Текст книги "Finders Keepers"

Автор книги: Stephen Edwin King

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

‘He was never my partner. Although he had his chance, once upon a time. Long before you were even a twinkle in your father’s eye, Peter. And while I find your attempt at a diversion admirable, I must insist that we keep to the subject at hand. Where are the notebooks? In your house? Which used to be my house, by the way. Isn’t that an interesting co-inky-dink?’

Here is another shock. ‘Your—’

‘More ancient history. Never mind. Is that where they are?’

‘No. They were for awhile, but I moved them.’

‘And should I believe that? I think not.’

‘Because of him.’ Pete again lifts his chin toward the body. ‘I tried to sell him some of the notebooks, and he threatened to tell the police. I had to move them.’

Red Lips considers this, then gives a nod. ‘All right, I can see that. It fits with what he told me. So where did you put them? Out with it, Peter. Fess up. We’ll both feel better, especially you. If’twere to be done, ’twere well it were done quickly. Macbeth, act one.’

Pete does not fess up. To fess up is to die. This is the man who stole the notebooks in the first place, he knows that now. Stole the notebooks and murdered John Rothstein over thirty years ago. And now he’s murdered Mr Halliday. Will he scruple at adding Pete Saubers to his list?

Red Lips has no trouble reading his mind. ‘I don’t have to kill you, you know. Not right away, at least. I can put a bullet in your leg. If that doesn’t loosen your lips, I’ll put one in your balls. With those gone, a young fellow like you wouldn’t have much to live for, anyway. Would he?’

Pushed into a final corner, Pete has nothing left but the burning, helpless outrage only adolescents can feel. ‘You killed him! You killed John Rothstein!’ Tears are welling in his eyes; they run down his cheeks in warm trickles. ‘The best writer of the twentieth century and you broke into his house and killed him! For money! Just for money!’

‘Not for money!’ Red Lips shouts back. ‘He sold out!’

He takes a step forward, the muzzle of the gun dipping slightly.

‘He sent Jimmy Gold to hell and called it advertising! And by the way, who are you to be high and mighty? You tried to sell the notebooks yourself! I don’t want to sell them. Maybe once, when I was young and stupid, but not anymore. I want to read them. They’re mine. I want to run my hand over the ink and feel the words he set down in his own hand. Thinking about that was all that kept me sane for thirty-six years!’

He takes another step forward.

‘Yes, and what about the money in the trunk? Did you take that, too? Of course you did! You’re the thief, not me! You!’

In that moment Pete is too furious to think about escape, because this last accusation, unfair though it may be, is all too true. He simply grabs one of the liquor decanters and fires it at his tormentor as hard as he can. Red Lips isn’t expecting it. He flinches, turning slightly to the right as he does so, and the bottle strikes him in the shoulder. The glass stopper comes out when it hits the carpet. The sharp and stinging odor of whiskey joins the smell of old blood. The flies buzz in an agitated cloud, their meal interrupted.

Pete grabs another decanter and lunges at Red Lips with it raised like a cudgel, the gun forgotten. He trips over Halliday’s sprawled legs, goes to one knee, and when Red Lips shoots – the sound in the closed room is like a flat handclap – the bullet goes over his head almost close enough to part his hair. Pete hears it: zzzzz. He throws the second decanter and this one strikes Red Lips just below the mouth, drawing blood. He cries out, staggers backward, hits the wall.

The last two decanters are behind him now, and there is no time to turn and grab another. Pete pushes to his feet and snatches the hatchet from the desk, not by the rubberized handle but by the head. He feels the sting as the blade cuts into his palm, but it’s distant, pain felt by somebody living in another country. Red Lips has held onto the gun, and is bringing it around for another shot. Pete can’t exactly think, but a deeper part of his mind, perhaps never called upon until today, understands that if he were closer, he could grapple with Red Lips and get the gun away from him. Easily. He’s younger, stronger. But the desk is between them, so he throws the hatchet, instead. It whirls at Red Lips end over end, like a tomahawk.

Red Lips screams and cringes away from it, raising the hand holding the gun to protect his face. The blunt side of the hatchet’s head strikes his forearm. The gun flies up, strikes one of the bookcases, and clatters to the floor. There’s another handclap as it discharges. Pete doesn’t know where this second bullet goes, but it’s not into him, and that’s all he cares about.

Red Lips crawls for the gun with his fine white hair hanging in his eyes and blood dripping from his chin. He’s eerily fast, somehow lizardlike. Pete calculates, still without thinking, and sees that if he races Red Lips to the gun, he’ll lose. It will be close, but he will. There’s a chance he might be able to grab the man’s arm before he can turn the gun to fire, but not a good one.

He bolts for the door instead.

‘Come back, you shit!’ Red Lips shouts. ‘We’re not done!’

Coherent thought makes a brief reappearance. Oh yes we are, Pete thinks.

He rakes the door open and goes through hunched over. He slams it shut behind him with a hard fling of his left hand and sprints for the front of the shop, toward Lacemaker Lane and the blessed lives of other people. There’s another gunshot – muffled – and Pete hunches further, but there’s no impact and no pain.

He pulls at the front door. It doesn’t open. He casts a wild glance back over his shoulder and sees Red Lips shamble out of Halliday’s office, his chin wreathed in a blood goatee. He’s got the gun and he’s trying to aim it. Pete paws at the thumb-lock with fingers that have no feeling, manages to grasp it, and twists. A moment later he’s on the sunny sidewalk. No one looks at him; no one is even in the immediate vicinity. On this hot weekday afternoon, the Lacemaker Lane walking mall is as close to deserted as it ever gets.

Pete runs blindly, with no idea of where he’s going.

30

It’s Hodges behind the wheel of Holly’s Mercedes. He obeys the traffic signals and doesn’t weave wildly from lane to lane, but he makes the best time he can. He isn’t a bit surprised that this run from the North Side to the Halliday bookshop on Lacemaker Lane brings back memories of a much wilder ride in this same car. It had been Jerome at the wheel that night.

‘How sure are you that Tina’s brother went to this Halliday guy?’ Jerome asks. He’s in the back this afternoon.

‘He did,’ Holly says without looking up from her iPad, which she has taken from the Benz’s capacious glove compartment. ‘I know he did, and I think I know why. It wasn’t any signed book, either.’ She taps at the screen and mutters, ‘Come on come on come on. Load, you bugger!’

‘What are you looking for, Hollyberry?’ Jerome asks, leaning forward between the seats.

She turns to glare at him. ‘Don’t call me that, you know I hate that.’

‘Sorry, sorry.’ Jerome rolls his eyes.

‘Tell you in a minute,’ she says. ‘I’ve almost got it. I just wish I had some WiFi instead of this buggery cell connection. It’s so slow and poopy.’

Hodges laughs. He can’t help it. This time Holly turns her glare on him, punching away at the screen even as she does so.

Hodges climbs a ramp and merges onto the Crosstown Connector. ‘It’s starting to fit together,’ he tells Jerome. ‘Assuming the book Pete talked about to Ricker was actually a writer’s notebook – the one Tina saw. The one Pete was so anxious to hide under his pillow.’

‘Oh, it was,’ Holly says without looking up from her iPad. ‘Holly Gibney says that’s a big ten-four.’ She punches something else in, swipes the screen, and gives a cry of frustration that makes both of her companions jump. ‘Oooh, these goddam pop-up ads make me so fracking crazy!’

‘Calm down,’ Hodges tells her.

She ignores him. ‘You wait. You wait and see.’

‘The money and the notebook were a package deal,’ Jerome says. ‘The Saubers kid found them together. That’s what you think, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Hodges says.

‘And whatever was in the notebook was worth more money. Except a reputable rare book dealer wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot po—’

‘GOT IT!’ Holly screams, making them both jump. The Mercedes swerves. The guy in the next lane honks irritably and makes an unmistakable hand gesture.

‘Got what?’ Jerome asks.

‘Not what, Jerome, who! John Fracking Rothstein! Murdered in 1978! At least three men broke into his farmhouse – in New Hampshire, this was – and killed him. They also broke into his safe. Listen to this. It’s from the Manchester Union Leader, three days after he was killed.’

As she reads, Hodges exits the Crosstown onto Lower Main.

‘“There is growing certainty that the robbers were after more than money. ‘They may also have taken a number of notebooks containing various writings Mr Rothstein did after retiring from public life,’ a source close to the investigation said. The source went on to speculate that the notebooks, whose existence was confirmed late yesterday by John Rothstein’s housekeeper, might be worth a great deal on the black market.”’

Holly’s eyes are blazing. She is having one of those divine passages where she has forgotten herself entirely.

‘The robbers hid it,’ she says.

‘Hid the money,’ Jerome says. ‘The twenty thousand.’

‘And the notebooks. Pete found at least some of them, maybe even all of them. He used the money to help his folks. He didn’t get in trouble until he tried selling the notebooks to help his sister. Halliday knows. By now he may even have them. Hurry up, Bill. Hurry up hurry up hurry up!’

31

Morris lurches to the front of the store, heart pounding, temples thudding. He drops Andy’s gun into his sportcoat pocket, snatches up a book from one of the display tables, opens it, and slams it against his chin to stanch the blood. He could have wiped it with the sleeve of his coat, almost did, but he’s thinking again now and knows better. He’ll have to go out in public, and he doesn’t want to do that smeared with blood. The boy had some on his pants, though, and that’s good. That’s fine, in fact.

I’m thinking again, and the boy better be thinking, too. If he is, I can still rescue this situation.

He opens the shop door and looks both ways. No sign of Saubers. He expected nothing else. Teenagers are fast. They’re like cockroaches that way.

Morris scrabbles in his pocket for the scrap of paper with Pete’s cell phone number on it, and suffers a moment of raw panic when he can’t find it. At last his fingers touch something scrunched far down in one corner and he breathes a sigh of relief. His heart is pounding, pounding, and he slams one hand against his bony chest.

Don’t you give up on me now, he thinks. Don’t you dare.

He uses the shop’s landline to call Saubers, because that also fits the story he’s constructing in his mind. Morris thinks it’s a good story. He doubts if John Rothstein could have told a better one.

32

When Pete comes fully back to himself, he’s in a place Morris Bellamy knows well: Government Square, across from the Happy Cup Café. He sits on a bench to catch his breath, looking anxiously back the way he’s come. He sees no sign of Red Lips, and this doesn’t surprise him. Pete is also thinking again, and knows the man who tried to kill him would attract attention on the street. I got him pretty good, Pete thinks grimly. Red Lips is now Bloody Chin.

Good so far, but what now?

As if in answer, his cell phone vibrates. Pete pulls it out of his pocket and looks at the number displayed. He recognizes the last four digits, 8877, from when he called Halliday and left a message about the weekend trip to River Bend Resort. It has to be Red Lips; it sure can’t be Mr Halliday. This thought is so awful it makes him laugh, although the sound that comes out sounds more like a sob.

His first impulse is to not answer. What changes his mind is something Red Lips said: Your house used to be my house. Isn’t that an interesting co-inky-dink?

His mother’s text instructed him to come home right after school. Tina’s text said their mother knew about the money. So they’re together at the house, waiting for him. Pete doesn’t want to alarm them unnecessarily – especially when he’s the cause for alarm – but he needs to know what this incoming call is about, especially since Dad isn’t around to protect the two of them if the crazy guy should turn up on Sycamore Street. Dad’s in Victor County, doing one of his show-and-tells.

I’ll call the police, Pete thinks. When I tell him that, he’ll head for the hills. He’ll have to. This thought brings some marginal comfort, and he pushes ACCEPT.

‘Hello, Peter,’ Red Lips says.

‘I don’t need to talk to you,’ Peter says. ‘You better run, because I’m calling the cops.’

‘I’m glad I reached you before you did something so foolish. You won’t believe this, but I’m telling you as a friend.’

‘You’re right,’ Pete says. ‘I don’t believe it. You tried to kill me.’

‘Here’s something else you won’t believe: I’m glad I didn’t. Because then I’d never find out where you hid the Rothstein notebooks.’

‘You never will,’ Pete says, and adds, ‘I’m telling you as a friend.’ He’s feeling a little steadier now. Red Lips isn’t chasing him, and he isn’t on his way to Sycamore Street, either. He’s hiding in the bookshop and talking on the landline.

‘That’s what you think now, because you haven’t considered the long view. I have. Here’s the situation: You went to Andy to sell the notebooks. He tried to blackmail you instead, so you killed him.’

Pete says nothing. He can’t. He’s flabbergasted.

‘Peter? Are you there? If you don’t want to spend a year in the Riverview Youth Detention Center followed by twenty or so in Waynesville, you better be. I’ve been in both, and I can tell you they’re no place for young men with virgin bottoms. College would be much better, don’t you think?’

‘I wasn’t even in the city last weekend,’ Pete says. ‘I was at a school retreat. I can prove it.’

Red Lips doesn’t hesitate. ‘Then you did it before you left. Or possibly on Sunday night, after you got back. The police are going to find your voicemail – I was sure to save it. There’s also DVD security footage of you arguing with him. I took the discs, but I’ll be sure the police get them if we can’t come to an agreement. Then there’s the fingerprints. They’ll find yours on the doorknob of his inner office. Better still, they’ll find them on the murder weapon. I think you’re in a box, even if you can account for every minute of your time this past weekend.’

Pete realizes with dismay that he can’t even do that. He missed everything on Sunday. He remembers Ms Bran – alias Bran Stoker – standing by the door of the bus just twenty-four hours ago, cell phone in hand, ready to call 911 and report a missing student.

I’m sorry, he told her. I was sick to my stomach. I thought the fresh air would help me. I was vomiting.

He can see her in court, all too clearly, saying that yes, Peter did look sick that afternoon. And he can hear the prosecuting attorney telling the jury that any teenage boy probably would look sick after chopping an elderly book dealer into kindling with a hatchet.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I submit to you that Pete Saubers hitchhiked back to the city that Sunday morning because he had an appointment with Mr Halliday, who thought Mr Saubers had finally decided to give in to his blackmail demands. Only Mr Saubers had no intention of giving in.

It’s a nightmare, Pete thinks. Like dealing with Halliday all over again, only a thousand times worse.

‘Peter? Are you there?’

‘No one would believe it. Not for a second. Not once they find out about you.’

‘And who am I, exactly?’

The wolf, Pete thinks. You’re the big bad wolf.

People must have seen him that Sunday, wandering around the resort acreage. Plenty of people, because he’d mostly stuck to the paths. Some would surely remember him and come forward. But, as Red Lips said, that left before the trip and after. Especially Sunday night, when he’d gone straight to his room and closed the door. On CSI and Criminal Minds, police scientists were always able to figure out the exact time of a murdered person’s death, but in real life, who knew? Not Pete. And if the police had a good suspect, one whose prints were on the murder weapon, the time of death might become negotiable.

But I had to throw the hatchet at him! he thinks. It was all I had!

Believing that things can get no worse, Pete looks down and sees a bloodstain on his knee.

Mr Halliday’s blood.

‘I can fix this,’ Red Lips says smoothly, ‘and if we come to terms, I will. I can wipe your fingerprints. I can erase the voicemail. I can destroy the security DVDs. All you have to do is tell me where the notebooks are.’

‘Like I should trust you!’

‘You should.’ Low. Coaxing and reasonable. ‘Think about it, Peter. With you out of the picture, Andy’s murder looks like an attempted robbery gone wrong. The work of some random crackhead or meth freak. That’s good for both of us. With you in the picture, the existence of the notebooks comes out. Why would I want that?’

You won’t care, Pete thinks. You won’t have to, because you won’t be anywhere near here when Halliday is discovered dead in his office. You said you were in Waynesville, and that makes you an ex-con, and you knew Mr Halliday. Put those together, and you’d be a suspect, too. Your fingerprints are in there as well as mine, and I don’t think you can wipe them all up. What you can do – if I let you – is take the notebooks and go. And once you’re gone, what’s to keep you from sending the police those security DVDs, just for spite? To get back at me for hitting you with that liquor bottle and then getting away? If I agree to what you’re saying …

He finishes the thought aloud. ‘I’ll only look worse. No matter what you say.’

‘I assure you that’s not true.’

He sounds like a lawyer, one of the sleazy ones with fancy hair who advertise on the cable channels late at night. Pete’s outrage returns and straightens him on the bench like an electric shock.

‘Fuck you. You’re never getting those notebooks.’

He ends the call. The phone buzzes in his hand almost immediately, same number, Red Lips calling back. Pete hits DECLINE and turns the phone off. Right now he needs to think harder and smarter than ever in his life.

Mom and Tina, they’re the most important thing. He has to talk to Mom, tell her that she and Teens have to get out of the house right away. Go to a motel, or something. They have to—

No, not Mom. It’s his sister he has to talk to, at least to begin with.

He didn’t take that Mr Hodges’s card, but Tina must know how to get in touch with him. If that doesn’t work, he’ll have to call the police and take his chances. He will not put his family at risk, no matter what.

Pete speed-dials his sister.

33

‘Hello? Peter? Hello? Hello?’

Nothing. The thieving sonofabitch has hung up. Morris’s first impulse is to rip the desk phone out of the wall and throw it at one of the bookcases, but he restrains himself at the last moment. This is no time to lose himself in a rage.

So what now? What next? Is Saubers going to call the police despite all the evidence stacked against him?

Morris can’t allow himself to believe that, because if he does, the notebooks will be lost to him. And consider this: would the boy take such an irrevocable step without talking to his parents first? Without asking their advice? Without warning them?

I have to move fast, Morris thinks, and aloud, as he wipes his fingerprints off the phone: ‘If ’twere to be done, best it be done quickly.’

And ’twere best he wash his face and leave by the back door. He doesn’t believe the gunshots were heard on the street – the inner office must be damned near soundproof, lined with books as it is – but he doesn’t want to take the risk.

He scrubs away the blood goatee in Halliday’s bathroom, careful to leave the red-stained washcloth in the sink where the police will find it when they eventually turn up. With that done, he follows a narrow aisle to a door with an EXIT sign above it and boxes of books stacked in front of it. He moves them, thinking how stupid to block the fire exit that way. Stupid and shortsighted.

That could be my old pal’s epitaph, Morris thinks. Here lies Andrew Halliday, a fat, stupid, shortsighted homo. He will not be missed.

The heat of late afternoon whacks him like a hammer, and he staggers. His head is thumping from being hit with that goddam decanter, but the brains inside are in high gear. He gets in the Subaru, where it’s even hotter, and turns the air-conditioning to max as soon as he starts the engine. He examines himself in the rearview mirror. There’s an ugly purple bruise surrounding a crescent-shaped cut on his chin, but the bleeding has stopped, and on the whole he doesn’t look too bad. He wishes he had some aspirin, but that can wait.

He backs out of Andy’s space and threads his way down the alley leading to Grant Street. Grant is more downmarket than Lacemaker Lane with its fancy shops, but at least cars are allowed there.

As Morris stops at the mouth of the alley, Hodges and his two partners arrive on the other side of the building and stand looking at the CLOSED sign hanging in the door of Andrew Halliday Rare Editions. A break in the Grant Street traffic comes just as Hodges is trying the bookshop door and finding it unlocked. Morris makes a quick left and heads toward the Crosstown Connector. With rush hour only getting started, he can be on the North Side in fifteen minutes. Maybe twelve. He needs to keep Saubers from going to the police, assuming he hasn’t already, and there’s one sure way to do that.

All he has to do is beat the notebook thief to his little sister.

34

Behind the Saubers house, near the fence that separates the family’s backyard from the undeveloped land, there’s a rusty old swing set that Tom Saubers keeps meaning to take down, now that both of his children are too old for it. This afternoon Tina is sitting on the glider, rocking slowly back and forth. Divergent is open in her lap, but she hasn’t turned a page in the last five minutes. Mom has promised to watch the movie with her as soon as she’s finished the book, but today Tina doesn’t want to read about teenagers in the ruins of Chicago. Today that seems awful instead of romantic. Still moving slowly back and forth, she closes both the book and her eyes.

God, she prays, please don’t let Pete be in really bad trouble. And don’t let him hate me. I’ll die if he hates me, so please let him understand why I told. Please.

God gets right back to her. God says Pete won’t blame her because Mom figured it out on her own, but Tina’s not sure she believes Him. She opens the book again but still can’t read. The day seems to hang suspended, waiting for something awful to happen.

The cell phone she got for her eleventh birthday is upstairs in her bedroom. It’s just a cheapie, not the iPhone with all the bells and whistles she desired, but it’s her most prized possession and she’s rarely without it. Only this afternoon she is. She left it in her room and went out to the backyard as soon as she texted Pete. She had to send that text, she couldn’t just let him walk in unprepared, but she can’t bear the thought of an angry, accusatory callback. She’ll have to face him in a little while, that can’t be avoided, but Mom will be with her then. Mom will tell him it wasn’t Tina’s fault, and he’ll believe her.

Probably.

Now the cell begins to vibrate and jiggle on her desk. She’s got a cool Snow Patrol ringtone, but – sick to her stomach and worried about Pete – Tina never thought to switch it from the mandated school setting when she and her mother got home, so Linda Saubers doesn’t hear it downstairs. The screen lights up with her brother’s picture. Eventually, the phone falls silent. After thirty seconds or so, it starts vibrating again. And a third time. Then it quits for good.

Pete’s picture disappears from the screen.

35

In Government Square, Pete stares at his phone incredulously. For the first time in his memory, Teens has failed to answer her cell while school is not in session.

Mom, then … or maybe not. Not quite yet. She’ll want to ask a billion questions, and time is tight.

Also (although he won’t quite admit this to himself), he doesn’t want to talk to her until he absolutely has to.

He uses Google to troll for Mr Hodges’s number. He finds nine William Hodgeses here in the city, but the one he wants has got to be K. William, who has a company called Finders Keepers. Pete calls and gets an answering machine. At the end of the message – which seems to last at least an hour – Holly says, ‘If you need immediate assistance, you may dial 555–1890.’

Pete once more debates calling his mother, then decides to go with the number the recording has given him first. What convinces him are two words: immediate assistance.

36

‘Oough,’ Holly says as they approach the empty service desk in the middle of Andrew Halliday’s narrow shop. ‘What’s that smell?’

‘Blood,’ Hodges replies. It’s also decaying meat, but he doesn’t want to say that. ‘You stay here, both of you.’

‘Are you carrying a weapon?’ Jerome asks.

‘I’ve got the Slapper.’

‘That’s all?’

Hodges shrugs.

‘Then I’m coming with you.’

‘Me, too,’ Holly says, and grabs a substantial book called Wild Plants and Flowering Herbs of North America. She holds it as if she means to swat a stinging bug.

‘No,’ Hodges says patiently, ‘you’re going to stay right here. Both of you. And race to see which one can dial nine-one-one first, if I yell for you to do so.’

‘Bill—’ Jerome begins.

‘Don’t argue with me, Jerome, and don’t waste time. I’ve got an idea time might be rather short.’

‘A hunch?’ Holly asks.

‘Maybe a little more.’

Hodges takes the Happy Slapper from his coat pocket (these days he’s rarely without it, although he seldom carries his old service weapon), and grasps it above the knot. He advances quickly and quietly to the door of what he assumes is Andrew Halliday’s private office. It’s standing slightly ajar. The Slapper’s loaded end swings from his right hand. He stands slightly to one side of the door and knocks with his left. Because this seems to be one of those moments when the strict truth is dispensable, he calls, ‘It’s the police, Mr Halliday.’

There’s no answer. He knocks again, louder, and when there’s still no answer, he pushes the door open. The smell is instantly stronger: blood, decay, and spilled booze. Something else, too. Spent gunpowder, an aroma he knows well. Flies are buzzing somnolently. The lights are on, seeming to spotlight the body on the floor.

‘Oh Christ, his head’s half off!’ Jerome cries. He’s so close that Hodges jerks in surprise, bringing the Slapper up and then lowering it again. My pacemaker just went into overdrive, he thinks. He turns and both of them are crowding up right behind him. Jerome has a hand over his mouth. His eyes are bulging.

Holly, on the other hand, looks calm. She’s got Wild Plants and Flowering Herbs of North America clasped against her chest and appears to be assessing the bleeding mess on the rug. To Jerome she says, ‘Don’t hurl. This is a crime scene.’

‘I’m not going to hurl.’ The words are muffled, thanks to the hand clutching his lower face.

‘Neither one of you minds worth a tinker’s dam,’ Hodges says. ‘If I were your teacher, I’d send you both to the office. I’m going in. You two stand right where you are.’

He takes two steps in. Jerome and Holly immediately follow, side by side. The fucking Bobbsey Twins, Hodges thinks.

‘Did Tina’s brother do this?’ Jerome asks. ‘Jesus Christ, Bill, did he?’

‘If he did, it wasn’t today. That blood’s almost dry. And there’s the flies. I don’t see any maggots yet, but—’

Jerome makes a gagging noise.

‘Jerome, don’t,’ Holly says in a forbidding voice. Then, to Hodges: ‘I see a little ax. Hatchet. Whatever you call it. That’s what did it.’

Hodges doesn’t reply. He’s assessing the scene. He thinks that Halliday – if it is Halliday – has been dead at least twenty-four hours, maybe longer. Probably longer. But something has happened in here since, because the smell of spilled liquor and gunpowder is fresh and strong.

‘Is that a bullet hole, Bill?’ Jerome asks. He’s pointing at a bookshelf to the left of the door, near a small cherrywood table. There’s a small round hole in a copy of Catch-22. Hodges goes to it, looks more closely, and thinks, That’s got to hurt the resale price. Then he looks at the table. There are two crystal decanters on it, probably Waterford. The table is slightly dusty, and he can see the shapes where two others stood. He looks across the room, beyond the desk, and yep, there they are, lying on the floor.

‘Sure it’s a bullet hole,’ Holly says. ‘I can smell the gunpowder.’

‘There was a fight,’ Jerome says, then points to the corpse without looking at it. ‘But he sure wasn’t part of it.’

‘No,’ Hodges says, ‘not him. And the combatants have since departed.’

‘Was one of them Peter Saubers?’

Hodges sighs heavily. ‘Almost for sure. I think he came here after he ditched us at the drugstore.’

‘Somebody took Mr Halliday’s computer,’ Holly says. ‘His DVD hookup is still there beside the cash register, and the wireless mouse – also a little box with a few thumb drives in it – but the computer is gone. I saw a big empty space on the desk out there. It was probably a laptop.’

‘What now?’ Jerome asks.

‘We call the police.’ Hodges doesn’t want to do it, senses that Pete Saubers is in bad trouble and calling the cops may only make it worse, at least to begin with, but he played the Lone Ranger in the Mercedes Killer case, and almost got a few thousand kids killed.

He takes out his cell, but before he can turn it on, it lights up and rings in his hand.

‘Peter,’ Holly says. Her eyes are shining and she speaks with utter certainty. ‘Bet you six thousand dollars. Now he wants to talk. Don’t just stand there, Bill, answer your fracking phone.’