When Ginny's door was closed and the level of noise fell by several decibels, Tee picked up the phone and called police headquarters. He asked when McNeil was next on duty and was told he had the shift starting in the morning from eight to four. He knew that McNeil's wife worked during the day.
He hadn't been invited to the man's house for years. Tee tried to remember if McNeil had a dog.
He waited until he knew that McNeil was nestled into the speed trap on Clamden Road before he set out himself. He drove down the steep hill that led from the town center toward the Merritt Parkway and saw McNeil's car snuggled just off the main road at a spot where the careless driver would have let the gravity of the hill accelerate his vehicle to illegal speed. At the base of the hill Tee turned left and began to weave along the back roads to McNeil's domain. He called the house before he arrived and let the phone ring a long time, assuring himself that Mrs. McNeil had not chosen this day to stay home sick. The walls of the garage were lined with tools, bicycles, chairs, snow shovels, gardening implements, a mattress still encased in plastic, skis and poles, boots, biking helmets, baseball bats, all of the residue of a family life, all of it hanging from hooks or stacked neatly in piles pushed snug against the sides of the building. A yellow slicker hung next to the door leading into the house, a surprising splash of color in the gloomy room. A roll of carpeting next to the garage door cast one of the few discordant notes in an otherwise compulsively neat display.
The carpet appeared too old to save, too ragged and tattered to serve any function that made it worth the storage space-which made it look significant to Tee. He shoved it to the floor in the empty space reserved for a car and unrolled it. Using his flashlight, Tee went over the carpet slowly, running his fingers through the worn fibers. He found nothing and rolled it up and replaced it.
What the hell am I doing? he wondered. Crawling around on a smelly rug, searching for some mysterious clue toto what? "A man be doing your hos?" It wasn't quite English, but Tee had chosen to think it meant something about Johnny's girls from the orchard. Why? Because he was already inclined to think that way, he admitted to himself Because too many things about McNeil troubled him.
He began a methodical search, tapping for hidden compartments, running his hand along rafters and the top of a storage shelf holding cans of paint, each meticulously marked.- Smelly rug? he thought suddenly. He returned to the carpet and pressed his nose against it. The odor of car exhaust made him cough. Not surprising in a garage. Or was it…?
He was not after smells, he realized, and just as suddenly he knew what he was seeking. He was looking for a knife. A small worktable attached to one wall was topped by a pegboard on which hung a variety of tools, many of them marked with their outlines drawn on the board. There were no vacant outlines, everything was in its place. Drawers in the table held nails, screws, nuts, bolts, each in its original box or in glass jars, appropriately marked. A supplemental plastic chest of drawers sat atop the table. Tee searched the drawers and found string, twine, electrical cord, wire, fuses, extension cords, three-pronged plug adapters, telephone lines, spares and extras of all kinds, each tidily arranged and in its place. McNeil should have been in hardware, not police work, Tee mused, thinking of the chaos of his own garage.
The bottom drawer held knives. A cornucopia of knives, a catalog display of knives: sportsmen's knives, kitchen knives, specialty knives, blades without handles, knives with replaceable blades. They ranged in size from a massive Bowie knife to a penknife no longer than the last joint on Tee's little finger. Not one of them was rusty, Tee realized, and not one was dull. McNeil had taken great care with each of them.
But what possible use?
Tee studied the collection, seeking the right instrument. The sharpest, thinnest blade of any utility was that of an artist's knife, a razor edge with a pronounced triangular shape at the cutting end. Tee remembered using one decades before, when carving models from balsa wood. He lifted it, held it against the light. Was it strong enough to cut through flesh? Certainly. Durable enough to maneuver through a human joint? Probably not, but then it didn't have to be. The blade was replaceable. A small box of refills sat in the drawer. The head of the instrument was also detachable from the four-inch-long shaft.
Without the blade attached, the shaft and head were shorter than a pencil and no thicker. They could be carried anywhere and never be noticed. With a piece of tape over the cutting edge, the blade, less than an inch long and wafer-thin, could be concealed in a wallet, in a shoe, in the lining of a coat, anywhere at all.
This blade looked factory-new. He turned it in the light from the overhead bulb. Not a nick, not a scratch, not a sign of wear. There would be nothing to see under the microscope, either, Tee was certain.
Whatever else McNeil might be, he was scrupulously clean.
Tee was surprised at how much he was suddenly prepared to think McNeil capable of. How had he come so quickly to the dangerous thoughts he was now contemplating? McNeil had deliberately not searched the orchard that held the bones. McNeil had been going out of his way to pass the orchard on the morning he found Tee there-but then so had Tee. Did that mean he was returning to the scene of the crime? It was a stretch, Tee knew it, and yet… Tee had said to him that seven or eight all pairs had left their employers without warning in the past eight years, McNeil had claimed a much lower number. When Tee did the research, he found that the number was six. Did that mean McNeil was trying to mislead Tee? Not necessarily. Even the anonymous phone call had not linked McNeil to the Johnny Appleseed bodies. What did "doing your hos" mean, anyway?
The sound of movement outside the window startled Tee. If he was found making an illegal search of McNeil's home, any evidence would be tainted. He inched toward the window, his right hand touching the butt of his service automatic, a weapon he had never even unholstered in the line of duty in Clamden. His skin prickled and Tee realized that he was not just alarmed-he was frightened. The noise came again — and Tee forced himself to control his breathing as he eased to the window and peeked out.
A large raccoon squatted on its haunches outside the shed that was attached to the garage, tugging at the door with its surprisingly delicate forepaws, trying to get at the garbage within. Fat and self-assured, it regarded Tee through the window, looking curious rather than frightened. Its bandit eyes peered at him for a moment, then dismissed him as an irrelevancy, returning to its quest for garbage.
Several yards away, poised at the edge of the treeline and scarcely visible, a deer in its summer buff had lifted its head from browsing to watch Tee and the raccoon. Tee knew there would be more deer close by, frozen into position until they determined that the face in the window was no threat they would take more convincing than the raccoon-and he would never see them until they moved. When he left the garage, the raccoon moved off slowly, waddling away as if aggrieved by the human trespass on its garbage rights. The deer stared at Tee a moment longer before bounding off in a flight that seemed quick yet unpanicked, almost casual. Tee caught sight of three other deer, each moving deeper into the trees. They were cautious, not alarmed, and did not bother to flash the white of their tails in their panic sign. Tee felt mildly insulted.
Metzger drove the lonely roads of predawn Clamden, cruising slowly, looking, without much expectation, for the unusual, the furtive, the stealthy. It was too late for the drinkers, the partygoers, even carousing teenagers; too early for the commuters to rouse themselves for the daily trek to the city. At this hour the town was sound asleep, which was exactly the way the residents and the police wanted it. He swung past the recycling center and made an arc along the lengthy sweep of unpopulated acreage that made up Converse Park, one of the six tracts of nature preserve in the town. A long dirt road led to the parking area, which was little more than a dirt rotary where people could nose their cars off the road far enough for others to pass. A wooden sign declared the area off limits after dark, but it was an injunction honored as much in the breach as the observance. Schoolchildren in science class, hikers, and dog owners walked the forest trails by day.