Three Blind Mice

9

Framed photographs of the detective squad he’d commanded up north in Nassau County lined Morris Bloom’s office in the Public Safety Building. They shared the wall space with a citation plaque from the Nassau County Chief of Detectives; a pair of laminated front-page stories from the New York Daily News and Long Island’s Newsday, headlining the daring capture of two bank robbers in Mineola, Long Island, by a police officer named Morris L. Bloom; and several framed photographs of his wife. A boxing trophy he’d received while serving in the U.S. Navy sat on top of his bookshelf, alongside a Snoopy doll his nineteen-year-old son had given him last Father’s Day. Hanging around the beagle’s neck was a hand-lettered sign that read To the best bloodhound in the world. Love, Marc.

Bloom was looking at the headline of that morning’s Calusa Herald-Tribune.

The headline read:

“I thought World War III was starting,” Matthew said.

“Mmm,” Bloom said.

“The size of that type.”

“Mmm.”

The bylined story under the headline went on to reveal, somewhat hysterically, that the largest cocaine seizure ever made in southwest Florida had taken place yesterday morning, August 21, and that the arrests of twelve men in the so-called Bolivian sector of Calusa might very well have put an end to all trafficking in this part of the state. The article went on to say that the four-month-long investigation had been initiated by Skye Bannister, the State Attorney, and that detectives from his office had worked in conjunction with the DEA, the Calusa P.D., and the Calusa Sheriffs Department to bring about a successful conclusion to the covert operation. Together they had confiscated in the early-morning raid thousands of kilos of cocaine, millions of dollars in cash, and enough handguns, rifles, and automatic weapons to start a war in Central America. Skye Bannister was quoted as saying, “If you do drugs, you will be caught. And when you’re caught, you will be punished. These men will be going away for a long, long time. I’ll see to that personally. We will not tolerate drugs in this city. We will not tolerate drugs in this state.”

“So this is what was cooking,” Matthew asked.

“This is what was cooking,” Bloom said.

“Skye’s rocket to Tallahassee.”

“Let’s say it couldn’t hurt,” Bloom said.

“Which is why he wants to sweep the murder case under the rug.”

“So to speak.”

“Make an offer, get his conviction fast, and dance on home with Mama.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Because if he loses this one…”

“Big one to lose, Matthew.”

“Oh yes.”

“He loses this one, it’s goodbye, Tallahassee.”

“I’m going to make sure he loses it, Morrie.”

“Aluvai,” Bloom said. “But I don’t think you have a chance.”

“No, huh? Was my man out of jail and roaming the waterfront last night?”

“A copycat murder, Matthew. Plain and simple.”

“The party line,” Matthew said.

The murder was buried on page fourteen of the paper, in a brief story that ran for half a column on the left-hand side of the page, adjacent to an almost-full-page ad for the Curtis Brothers Department Store. The story reported that Trinh Mang Due, sixty-eight years old, an unemployed immigrant from Vietnam, residing at 1224 Tango Street, had been found dead on the North Tamiami Trail, near Marina Lou’s, at five minutes past two a.m. by the motorized police officer patroling that sector.

When certain apparent similarities were pointed out to Patricia Demming — the Assistant State Attorney prosecuting the sensational case involving the murder and mutilation of three Vietnamese immigrants recently acquitted of rape charges — the young prosecutor told reporters that such incidents were not uncommon. “It’s extremely unfortunate that so many murders are imitated by impressionable people who commit the same crime in the identical manner,” she said. “We call them copycat murders. The slaying of Mr. Trinh is just such a horrible tragedy. He was the innocent victim of a twisted person seeking dubious fame through the repetition of a previous murder — or murders, as the case happens to be here. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that the murders are related only in that way. We already have the man who committed the earlier murders, and I’m certain the Calusa police will find the man or woman who committed this most recent outrage.”

“Some mouth on her,” Bloom said.

“Some baloney,” Matthew said. “Who was responsible for burying the story?”

“Not me,” Bloom said.

“I didn’t think you.”

“I didn’t even catch the squeal. Palmieri was on last night.”

“Was the body mutilated in the same way?”

“Identical.”

“To make sure we think copycat, right?”

“I do think copycat.”

“The murderer just happened to pick one of Demming’s witnesses, right?”

“No, he deliberately picked him.”

“Why?”

“Who knows why? Maybe because Trinh was related to the previous murders. Who knows what goes on in a copycat’s head, Matthew? These people are nuts, do you think they know what they’re doing? They don’t know what they’re doing, believe me. I had a copycat in Nassau, when I was working up there, he went around killing old ladies because some other poor lunatic had killed his eighty-year-old mother the week before. Made headlines all over New York. But the copycat picked only grey-haired ladies. Because his own mother had grey hair. So never mind the first guy’s mother had hair even blacker than yours. The copycat’s mother had grey hair, so he went looking for grey-haired victims. A meshuggener,” Bloom said.

“No motive, is that what you’re saying?”

“Fame maybe, Demming was right about that. A lot of them do it ’cause they think it’ll make them as famous as the guy they’re imitating.”

“How about this for a motive, Morrie? Trinh saw the license plate on the murderer’s car.”

“There’s no such plate in Florida,” Bloom said, and shook his head.

“I know. But do you think I’d have left it there? Do you think I wouldn’t have gone after him till he remembered what he saw?”

“I guess you would have,” Bloom said, and shrugged.

“And you don’t think the murderer realized that?”

“I don’t know what he did or didn’t realize, if it’s a he to begin with. Murderers don’t think the way you or I do. In murders, there’s nothing neat, take my word for it. Murders are messy. And the people who commit murders don’t read Agatha Christie. They’re not all crazy, Matthew, but this one is, believe me. This is a classic copycat murder. And the person responsible will do another one, and maybe another one after that, and he’ll keep doing them till we catch him. We’ll catch him, Matthew, wait and see. And he’ll be a copycat. And him and your man’ll be sitting together on death row.”

“I promised him otherwise,” Matthew said.

“You shouldn’t have,” Bloom said.

They were both drinking coffee and eating scrambled eggs and bacon in a Sabal Key joint called The Miami Deli. There was something wrong with the air conditioning today, the waitress explained. This meant that the temperature inside the place was something like a hundred and four Fahrenheit. Warren had wanted to leave at once, find another place, but Nick Alston said he didn’t mind the heat. A fat lady in pink shorts and a pink tube top sat near the windows, fanning herself with a laminated menu. On the road outside, an occasional car went by, heading north toward Sabal’s public beach. Alston was enjoying his eggs.

“What is it you want this time?” he asked.

“Computer work,” Warren said.

He had always operated on the theory that if you were going to ask a favor you asked it straight out, without doing a little tap dance around the mulberry bush. Saved a lot of time all around. And maybe generated a little respect. He had told Alston on the phone that he needed another favor. Alston had sourly agreed to meet him and had hinted that this time there’d be a price tag. But now, seeing the man, Warren wasn’t so sure he wanted to get down to business quite so fast.

Alston didn’t look too terrific.

He had never been what anyone would call handsome, but his brown eyes were now shot with red, and his craggy face looked puffy and bloated, and his straw-colored hair looked stringy, and there was a beard stubble on his face, and it was plain to see he’d already been drinking this morning. Only ten o’clock, and the smell of alcohol on his breath was overpowering. He had told Warren that today was his day off, but now Warren wondered if he drank even on the days he was working.

“How have you been, Nick?” he asked.

“What kind of computer work?” Alston said.

“You been all right?”

“Well, you know.”

He kept his eyes on his plate, cutting into the eggs with the edge of his fork, lifting the fork to his mouth, repeating the operation.

“There’s a new guy in Frank sector,” he said.

“How is he?”

“Okay, I guess.”

He kept eating. Warren signaled to the waitress for more coffee. She was a plain-looking blonde with spectacular legs. She wore her skirt very short, to show off the legs. Both Warren and Alston noticed the legs. It would have been impossible not to notice those legs.

“Throw a flag over her face,” Alston said, “fuck for Old Glory.”

An old joke, but Warren smiled.

“He’s the other car in the sector,” Alston said. “The car that used to be Charlie Macklin’s. We ride solo, you know. But there’s two cars in each sector, we can get pretty quick backup if we need it. I don’t know him too good yet, but he ain’t no Charlie Macklin, I can tell you that.”

“How long had you known Charlie?”

“Oh, Jesus, we go back for years.”

Present tense. As if he were still alive.

“Must be difficult,” Warren said. “Losing a partner.”

“Yeah. Well, you know, we really got along good together. I’da trusted Charlie with my life — well, hell, that’s exactly what I did do, more times’n I can count. It ain’t the same without him, Chambers, I can tell you that,” he said, and nodded, and picked up his coffee cup.

Warren watched him for a moment.

Go on, he thought, take a chance.

“You been drinking much?” he asked.

“A little,” Alston said.

“You should try to cut back.”

“What business is it of yours?”

“None.”

“Then butt out.”

“I thought maybe I could help,” Warren said.

Alston looked across the table at him.

“Come on,” he said.

“I’m serious. If there’s anything I can do to…”

“Come on, I hardly know you. Why should it matter to you?”

“I don’t like to see anyone in trouble.”

“I’m not in trouble.”

“You’ve been drinking already this morning, haven’t you?”

“Nothing to speak of. What are you, a minister?”

“I’d like to help, Nick. Call me, okay? You ever feel like talking, give me a call.”

“Come on,” Alston said, embarrassed.

“Instead of turning to the bottle,” Warren said.

“I guess I have been drinking some,” Alston said, and shrugged, and looked away. Across the room, the waitress was leaning over the fat lady’s table, refilling her coffee cup.

“You ever see wheels like that?” Alston asked.

“Never.”

“Competition-class wheels, those are.”

“Indeed,” Warren said.

“Man,” Alston said, and shook his head in admiration.

Both men were silent for several moments, looking at the girl’s long, splendid legs.

“It’s just I sometimes start thinking about what happened,” Alston said. “I didn’t think I’d miss him this much, you know? Charlie. I mean… we used to have breakfast together every morning before we went out in the cars… and we’d stop for coffee two, three times during the shift, and then grab a bite when the tour was over, and we’d… we’d talk about all different kinds of things. Women, the job, places we been, things we wanted to do, it was good to be able to talk to somebody like that. Because this job, you know, it gets to you after a while. All the stuff you see. All the stuff that goes down in this city, especially nowadays with drugs calling the tune. You read the papers this morning? What bullshit! The S.A. makes one lousy drug bust, he thinks that’s the end of it. He oughta come ride the sector with me some night, I’ll show him the end of nothing.”

“They think they can nickel and dime the drug lords out of business,” Warren said.

“The drug budget is a laugh,” Alston said. “I try to explain that to my girlfriend, she’s a dispatcher down the Building, she understands police work a little. But not the underbelly, you know? What you have to deal with day in and day out. You need a partner to talk to about that.”

“Somebody who knows the work,” Warren said.

“Sure. Otherwise, you’re out there, you start thinkin’, what am I doing here? Who even cares whether I’m here or not?”

“I used to be in the job, you know,” Warren said.

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah. St. Louis P.D.”

“So then you know.”

“Oh sure.”

“That’s interesting,” Alston said. “You being a St. Louis cop.”

“Ever been to St. Louis?”

“No, but I hear the women there got diamond rings,” Alston said, and smiled.

“They’ve got other things, too.”

“But not legs like this one’s got,” Alston said. “I’d like to lick my way up those legs all the way to the crotch, starting with the toes.”

She was coming back to their table now. High heels clicking on the asphalt tile floor. Long stride on her. Proud of those magnificent legs.

“Anyone for more coffee?” she asked.

“You got a sister for my friend?” Alston asked, and winked at Warren.

The girl smiled. She didn’t know quite how to handle this. Salt-and-pepper team at the table here, what could she say? She played it safe.

“Anyone for more coffee?” she asked again.

“You might want to hotten mine a bit,” Alston said, and winked at Warren again.

“Mine, too,” Warren said.

The girl poured coffee into both cups. She was truly very plain except for those legs. And those legs probably had brought her the wrong kind of attention ever since puberty. Men equated legs like those with sexuality. It was a fact of life, not entirely discouraged by television commercials and magazine ads. But she sure knew she had those legs. Head high, she clicked away from the table like a racehorse.

They watched her go.

“Mmmm-mmmm,” Alston said.

“Indeed,” Warren said.

They sat there sipping their coffee. The fat lady got up and walked to the cash register.

“I like mine better than yours,” Alston said.

Both men grinned like schoolboys.

“I meant what I said, you know,” Warren said.

“Okay.”

“You ever feel like talking to somebody, give me a call.”

“Okay, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I mean it.”

“I hear you.”

“Good.”

“What do you need from the computer?” Alston asked.

“What does a tattoo mean to you?”

“Armed robber,” Alston said at once.

“A lot of them, anyway,” Warren said, nodding.

“Most of them,” Alston said. “In fact, every one of them I ever come across had a tattoo one kind or another.”

“I’m looking for whatever you’ve got on a man named Ned Weaver. San Diego may be a place to start.”

“What else can you give me? The computer likes the more the merrier.”

“He’s in his late twenties, big guy around six two, two twenty or thirty, looks like he’s done some weight lifting. Red hair, green eyes, no visible scars. The tattoo’s on his right forearm. Big-titted mermaid with a long, fishy tail. He says he wasn’t in the service, but you may want to check the FBI files anyway.”

“I’ll go down the Building soon as we finish here.”

“Let me know how much time you put in, will you?”

“Why?”

“So we can figure out…”

“Don’t be a jackass,” Alston said.

“On the phone, you told me…”

“That was then, this is now.”

Warren looked at him.

“Okay?” Alston said.

“Okay,” Warren said.

Jimmy Farrell was bent over the open hood of a Chrysler LeBaron convertible when Matthew came into the garage at eleven that morning. He had called ahead, and Farrell was expecting him. But he took his own sweet time straightening up. Matthew disliked him at once. It had to have been his looks because the man hadn’t yet opened his mouth.

He was bearded and bald, five-ten or — eleven inches tall, a bit shorter than Matthew, but much more solidly built. He was wearing a red T-shirt with the Shell company’s yellow scallop logo across its front. The shirt rippled with well-defined pectorals, and muscular biceps bulged below the short sleeves, one of which was rolled up around a package of cigarettes. He had dark brown eyes and shaggy brows that matched the full beard, altogether a very hairy fellow except for the entirely bald and undoubtedly shaven head. He looked as if he ate spark plugs and spit out pistons. He looked like one of those phony wrestlers on television. Matthew was willing to bet he went hunting a lot.

“Matthew Hope,” he said. “I called.”

He did not extend his hand; Farrell’s hands were covered with grease.

“Does he know the Cad’s ready?” Farrell asked.

“Yes. He was going to talk to his wife about it. Or his brother-in-law.”

“That turd,” Farrell said, but did not amplify. “When’s somebody gonna pick it up? I got limited space here, and also I wouldn’t mind getting paid for work already done.”

“The man’s in jail,” Matthew said evenly.

“Tough,” Farrell said. “He shoulda been more careful, he wouldn’t be in jail.”

“Mr. Farrell, I wonder if you can show me where you keep the keys to the cars you service.”

“Why?”

“It might be important to Mr. Leeds’s case.”

“He thought he was still in the jungle, didn’t he?” Farrell said. “Where it didn’t matter shit what he did. He forgot he was back in civilization.”

A Vietnam vet, Matthew realized. Just about the right age — thirty-nine or forty — and in his eyes a look Matthew hadn’t noticed earlier. A bitter, cynical look that said he and others like him had done things luckier mortals hadn’t been forced to do.

“I don’t think he killed those men,” Matthew said.

“If he didn’t, he should’ve,” Farrell said. “Only with a little finesse. I still don’t know why you want to see the key box.”

“Is there a box?”

“Hanging right there on the wall,” Farrell said, and pointed to a long grey metal box screwed to the wall just inside the door that led to the office. The panel door of the box was standing wide open, a key jutting out of its lock. There were perhaps half a dozen sets of car keys hanging on hooks inside the box.

“Is the box open like that all day long?” Matthew asked.

“Nobody here but us,” Farrell said.

Plus whoever wanders into the garage, Matthew thought.

“When do you lock it?”

“When we leave at night.”

“But all day long the key just sits there in the lock, is that it?”

“Safest place for it,” Farrell said. “Might get lost otherwise.”

“Where do you put that key when you lock the box at night?”

“In the cash register.”

“What time do you normally leave here?”

“Around six.”

“Everybody?”

“Usually. Every now and then, somebody’ll be working on a car, he’ll stay a little later. But we stop pumping gas at six. That’s it. Life’s too short.”

“Do you know what night the murders took place?”

“Couple of weeks ago, wasn’t it?”

“The thirteenth. A Monday night.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you remember what time you left here that night?”

“Around six, I guess. Same as usual.”

“Did you lock that box when you left?”

“I did.”

“Was Leeds’s key ring in that box when you locked it?”

“I guess so. No reason to have taken it out.”

“Do you know what keys are on that ring, Mr. Farrell?”

“Yep. I called about it, in fact. Spoke to that dumb fuckin’ brother-in-law of his, told him I wasn’t gonna be responsible for all those keys on the ring, looked like a house key and what-not. He said he’d stop by to pick them up. Do you see him here?”

“Mr. Farrell, who else knows there’s a house key on that ring?”

“You mean people working here?”

“Yes.”

“If you’re thinking somebody used that key to get into the Leeds house…”

“I’m thinking that’s a possibility, yes.”

“I’m thinking it ain’t.”

“I’d still like to talk to anyone who had access to those keys.”

“There’s only three of us here,” Farrell said. “The high-school kid I got pumping gas don’t come in till after school, three, three-thirty. He’s sixteen years old, and he didn’t break into anybody’s house.”

“How big is he?”

“Why?”

“Because somebody big was wearing Leeds’s jacket and hat on the night of the murders.”

“Danny’s five-seven, and he weighs around a hun’ sixty,” Farrell said. “So I guess he ain’t the one who broke into Leeds’s house and stole his goddamn clothes.”

“Who said his clothes were stolen?”

“If somebody was wearing them, then they were stolen.”

“Who else works here?” Matthew asked.

“I got a mechanic helping me out, that’s all. And he’s six-two, which I guess makes you happy.”

“Where is he?”

“Out gettin’ some coffee for us.”

“I’ll wait for him,” Matthew said.

The computer’s name was Bessie. Alston wondered why somebody had named it Bessie. He also wondered if computers everywhere in the world had women’s names. Fat women’s names. The girl with the legs back there in the deli wouldn’t be caught dead with a name like Bessie. Face that could stop a clock on that girl, but legs he would never forget in his entire lifetime. You didn’t name any computers after a girl with legs like that. Bessie. All right, let’s go, Bessie, let’s see what you’ve got on Mr. Ned Weaver.

He was sitting alone in the Computer Room of the Public Safety Building, the computer screen not a foot and a half from his face, his big hands hovering over the keyboard, the forefingers poised to type. Like a man playing “Chopsticks” on a toy piano, he pecked out the letters that opened the file, and then hit the return key.

The screen asked him which of several categories he wanted searched.

He tapped out the letters CR, for “criminal.”

The machine whirred.

The screen said SELECT ONE:

He knew that if he hit the numeral 3 for the nationwide search, Bessie would tap into FBI files and he’d be sitting here all day. He hit the numeral 4 instead, calling for a specific state search outside Florida, and at the next prompt he typed in the letters ca for California.

The machine whirred again.

A single word appeared on the screen:

He typed? for “unknown.”

Chambers had told him the subject was in his late twenties. Alston knew there were kids who got in trouble before they could tie their own shoelaces, but the longer the span, the longer he’d be here. He figured a ten-year search was long enough. Weaver would’ve been sixteen, seventeen years old back then, nice age to run afoul of the law, and the search would continue on up to the current year. He typed in the numerals 1–0, and then hit the return key again.

He typed in W-E-A-V-E-R.

He typed in N-E-D.

He typed? again.

The screen asked IS NED AN ALIAS? TYPE “Y” OR “N”

He typed N. For no.

The machine whirred.

The words NO CRIMINAL RECORD NED WEAVER STATE OF CALIFORNIA, and then immediately and again asked IS NED AN ALIAS? TYPE “Y” OR “N”

This time he typed Y.

The screen said SELECT ONE:

He typed 4.

A hundred goddamn Edmund, Edward, and Norton Weavers popped up on the screen.

Alston had his work cut out for him.

Farrell’s mechanic was indeed six feet two inches tall. Wrinkled and sun-browned, swinging his arms, he came ambling past the gasoline pumps toward the office. There was a brown paper bag in his right hand. A cigarette dangled from his mouth. A peaked baseball cap was perched on his head. He was tall for sure. But he was also a scarecrow of a man in his early sixties, and he could not have weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds. Access to house keys or not, it was impossible to believe that this man could have overpowered and murdered — with a knife, no less — three young men.

“This is Avery Shoals,” Farrell said, “Ave, the man here’d like to ask you some questions.”

“Sure thing,” Shoals said. He put the brown paper bag on the counter alongside the cash register, dragged on his cigarette, eyes squinted, and said, “Only bought two coffees, though. Didn’t know we had company.”

“That’s okay,” Farrell said, and smiled. “I don’t think Mr. Hope’ll be staying very long.”

Warren Chambers was waiting for him when he got back to the office at one that afternoon. Neither of the men had yet had lunch. They walked up Main Street toward the new little mall in the reconstructed Burns Building. The size of a tennis court, the mall occupied the street-level floor of a four-story office building, one of the oldest in downtown Calusa, surrounded now by the city’s modest version of skyscrapers. The mall’s restaurants were of the takee-outee variety, except that you didn’t take the food home with you. Instead, you lined up at various counters for your hamburgers or hot dogs or pasta or Mexican or Chinese food, and then you carried the food and your beer or soda or milk shake to these little round tables in a sort of open courtyard. Canned music piped through hidden speakers relentlessly flooded the courtyard, but it was impossible to tell which songs were being played. There was only a sense of music, a constant, low-key, muted background din.

Warren had good news.

Depending upon how you looked at it.

He told Matthew first about the tattoo on Ned Weaver’s arm, and how a large percentage of armed robbers wore tattoos. This happened to be a fact, he said, even though it was news to Matthew. Weaver’s reluctance to discuss his sexy mermaid had piqued Warren’s curiosity, so he had asked a friend of his on the Calusa P.D. to crank up the computer and see if there was anything on a Ned Weaver in San Diego, because this was where Ned Weaver said he’d picked up the tattoo.

What he’d also picked up in San Diego was twenty-two thousand dollars and change from a bank he’d robbed with a buddy of his named Sal Genovese, who was wheelman on the job. Actually, the holdup would have been a great success if, first, one of the bank guards hadn’t been silly enough to draw his pistol while looking down the muzzle of a .44-caliber Magnum. Naturally, Weaver had to shoot him. The man missed death by an ace. The several rounds from Weaver’s weapon ripped into the guard’s left biceps some three inches from his heart and almost tore off his arm.

Even so, and in spite of this slight setback, the job still might have worked out well if, second, the getaway car hadn’t got stuck in downtown traffic. There was another unfortunate shootout between the fleeing bank robbers and the San Diego police, which this time the police won. Norton (which was Ned’s full given name) and his good buddy Salvatore (which was his) both went to prison for a long, long time. The prison’s given name was Soledad. Last summer…

Here it is, Matthew thought.

Last summer. Weaver was paroled and he moved here to Florida.

Exactly what Leeds had told him yesterday. But only after a slight hesitation.

Ned’s been working for us ever since… last summer.

Had he been about to say “ever since he got out of prison”?

Possibly. Which knowledge might have pleased Matthew — as it pleased him now — especially since he already knew that Jessica Leeds had contemplated hiring someone to kill the three men who’d raped her. Her brother hadn’t quite killed that bank guard, but not for lack of trying.

“I wonder where young Ned was on the night of the murders, don’t you?” Warren asked.

“Indeed I do.”

“Because there may be wheels within wheels here, Matthew. As for example, suppose Weaver didn’t like the idea of those three Vietnamese punks getting away with the rape of his sister, and suppose he decided to do something about it. A man spends nine years in prison…”

“Was that it?”

“He was nineteen when he went up. Nine years is a long time behind bars, Matthew, especially for somebody who’s a hothead to begin with. So now he’s out, and he sees these three punks getting away with rape, he thinks ‘Hey, man, this is my sister here!’ This isn’t a bank guard getting in his way, this is three punks who raped his sister. So maybe — I’m only saying maybe — maybe he got it in his head to go after them.”

“Especially if his sister suggested it,” Matthew said.

“Well, we don’t know that she did,” Warren said.

“She explored the possibility with her husband.”

“She did?”

“Yes.”

“Mmm.”

“Mmm is right,” Matthew said.

“So let’s say young Ned did do the job…”

“No, Warren, it won’t wash.”

“Why not?”

“Leeds’s wallet was at the scene.”

Both men were silent for a moment. Warren was eating enchiladas and drinking beer. Matthew was eating a hamburger and drinking a Diet Coke. At a nearby table, two young women were trying to eat with chopsticks. Food kept dropping back onto their plates. They giggled each time another morsel escaped the chopsticks.

“One thing you learn in prison,” Warren said.

Matthew looked up.

“It ain’t good to get caught.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning how did Weaver get along with his brother-in-law?”

“Good question.”

“Because if, let’s say, he didn’t like him so much. then why not set him up? Juke the three punks and make it look like Leeds did it.”

“That would be hurting his sister, too. I don’t think…”

“The man did time,” Warren said. “In the slammer, you learn a code, Matthew, you learn a different kind of law. This law says you rape my sister, I’m gonna get you. This law says I hate my brother-in-law, I’m gonna get him, too. That’s the kind of law you learn in jail, Matthew, and it’s got nothing to do with the kind of law you practice.”

“I’ll talk to Leeds…”

“I’m only saying it’s possible.”

“… try to find out what kind of relationship they had,” Matthew said.

“Because here’s a man can go in and out of that house at will,” Warren said. “Take Leeds’s jacket and hat, he wants to, grab his sister’s car keys, the boat keys, whatever the hell he needs to do the murders and pin a rose on his brother-in-law. But I may be wrong.”

“Can you get me a tape of his telephone voice?” Matthew asked.

It kept bothering Bannion.

The license plate the old gook had seen on the getaway car.

2AB 39C.

No such plate in the state of Florida. But that hadn’t stopped somebody from killing him. Bannion wished he could see eye to eye with his boss on this one, but he just couldn’t accept her belief that this was a copycat murder. Not when the victim was one of the state’s witnesses, nosir. Bannion had been in police work too long not to know the difference between a crazy and a crazy crazy. To his way of thinking, anyone who committed murder was crazy. But the ones who did it without rhyme or reason, those were the crazy crazies.

The person who had killed Trinh Mang Due did not strike Bannion as a certified nut. A copycat murderer wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of seeking out Trinh in Little Asia, and then following him all the way up to Marina Lou’s. Your garden-variety lunatic copycat murderer would’ve settled for any gook walking the streets of Calusa, never mind a witness who had seen the murderer getting into a car with a license plate that did not exist in this state. Any gook would’ve satisfied the need, short, tall, fat, skinny, old, young, it wouldn’t have mattered to the copycat. Grab him from behind, slit the poor bastard’s throat, poke out his eyes, cut off his cock and stick it in his mouth.

But this guy had deliberately sought out Trinh Mang Due.

Had to’ve read his name in the paper, that was the first mistake, you didn’t go putting a witness’s name in the paper. Unless, of course, you already had your alleged murderer behind bars, which happened to be the case here. If he was the right man.

Bannion wasn’t paid to make trouble for his own boss. His job was to compile information that would help her prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the man they’d charged with three counts of murder was the man who’d actually committed those murders. But it was also Bannion’s job — or so he saw it — to make sure Patricia Demming didn’t make a damn fool of herself. And if she had the wrong man in custody while the real murderer was still out there someplace killing a witness who had seen the license plate on his auto—

But there was no such plate.

Not if it was a Florida plate.

Trinh Mang Due had said it was a Florida license plate.

2AB 39C.

Which he had seen through a closed screen door. At night. Well, the moon was still almost full. But the car was parked under a leafy pepper tree. Some distance from where he was standing inside his house looking out through a screen door.

2AB 39C.

So either it wasn’t a Florida plate…

Which was a fairly distinctive plate, orange letters on a white field…

Either it wasn’t a Florida plate, or else Trinh had seen it wrong. Read the numbers and the letters wrong. In which case, why kill him? If he had it wrong, then as a witness he wasn’t worth a rat’s ass. So why bother with him? Let the man live. Unless…

Unless he’d been damn close to what the numbers and letters on that plate actually were. In which case, he might have remembered them correctly if prodded long enough. And if he’d eventually remembered them, those letters and numbers might have led not to the man Patricia Demming had in jail, but to the man or woman who’d actually slit those gooks’ throats. In which case, Trinh had to go. Now. Before he remembered. So long, sir, it was nice having you here in Florida, may your ancestors welcome you with joy and your descendants mourn you eternally.

2AB 39C.

What could he have seen instead?

Bannion picked up a pencil and began writing the numbers and letters over and over again…

… and all at once he realized what it was that Trinh Mang Due had actually seen, and knew in that same instant why it had been necessary to kill the old man.

He pulled the telephone to him and began dialing.