, looking for more of the beds, he stopped to rub the stings on his ankles and hands. He peered closely, saw the bites were already swelling redly. “Bastards,” he repeated.

It took him all of two hours, but Son managed to find every new bed in the front and back yard. When outside his mother's bedroom window, he saw her draw back the curtain and wave to him. He waved back, but a corresponding smile was too much to ask. When involved in a task he single-mindedly tackled it, and to request a convivial smile from him was too demanding.

He had been out here trying to rid the place of red ants not more than two weeks before. They were a plague, one that never disappeared no matter what poison he tried, or how diligent he was.

He put away the container of poison and the shovel in the metal garden shed. When heading for the back door, his neighbor called over the hurricane fence. “Get ‘em this time, Son?”

Son caught himself stiffly, hand on the door, and swiveled his head slowly toward the voice. He didn't like people calling him “Son.” No one had that right except his mother. Did the snoopy neighbors think he was their son, too? Assholes.

“I got most of them,” he said.

“They keep coming back like bad pennies, don't they? You know what, you kill ‘em over there and they move over here.” The neighbor waggled a bald pate and hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “I kill them off, they move back over there. I don't think we're gonna win this war.”

Son thought he would, but what was the point in debating it? He pulled the door toward him, hoping to dismiss the neighbor.

“Hey, how's your book coming along?”

Son sighed, turned to look frostily at the man again. “It's fine. Great. In fact, that's what I've got to do now, go write something. Goodbye.”

Son might be the only person on the street who ended his conversations with such formality. No one ever said “goodbye.” The neighbors were always left smiling tentatively, hands raised in farewell to Son's retreating back. They thought this standoffish attitude just came with being a writer. Artistic temperament, they told one another. Those writers, they're eccentric, everyone knows that.

The truth was, Son simply didn't want to get involved. People, for the most part, got on his nerves. If he had to speak to them longer than five minutes, he started sneering at their provincial, bigoted, ignorant comments. The bulk of humanity had individual IQs that left much to be desired. They didn't understand politics, language, religion, current affairs, where they were headed or where they had originated. It was wasteful to spend time with them.

Inside the house, Son set up the ironing board and plugged in the iron. He checked on his mother to see if she wanted anything before beginning the next chore on his list. For three hours he dedicated himself to the pressing of sheets, pillowcases, his mother's gowns, and his own baggy, pleated pants and short-sleeved white shirts that he wore around the house.

It was Saturday, and every Saturday he tended the lawn, cleaned the house, and ironed the wash. He worked on his books during the weekdays, reserving weekends for the more difficult, time-consuming chores he had to ignore during the week. On Saturday nights he often visited Sherilee.

At a quarter to eight, after his bath, clothes change, and the preparation of his mother's dinner tray, he stood in the door of his mother's room. “I'll be back before midnight,” he said. “If you need anything, you've got that number to call me.”

“I'll be all right, Son. Enjoy yourself, you hear?”

She thought he visited a married couple he had met while in college. She thought he played pinochle with them and that his partner was Sherilee. She thought his social life was rather restricted and that he should date nice young women, but she hadn't brought that subject up in years.

What she didn't know didn't hurt her.

Sherilee lived four miles from Son's home. He drove there and parked along the street. He hitched his pants as he crossed the curb. This was the one part of his scheduled and patterned life that he most enjoyed. He had read a book or seen a movie where a man very much like himself, a man with an ailing mother, and a strict routine to his life, took up visiting a woman no one knew about. Son loved to copy things that made good sound sense to him.