Tango Key (35 page)

Spicules of perspiration slid down the sides of her face, pimpled the space between her shoulder blades. The bedrooms. She would check the bedrooms and Murphy's den.
Oh yes, I know where to look. I'm the only cop on the force accomplished in the art of breaking and entering
. She giggled, a high, nervous giggle, and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth as she advanced into the family room and down the hall.

She was afraid to turn on the lights, but she didn't need to. From the bedroom doorway, she could make out the familiar dark shapes of the furniture, all the same stuff that had been in the townhouse: the king-size bed—the one where Monica had been found; the headboard—which was smeared with her blood that night; the mirror above it—where the killer had written Monica's name in her blood. She hurried past it and stopped in the doorway of the spare bedroom on the other side of the hall. The furniture was all there, but cartons were stacked against the wall. She moved on to Murphy's den. It smelled like him. The furniture hadn't been removed from here, either. She sat in his chair, at the desk. She ran her palms over the smooth, cool wood, then turned on the desk lamp, her hand trembling.

The first thing she .aw was a photograph of him with Eve. His arm circled her waist. It was difficult to tell where the picture had been taken, because the background was blurred. But one thing was obvious: they were happy. She carefully removed the photo from the frame and glanced at the back. Her heart slid into her gut. The date on the back was the second of February, this year.

I want to be wrong. Please lemme be wrong. Let this be a mistake.

She stared at the date, willing it to change. It didn't. Aline slid the photo back into the frame, wiped the moist smudge of her fingerprints off the glass with the hem of her T-shirt, and opened the middle drawer of the desk. It was empty.

She yanked open the top side drawer.

Empty.

The second and third and fourth drawers were also empty. Now she yanked open a drawer in the metal filing cabinet. Gone. Everything gone. She leaped up and ran over to the closet. She threw open the door. Dozens of boxes were stacked against the walls. She opened one, glanced inside. Files. She shut off the desk lamp and fled into the master bedroom. She opened the French doors of the closet. There were still a few shirts and slacks hanging inside, but the shelves had been cleaned off. She peeled back the foot of the spread, revealing a bare mattress. In the bathroom linen closet, she found one set of sheets, that was all, one lousy goddamn set of satin sheets which she'd given Murphy two Christmases ago.

"You can't do this," she whispered, scooping up the salmon-colored sheets. "You can't do this, Murphy. You can't."

But he had. He was not only doing it, he was going to get away with it. Unless she snitched on him. She buried her face in the cool satin and started to cry, but she didn't know who she was crying for—herself, Murphy, Monica, the past, what could've been and wasn't.

After a while, still sniffling, she folded the sheets, replaced them on the shelf, closed the door. She glanced in the medicine cabinet. Empty, except for a toothbrush and small tube of toothpaste and a razor.

She returned to the master bedroom again and opened the top bureau drawer. She was surprised to see underwear, T-shirts. In the next drawer, there were socks, a pair of swimming trunks, shorts. Bottom drawer: old photo albums. Okay, so he hadn't quite finished packing things up.

The safe. What about the safe?

Aline hurried over to the nightstand next to the bed and moved it to the side. She pulled the lamp down on to the floor, turned it on, knelt, peeled back the edge of the rug, removed the plank of old wood. She stared at the safe's combination lock. A long time ago, when Murphy was going through his paranoid stage, believing that whoever had killed Monica would come after him, he'd told her the combination. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, trying to remember.

What year did Columbus discover America, Al?

1492.

Right three times to one. Left three times to four, right again to nine, left once to two. It clicked. She lifted the lid. The first thing she saw was a stack of bills. She counted them. About $5,000. She dug deeper. A bankbook from the Grand Bank of the Cayman Islands. Of course. No name, just a number. The Caymans were considered, in some circles, to be more secure than Swiss banks. Grand total? $18,689.90. Murphy, the thrifty cop.

Next, she dug out a thin envelope with CAR REGISTRATION written across the front. She guessed it would go to whoever had bought the Scirocco. For delivery when? She was breathing so hard now, so fast, that she was dizzy and had to stop a moment. A wave of nausea rushed through her.

You got this far, keep digging and throw up later.

But there were only two more items in the safe—a photo of Monica and Murphy, and his passport, which had been renewed recently and was good until 1998. She paged through it, but the thing was as clean as a baby's conscience. No stamps. So how had he opened an account in the Caymans? Maybe you didn't need a passport to get into the islands. She didn't know, but Kincaid would. It was the sort of information he specialized in.

What's the minimum deposit required for a secret account in the Caymans, Kincaid?

Where was the cute little froggy? How come it wasn't in the safe? Maybe it was at Eve's house. Or in the Caymans, in a safe-deposit box. Oh Christ. She started to laugh again an ugly, erratic sound, a staccato of incipient hysteria. She slapped a hand over her mouth, squeezed her eyes shut, forced herself to take one deep breath, then another and another until a false calm settled through her, a cool calm.

Okayokayokay: time to split.
Good-bye, safe. Good-bye, Murphy's house.

Good-bye.

Good bye.

July 6, 2:22 A.M.

E
ve is floating. She wants to spread her arms at her sides like wings, wants to soar and glide through the air, but that isn't part of the game. In this game, she must pretend she's asleep, that she's being spirited away. She feels her daddy's arms against her back as he carries her, and yes, now she catches the faint whiff of gin on his breath. This is the game they play when he is high, but not drunk; when he is feeling good, but not mean.

But why is it so hot? Why does his neck feel so different against her hands? Daddy's neck is thinner, softer; this neck is thick and hot. And the shirt, that isn't right either. Or the chest. This chest is too hard to be Daddy's chest. This chest is like a brick wall. She is suddenly afraid to open her eyes. She's afraid that if she looks, she'll start to scream.

Daddy sets her down. He says something to her. He touches her face. She keeps her eyes closed. She has to pee. She doesn't feel well. Her mouth hurts. Why does her mouth hurt?

Now he is lifting her head, whispering, "Babe, drink this, c 'mon." She feels something cool and damp against her lips and she drinks and her eyes flutter open and it isn't Daddy's face, it isn't. But when she opens her mouth to scream, the cool liquid slides down her throat and she starts to choke and he brings her forward, patting her on the back as she coughs.

"Better now? C 'mon, babe. Take a deep breath. That's my girl."

She gasps and sucks at the warm air. There's a breeze. Ii licks at her hot, damp face. The light from a lantern flickers across the dirty walls, and there, her own shadow, huge and grotesque, and his shadow, and now the two shadows melting together as he kisses her cheek, smoothes her hair from her temples.

"No touch," she says. "No touch."

Her gums throb, and she winces and moves back against the mattress, hands covering her face as she sobs.

"Don't do that. Don't cry. You make me angry when you cry like that."

"My gumth hurt. My gumth."

"You want some more codeine? I got some more codeine for you."

She sits up, drinks down three tablets this time with the water. But these taste different. These aren't codeine. She throws the glass across the room and sticks her fingers down her throat, trying to bring up whatever he's given her. Bui it's too late, she can feel the tablets sliding into her belly, and now he's grabbing hold of her hand, yanking her finger out of her mouth. "Christ, what're you doing? Stop it!"

"You lied!" she screams. "Thothe aren't codeine. You lied!"

He grabs her by the arms, shaking her until pain sings through her gums. "Shut up, stop saying those things, shut up. I don't want to hurt you again, but you're making me mad."

"Juth kill me. Juth get it over with," she sobs as he lets go of her and she falls back against the wall. "Juth do it."

"Kill you?" He speaks softly now, gently. "I can't kill you." He kneels at the side of the mattress like a little boy who is about to say his prayers. "I love you. We're going to be happy. We're going to take a trip later on. Tonight. You were going to take the trip without me, but I couldn't let you do that. I want you to sleep awhile. I gave you some pills to help you sleep. You'll see. You'll love this place where we're going. On the boat. Remember?"

Trip. Boat. Today.
What's today?

Today she's supposed to go on a trip. With Daddy? Yes, that's it. She and Daddy are going to rent a boat. . . . No.

Now she remembers. The yacht. That's right, Daddy sometimes does carpentry work for a rich man in Vero Beach, and today this nice rich man is taking them all for a ride on the Indian River in his yacht. There is something about the rich man she doesn't like, maybe the way he looks at Mommy, but so what. He gives her butterscotch candies and talks to her like she's a grown-up and he has a yacht.

"I have to pee."

"Sure. C'mon, up and at 'em. We'll get you to the john and then back to sleep for a while. I'll fix you a nice bed in the closet."

Closet: What's in the closet? Something important.
She'll remember. Right now, she has to pee.

"I'll prop the lantern in the door so you have some light," he says.

She doesn't believe him until she sees him set the lantern against the doorjamb. Then he pulls the door shut. She stands there, sucking her thumb. It hurts her gums if she sucks too hard, so she puckers her lips around it and sucks gently. Finally, she unzips her jeans and uses the toilet. It stings bad. She knows the stinging will get worse unless she takes the right medicine, but she doesn't know what the medicine is. There's a name for the stinging, too, some complicated name, but she can't remember that, either. She knows, though, that the bad man out in the hall gave it to her. She knows because she remembers that after she did it with the boy on the railroad tracks, she had the same thing. Only that time she peed blood.

"Daddy, "she whispers. "Take me to the yacht. Daddy?" The darkness seizes her voice—and tosses it back to her. "Daddy?"

She says it louder, and the man in the hall says, "What? You finished?"

She rises from the toilet, pulls the jeans back up, sticks her thumb back in her mouth, and starts to cry again. She doesn't know exactly why she's crying, except that everything hurts. Her mouth. Between her legs. Her bones. Her head. Her heart.

When the man opens the doors, she is still standing there, sucking her thumb, tears coursing down her cheeks.

A
line's back was to the sun as she pedaled her hike along the boardwalk. But she could watch the white blazing sphere rise in the side windows of the cafes and shops she passed, each square of glass a second later in time in which the sun was suspended in its inexorable movement across the sky. Despite her dark sunglasses, the light hurt her eyes. Everything she looked at seemed to possess a trenchant penumbra that radiated out from it like an aura. It was as if she'd been swimming underwater most of the night in a chlorinated pool.

It was only a little after six on the morning of July 4. The air was already warm and glutinous, but the sky was a brilliant blue, and way out near the horizon it sloped down and kissed a sea as placid as a lake. She passed a handful of joggers and at least half-a-dozen people doing laps in the shoals. An elderly couple walking rapidly in the opposite direction nodded hello as she passed them. Just beyond the beach, a catamaran caught the first breath of a morning breeze, its sails filling like balloons. By ten, the beach would be crowded with families. By noon, the mayor and his gang would be setting up the area for this evening's fireworks here on the boardwalk. By four, all the good seats in front of the cafes would be taken and kids would be lining the boardwalk railing and the beach, waiting for the boat rice.

The race Murphy and Dobbs would be in.

And by the day after tomorrow, Murphy and Eve would set sail.

Unless she did something.

She pedaled faster. The tires clacked rhythmically over the boards. When she'd left Murphy's last night, she'd placed a call to a woman she knew who worked in county records.