A Knife Edge

TWENTY-SEVEN

I parked a block from Amy McDonough's house, and walked the rest of the way. Her place still looked and felt every bit as empty and deserted as it did that morning. Nevertheless, I went to the front door and rang the bell.

Nothing.

I took a step back, stood on the porch, and wondered where she'd gone after the doctor's appointment she'd told Boris about — assuming she even had a doctor's appointment in the first place. It was 4:47. On the walk back down the path, I called Elmer's. After six rings a recorded voice message clicked in and told me my call was important to Elmer's and that I should try ringing during business hours, which were between nine a.m. and five p.m. Monday to Saturday, and nine a.m. to two p.m. Sundays and public holidays, except for Christmas Day, New Year's Day, and Thanksgiving when they weren't open at all, and my call would be happily handled by their expert trained staff. I wondered in what field Boris's expert training lay. Maybe it was in finishing up early.

Despite my earlier belief to the contrary, I was reasonably sure Boris took me seriously enough not to piss me off. I believed he would have called had Amy turned up for work, even if just to get revenge on her for leaving him alone in that wasteland of weight machines for the day. I got to the SUV and wondered what to do next. It would be dark in an hour. If I drove to Hurlburt Field, I'd only have to drive back out to Pensacola in the morning. My cell rang. Another blocked number. I answered it anyway.

“Hey. I thought you'd have called, or maybe sent flowers.”

“Ma'am…”

“It's Clare to you now, OK?”

“OK.”

“Anyway, now you've made me call you. Where are you? It's New Year's Eve, for Christ's sake, and I've got the night off.”

“New Year's? Jesus, when did that happen?”

“At least try to sound enthusiastic, Vin. You might give a girl a complex.”

“Sorry, Clare. Last night was amazing — you're amazing…”

“But something's wrong,” she said. “Yes, you've had an attack of the guilts — haven't you? — and now you don't want to see me because seeing me will remind you of your pathetic weakness for truly beautiful women.”

I laughed. I'd forgotten how to do that with a woman — laugh.

“So, what are you doing tonight? Mom and Dad have Manny. I've bought a bottle of vodka, the cutest underwear ensemble you've ever seen, and some whipped cream.”

“Whipped cream?”

“You'll never know unless you come over.”

“I'm still in Pensacola.”

“Really?”

“Actually, I'm parked a block away from the home of a woman by the name of McDonough.”

“Who's she?”

“She was Wright's girlfriend, and maybe Butler's too.”

“Did Wright know that?” Clare asked, turning instantly into a cop.

“I don't know. That's one of the things I want to ask her.”

“So what's going on at her house?”

“Nothing. She's not home. Went out this morning and hasn't come back. I'm going to sit in the SUV and wait for her to turn up.”

“Now there's a New Year's Eve to remember. How has the rest of the day gone? Dig up anything interesting?”

“Yeah — bits and pieces.” I gave her a rundown — she was still the DI on the case.

When I'd finished, Clare said, “And you're hoping Amy will provide the piece that makes it all fall into place?”

“That'd be convenient, wouldn't it?”

She agreed that it would. Having gone through everything with Clare, I realized I now had a pretty good picture of Ruben Wright on his last jump. To begin with, he was not the man I knew. He was sick, his face and hands possibly numb, his legs possibly spasming as MS attacked the nerve endings in his brain. He was also more than likely to have been clinically depressed, and jumping in the company of a man he despised, not least because he probably knew the guy was boning his girlfriend — something Wright was more than likely no longer capable of doing. That would have been hard for a man like Ruben — at least, the man I knew — to take. In my first conversation with Clare on this case, her view, as well as my own, was that the circumstances surrounding Ruben Wright's death were, at the very least, suspicious. They still were, only now I was equally suspicious of Ruben Wright. He at least had the motive to take his own life. What was Butler's motive? He had the girl, didn't he? The guy might have been an asshole but he wasn't a psychopath — the type who killed just for the sake of killing. The picture didn't make a hell of a lot of sense. I had Butler's version of events, a little interesting forensic evidence, plus a few conflicting interviews. Was it possible the facts could be put together to form a different picture, one that made total sense?

I was aware of the silence, but it wasn't an uncomfortable one. It was almost as if the discussion about the case we'd just had was the small talk buffering the major issue still to be resolved — namely, were we somehow going to overcome the tyranny of distance between us and get together for some serious action with her bottle of whipped cream, or what?

“Where are you going to stay?” Clare asked, finally.

“Well, I currently have a room at the Ford Explorer, but the room service sucks.”

I heard her laugh. “What if McDonough doesn't show?”

“Then I'll try to find the complaints box and leave a note.”

“Why don't you just go to a hotel and make sure you're up early enough to catch the worm?”

It didn't take much to convince me that this would be a much better idea.

“I know a place just after you cross the bridge, coming into town. It's clean and the rooms don't smell of old sex,” Clare said.

“Okay, you've talked me into it.”

“Great. I'll see you there in an hour and a half. Wait up.” There was a pause. And then she added, “On second thought, have a quick nap. Might as well get some sleep while you can.”

I found the place Clare recommended. As promised, it was clean and fresh — more in the country bed-and-breakfast mode than hotel-style accommodation — and run by a tough little granny in orthopedic shoes whose thinning hair was dyed chestnut. As she handed over the key she informed me that I was lucky to be getting a room, it being New Year's Eve with folks down from the colder northern climes to enjoy the warmer weather. The old lady had apparently had a last-minute cancellation.

I ordered a club sandwich in my room, and took a shower. The sandwich arrived just as I was toweling off. Perfect timing. I had no fresh clothes, so I put on the robe supplied, ate the sandwich, and tried not to think too much about the case at hand. I succeeded, but only because I couldn't shake the feeling that I still had work to do on the Tanaka/Boyle case. Under my skin was that feeling I'd had in the morning, the one I'd woken up with. I wanted to call Arlen. I wanted him to check on whether Al Cooke's faxed statement had turned up. I wanted him to look into the guy's bank account for me. Cooke was on deck the same time as Tanaka. He'd told me it was Boyle who'd murdered Tanaka. But what if it'd gone down another way and he was more involved in the murder than he was prepared to admit? Boyle was the only other person who could have verified his story, and now Boyle was dead. I picked up the phone, then put it down. New Year's Eve was New Year's Eve. My crap could wait twenty-four hours. And anyway, I knew what he'd say: “That's not your case anymore.”

I turned on the television for company. The screen filled with some local doll presenting the news. The lead stories were still related to the hit on the Transamerica Pyramid building and the Four Winds apartments. Rescue efforts were about to end, the emergency crews standing by, engines idling. There was a piece shot on a set of steps in downtown San Francisco, the President noting with thanks the condolences sent by a host of nations and angered by some that hadn't, most notably Pakistan's new anti-West government whose thinly veiled message in their statement about the bombing basically said we deserved it.

The President's general displeasure with Pakistan dovetailed with a report about Islamabad announcing the resumption of nuclear testing. Apparently, they had one ready to go. India had reacted by placing its military on high alert, and rushing reinforcements through midwinter blizzards to defend the disputed patch of high-altitude dirt and ice in Kashmir.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, various religious nutcases were trying to turn the clock back to around the year A.D. 600—a great time to have been a Muslim, apparently — and blowing up their fellow Muslims who dared to want to live in the present.

Eventually, CNN got around to the real news that, once again, it was almost certain the Redskins would fail to make it into the divisional playoffs. They had to win the next three of three. I hit the off button in disgust.

I twiddled my thumbs — still had an hour to kill. The book I had bought earlier caught my attention. I lay on the bed and leafed through it. The miracle cure for my flying issues could possibly be just a few chapters away. Have a Nice Flight. Pictured on the cover of the book was a supermodel seated on a plane pointing out the porthole at something below, her partner looking over her shoulder with interest. Both were beaming with happiness and relaxation. In reality, I bet the plane probably hadn't even taken off. It probably hadn't even left the hangar.

I told myself to keep an open mind — if nothing else, the book had cost me nearly twenty bucks. The first chapter gave an overview of the kind of people affected by “aviaphobia,” the name of this particular anxiety disorder. It informed me that aviaphobics fell into three categories: worriers by nature; people who'd just been through an emotional trauma like divorce; people who'd had a bad experience in a plane. Generally speaking, I wouldn't have classed myself as a worrier, and, although I'd also been divorced, that particular event was more joyous than traumatic. I was firmly in the third category. I flipped through the chapters, getting a feel for how the cure was going to be effected. Instead what I found were plenty of the detailed experiences of my fellow phobics — how and why they became fearful in the first place, and then how they managed to overcome their fear. There were chapters on the physics of flying — how planes have to fly, have no choice in the matter, and so on; chapters on how pilots are trained and retrained to handle disaster, which I found contradictory. If flying was so goddamn safe, why the hell was there so much emphasis on what to do when—not if-—the thing ceased to stay aloft and came screaming to earth in a disintegrating ball of flaming aluminum?

I put the book down, lay back, and stared at the ceiling. There was a fan up there, its three blades reminding me of an airplane propeller. Outside, a couple of cats growled at each other. My problem was that I'd been in a number of pretty hairy flying situations. I'd also lost plenty of good friends to plane crashes, accidents with rotary and fixed-wing aircraft being a primary cause of noncombat death in the military these days.

I picked up the book again and read the same paragraph three times about a guy whose fear of flying sprang from his being knocked unconscious by the drinks cart as it rolled out of control down the aisle. There was a joke in there somewhere, but I was too damn tired to find it. I closed my lids for a moment, just to moisten my eyeballs. The next thing I was aware of was a thumping sound. I rolled off the bed and opened the door.

“Hey, sleepy… taking my advice about the nap, huh?” said Clare.

“Hi. Come in,” I said, rubbing my face. “Sorry about that.”

Clare was dressed in jeans, sneakers, a tight, light blue T, and a light green cardigan with embroidered daisies scattered on it. It was a cool night and her nipples were giving a couple of those daisies a little extra definition. Her hair was loose — she'd done something different to it so that soft blond curls framed her face. A little black eyeliner accentuated her blue eyes, and lip gloss gave her lips a pink, wet look. She carried a woven hemp bag, the sort people often take to the beach.

“What's in the bag?” I asked.

“Supplies. There a fridge in the room?”

I pointed.

“Sorry I'm late, by the way,” she said as she transferred the contents of her bag to the small refrigerator.

I checked my watch. She'd taken close to two hours. “That's OK. It's nice of you to come.”

“Nice? Nice? I'll show you nice, buddy-boy.” She turned and took three running steps toward me. She took me by surprise, knocking me back so that I fell on the bed. I grabbed hold and took her with me. Her hair fell over my face, smelling of wildflowers. She kissed me and nearly took my tongue by the root. She lifted my hand off her ass and brought it to her breast and whispered, “You really should fuck me, Vin.” Then she sat up and took her cardigan and shirt off, revealing a delicate white lace bra, a fine white mesh fabric cradling her small breasts. “You like?”

“Yes,” I said. I traced the shape of her nipples with my fingertips.

Clare closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the sensation, then went down on all fours over me, running her lips and her tongue down my chest. “Close your eyes and keep them closed,” she ordered. “And no cheating.”

“Yes, sir.”

She kissed me again.

Then I felt her get off the bed. “Where're you going?” I asked.

“Nowhere. Keep them closed.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel, sir.”

I felt her untie the sash of my robe and her tongue lick the length of my erection. The blast of pleasure that resulted was like an electric shock.

“Now, no cheating,” she said again.

As a game, this beat the hell out of Scrabble. I heard her light a match, smelled it in the air, heard the wick crackle, and then smelled the hot wax. I heard her loosen her belt and listened to the sound of fabric on skin as her jeans came off. My breathing was hard, as was the rest of me, my whole being concentrated in a rod of steel between my legs.

I heard her open the fridge and fill a glass with ice. Next came the sound of running water.

“Keep them closed, or you'll be in big trouble,” she warned.

“No, it's you who's going to be in big trouble,” I replied. Every nerve ending in me was now raw and craving sex.

“Yeah, I can see that,” she whispered in my ear. “Nearly ready.”

I heard the glass tinkle. Then she took me in her mouth, which also contained ice, and a shiver rocketed down my thighs. A tingling sensation bounced up and down my spine. She cupped my balls with a hand that had been wrapped around a hot mug. The heat and cold caused me to gasp.

I wasn't going to protest. Clare ran her fingernails along the skin of my legs as she knelt between them and then took me in her mouth, her now scaldingly hot mouth. I felt as though I was melting between her lips.

“Jesus, stop, stop …” I whispered in order to prevent the explosion welling up inside me.

Clare slid off the bed. She stood beside me, armed with a melting ice cube, a dribble of water rolling down toward her wrist. The flickering light from the candles glimmered across her flawless golden skin and a spark danced in her eyes and in the gloss of her lips. She reminded me of Tinkerbell, a very bad Tinkerbell.

I think I must have swallowed, because she said, “You like?”

“ Uh-huh,” I said. “Is that what you mean by ‘cute'?”

She answered by removing her bra and running the ice around a nipple. “You want a turn?” she asked.

Clare gave me her best Playboy bunny pout.

“What, and spoil the show? Come here,” I said.

She took half a step toward the bed, which brought her within range. I reached up and grabbed her wrist and pulled her onto me. We kissed long and slow, exchanging the ice cube a few times until the heat within us dissolved it. When our lips parted, she informed me, “Like I said, your turn. I promise I won't look.”

Clare lay back on the bed, her eyes closed, her hands above her head as she stretched catlike. For the first time I noticed, lined up on the bedside table, that can of whipped cream she'd mentioned, as well as a bottle of honey, a block of dark chocolate, a mug of hot water, and a bowl of ice cubes.

“I thought you were joking about the whipped cream.”

“I never joke about food.”

“Um …” I said, considering the lineup on the table.

“Use your imagination, Vin.” Clare sighed as she rolled over on the bed, lifting her ass high, toward me. “Just start with the honey and move on to the chocolate,” she purred. “Happy New Year, big boy.”