Contemporary Americans were so prosperous, so happily distracted by such a richness of vivid entertainments, they were reluctant to have their fun diminished by acknowledging that anything existed with fangs and fierce appetites. If now and then they recognized a wolf, they threw a bone to it and convinced themselves that it was a dog.
They denied real threats by focusing their fear on the least likely of armageddons: a massive asteroid striking the earth, superhurricanes twice as big as Texas, the Y2K implosion of civilization, nuclear power plants melting holes all the way through the planet, a new Hitler suddenly rising from the ranks of hapless televangelists with bad hair.
Krait found people to be less like sheep than like cattle. He moved among them as if invisible. They grazed dreamily, confident in the security of the herd, even as he butchered them one by one.
His work was his pleasure, and he would have both in abundance until such a day as some more flamboyant murderer hurled fire at the herd, stampeding them by the tens of thousands over a cliff. Then the cattle might be wary, and for a while Krait would find his job more difficult.
He wanted to know more about the woman, Linda Paquette, because he hoped that through her he might learn about the man who had intervened to spare her from execution. Soon he would receive a name for that interloper, but he didn’t have one yet.
In her dresser drawers he found only clothes, but they told him things about her. She had many socks in various colors but only two pairs of nylons. Her underwear were simple cotton, much like men’s briefs, without lace or other frills.
The simplicity of these garments charmed him.
And they smelled so fresh. He wondered what detergent she used, and hoped it was a brand friendly to the environment.
After closing the last of the drawers, he regarded his face in the mirror above the dresser, and he liked what he saw. No flush had risen to his cheeks. His mouth was neither tight with tension nor loose with desire.
The reflection of a framed painting drew his attention from his face before he finished admiring himself. Smile faltering, he turned away from the mirror and toward the true image.
He should have noticed the painting immediately on entering the room. No other art adorned the walls, and the only decorative items on the pair of nightstands were a luminous clock and an old Motorola radio, both from the 1930s and made out of Bakelite.
He took no offense at the clock or the radio, but the painting—a cheap print—vexed him. He took it off the wall, smashed the glass on the footboard of the bed, and peeled the artwork from the frame.
After folding the print three times, he slipped it into an inner pocket of his sports coat. He would save it until he found the woman.
When he had stripped away her clothes and her defenses, he would shove the wadded poster down her throat, clamp her mouth shut, and insist that she swallow it, and when it proved too much to swallow, he would let her gag it up, only so that he could shove it somewhere else, and then somewhere else again, and shove other things, too, shove in anything he wanted, until she pleaded with him to kill her.
Unfortunately, he lived in an age when such measures were sometimes necessary.
Returning to the mirror, he liked what he saw, as before. Judging by his reflection, he possessed a blameless heart, and his thoughts were full of charity.
Appearances were important. Appearances were all that really mattered. And his work.
In her well-ordered bathroom vanity, he didn’t find anything of interest except a brand of lip balm that he had never used.
Lately, humidity had been low, and his lips had been constantly chapped. The product that he usually relied upon had not helped much.
He smelled the balm and detected no offensive perfume, licked it and tasted an acceptably bland orange-cream flavor. He greased his lips, which at once felt cooler, and pocketed the tube.
In the living room, Krait pulled from the shelves some of the old hardcover books in the woman’s collection. They had quaint but colorful jackets, and were all fiction by popular novelists of the 1920s and ’30s: Earl Derr Biggers, Mary Roberts Rinehart, E. Phillips Oppenheim, J. B. Priestley, Frank Swinnerton…. With the exceptions of Somerset Maugham and P. G. Wodehouse, most were forgotten.
Krait might have taken a book that looked interesting, except that these authors were all dead. When he read a book that expressed inappropriate views, Krait sometimes felt obliged to search out the author and correct him. He never read books by dead authors because the satisfaction of a face-to-face discussion with a living wordsmith could not be equaled by exhumation and desecration of an author’s corpse.
In the kitchen, he found two dirty coffee mugs in the sink. He stood for a while, considering them.
As neat as she was, Linda would not have left this mess unless she had an urgent reason to get out of the house. A companion had joined her for coffee. Perhaps the companion had convinced her that she dared not delay long enough to wash the mugs.
In addition to what the mugs suggested, Krait was interested in the one with the parrot handle. He found it charming. He washed it, dried it, and wrapped it in a dishtowel to take it with him.
A knife was missing from the rack of fine cutlery, and that was interesting, too.
From the refrigerator, he withdrew the remaining half of a cinnamon-dusted homemade egg-custard pie. He cut a generous slice for himself and put it on a plate. He put the plate on the kitchen table, with a fork.
He poured a cup of coffee from the pot that stood on the warming plate. The brew had not yet turned bitter. He laced it with milk.
Sitting at the table, he studied the ’39 Ford while he ate the pie and drank the coffee. The egg custard was excellent. He would have to remember to compliment her on it.
As he finished the coffee, his cell phone vibrated. When he checked, he had received a text message.
Earlier, when Krait had returned to the Lamplighter Tavern, seeking the name of the big man on the end stool, the bartender had pleaded ignorance.
Five minutes after Krait left the joint, however, Liam Rooney had phoned someone. In this text message were the number that had been called and the name of the person to whom that telephone was registered—TIMOTHY CARRIER.
On screen appeared an address for Carrier, too, although Krait doubted that it would be of immediate use to him. If Carrier was the barfly and if he had hurried to Laguna Beach to warn the woman, he would not be witless enough to return home.
In addition to a name and address, Krait had wanted to know the occupation of this guy. Carrier was a licensed masonry contractor.
Krait stored the data, and the phone vibrated again. A photo of the mason appeared with megapixel clarity, and he was without doubt the man in the tavern.
In the wet of business, Krait worked alone, but he had awesome data and technical support.
He pocketed the phone without saving the photo. He might need to know more about Carrier, but not yet.
A final cup of coffee remained in the pot, and he sweetened the brew with a generous slug of milk. He drank it at the table.
In spite of the boldness with which the kitchen and garage had been combined, the space was cozy.
He liked the entire bungalow, the clean simplicity of it. Anyone could live here, and you wouldn’t know who he really was.
Sooner or later, it would come on the market. Acquiring the property of a person he had murdered would be too risky, but the thought pleased him.
Krait washed his cup, his plate, his fork, the coffeepot, and the FDR mug that had been used by either Linda or her guest. He dried them and put them away. He rinsed the stainless-steel sink, then wiped it dry with paper towels.
Just before he left, he went to the Ford, opened the driver’s door, stepped back just far enough to avoid being splashed, unzipped his pants and urinated in the vehicle. This didn’t please him, but it was necessary.
Eight
Pete Santo lived in a modest stucco house with a shy dog named Zoey and a
dead fish named Lucille.
Handsomely stuffed and mounted, Lucille, a marlin, hung above the desk in the study.
Pete wasn’t a fisherman. The marlin had come with the house when he bought it.
He had named it after his ex-wife, who had divorced him when, after two years of marriage, she realized that she couldn’t change him. She wanted him to leave the police department, to become a real-estate agent, to dress with more style, and to have his scar fixed.
The marriage collapsed when she bought him a pair of tasseled loafers. He wouldn’t wear them. She wouldn’t return them to the store. He wouldn’t allow them in his closet. She tried to put one of them down the garbage disposal. The Roto-Rooter bill was huge.
Now, as sharp-toothed Lucille peered down at him with one glaring gimlet eye, Pete Santo stood at his desk, watching as the Department of Motor Vehicles home page appeared on the computer screen. “If you can’t tell me what it’s about, who could you tell?”
Tim said, “Nobody. Not yet. Maybe in a day, two days, when things…clarify.”
“What things?”
“The unclarified things.”
“Oh. That’s clear now. When the unclarified things clarify, then you can tell me.”
“Maybe. Look, I know this might get your ass in a sling.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters,” Tim said.
“Don’t insult me. It doesn’t matter.” Pete sat at the computer. “If they bust me out of the department, I’ll be a real-estate agent.”
He entered his name, badge number, and access code, whereupon the Department of Motor Vehicles records surrendered to him as a nubile maiden to a lover.
Bashful Zoey, a black Lab, watched from behind an armchair, while Linda dropped to one knee and, with cooing sounds and declarations of adoration, tried to coax the dog into the open.
Pete typed the license number that Tim had given him, and the DMV database revealed that the plates had been issued for a white Chevrolet registered not to any law-enforcement agency but to one Richard Lee Kravet.
“You know him?” Pete asked.
Tim shook his head. “Never heard of him. I thought the car would turn out to be a plainwrap department sedan.”
Surprised, Pete said, “This guy you want to know about—he’s a cop? I’m scoping out a cop for you?”
“If he’s a cop, he’s a bad cop.”
“Look at me here, what I’m doing for you, using police power for a private inquiry. I’m a bad cop.”
“This guy, if he’s a cop, he’s seriously bad. At worst, Petey, by comparison, you’re a naughty cop.”
“Richard Lee Kravet. Don’t know him. If he has a shield, I don’t think it’s one of ours.”
Pete worked for the Newport Beach Police Department, but he lived in an unincorporated part of the county, nearer to Irvine than to Newport Beach, because even pre-divorce, he couldn’t afford a house in the city that he served.
“Can you get me this guy’s driver’s license?” Tim asked.
“Yeah, why not, but when I’m a real-estate agent, I’m going to wear whatever shoes I want.”
On her belly, Zoey had crawled halfway around the armchair. Her tail thumped the floor in response to Linda’s coaxing.
The one small lamp left most of the room dusted with shadows, and the alchemic light from the monitor gave Pete a tin man’s face, his smooth scar shining like a bad weld.
He was handsome enough that a half-inch-wide slash of pale tissue, curving from ear to chin, did not make him ugly. Plastic surgery would reduce or even eliminate his disfigurement, but he chose not to submit to the healing scalpel.
A scar is not always a flaw. Sometimes a scar may be redemption inscribed in the flesh, a memorial to something endured, to something lost.
The driver’s license appeared on the screen. The photo was of the killer with the Mona Lisa smile.
When the printer produced a copy, Pete handed it to Tim.
According to the license, Kravet was thirty-six years old. His street address was in Anaheim.
Having rolled onto her back and put all four paws in the air, Zoey purred like a cat as she received a gentle tummy rub.
Tim still had no evidence of a murder-for-hire plot. Richard Kravet would deny every detail of their meeting in the tavern.
“Now what?” Pete asked.
As she charmed the dog, Linda looked up at Tim. Her green eyes, though remaining wells of mystery, floated to him the clear desire to keep the nature of their dilemma strictly between them, at least for the time being.
He had known Pete for more than eleven years, this woman for less than two hours, yet he chose the discretion for which she wordlessly pleaded.
“Thanks, Pete. You didn’t need to climb out on this limb.”
“That’s where I’m most comfortable.”
This was true. Pete Santo had always been a risk-taker, though never reckless.
As Linda rose from the dog, Pete said to her, “You and Tim known each other long?”
“Not long,” she said.
“How’d you meet?”
“Over coffee.”
“Like at Starbucks?”
“No, not there,” she said.
“Paquette. That’s an unusual name.”
“Not in my family.”
“It’s lovely. P-a-c-k-e-t-t-e?”
She didn’t confirm the spelling.
“So you’re the strong silent type.”
She smiled. “And you’re always a detective.”
Shy Zoey stayed close to Linda all the way to the front door.
From various points in the night yard, a hidden choir of toads harmonized.
Linda rubbed the dog gently behind the ears, kissed it on the head, and walked across the lawn to the Explorer in the driveway.
“She doesn’t like me,” Pete said.
“She likes you. She just doesn’t like cops.”
“If you marry her, do I have to change jobs?”
“I’m not going to marry her.”
“I think she’s the kind, you don’t get a thing without a ring.”
“I don’t want a thing. There’s nothing between us.”
“There will be,” Pete predicted. “She’s got something.”
“Something what?”
“I don’t know. But it sure is something.”
Tim watched Linda get into the Explorer. As she pulled the door shut behind her, he said, “She makes good coffee.”
“I’ll bet she does.”
Although the secreted toads had continued singing when Linda had walked among them, they fell silent when Tim set foot on the grass.
“Class,” Pete said. “That’s part of the something.” And when Tim had taken two further steps, Pete added, “Sangfroid.”
Tim stopped, looked back at the detective. “Sang what?”
“Sangfroid. It’s French. Self-possession, poise, steadiness.”
“Since when do you know French?”
“This college professor, taught French literature, killed a girl with a chisel. Dismembered her with a stone-cutter.”
“Stone-cutter?”
“He was also a sculptor. He almost got away with it ’cause he had such sangfroid. But I nailed him.”
“I’m pretty sure Linda hasn’t dismembered anyone.”
“I’m just saying she’s self-possessed. But if she ever wants to dismember me, I’m okay with that.”
“Compadre, you disappoint me.”
Pete grinned. “I knew there was something between you.”
“There’s nothing,” Tim assured him, and went to the Explorer in a silence of toads.
Nine
As Tim reversed out of the driveway, Linda said, “He seems all right for a cop. He has a sweet pooch.”
“He’s also got a dead fish named for his ex-wife.”
“Well, maybe she was a cold fish.”
“He says he won’t mind if you want to dismember h
im.”
“What does that mean?”
Shifting into drive, Tim said, “It’s sand-dog humor.”
“Sand dog?”
Surprised that he had opened this door, he at once closed it. “Never mind.”
“What’s a sand dog?”
His cell phone rang, sparing him the need to respond to her. Thinking this might be Rooney with some additional news, Tim had it on the third ring. The screen didn’t reveal the caller’s ID.
“Hello?”
“Tim?”
“Yeah?”
“Is she there with you?”
Tim said nothing.
“Tell her she makes an excellent egg-custard pie.”
Conjured by the voice, into memory rose those impossibly dilated eyes, greedy for light.
“Her coffee isn’t bad, either,” said Richard Lee Kravet. “And I liked the mug with the parrot handle so much that I took it with me.”
This residential neighborhood had little traffic; at the moment, none. Tim came to a stop in the middle of the street, half a block from Pete Santo’s house.
The killer had gotten Tim’s name from someone other than Rooney. How he had obtained the unlisted cell-phone number was a mystery.
Although she couldn’t hear the killer, Linda clearly knew who had called.
“I’m back on track, Tim, no thanks to you. I’ve been given another picture of her, to replace the one you kept.”
Linda picked up the printout of Kravet’s driver’s license and held it to the window, studying his face in the glow of a nearby streetlamp.
“Before the coup de grâce,” said Kravet, “I’m supposed to rape her. She looks sweet. Is that why you sent me away with half my money? Did you see this skank’s picture, want to rape her yourself?”
“This is over,” Tim said. “You can’t put it together again.”
“What—you’ll never go home, she’ll never go home, you’ll both run forever?”