"He wouldn't have done it. I could tell. And, then, when I was leaving, he made a veiled suggestion."
"Aha. The wolf pounces on the helpful little lamb."
"I was so angry. He was ignoring my advice, but apparently he could find me horizontally useful. I told him a no-shilly-shallying no and got out of there. I wanted to forget about the encounter. I both felt sorry for him, and despised him. So pathetic and so true-to-form. So when I heard he'd killed himself that very night, I figured that you'd find the letters."
Molina remained quiet, doodling on her legal-pad desk mat for a moment. "So you think he could have been murdered--?"
"Maybe. Though, the mood he was in, having struck out in his halfhearted seduction and worried sick about this disenchanted daughter, suicide could be likely."
"And what do you think?"
Molina had spun to drill her memorably blue eyes into Matt's.
He refused to bolt, speaking in a flat, reportorial tone. "You know I've been receiving calls at ConTact for several weeks from a sexual addict. A man with an impressive speaking voice. He's also an impressive manipulator, which comes with the addict's territory."
"You've concluded this was Darren Cooke?"
"This could have been Darren Cooke. I don't know for sure yet. If he never calls again--"
Matt shrugged, and then shrugged the sheepskin jacket, which was much too hot for a small office, onto his chair back.
Molina, Temple noticed, was riveted on his every move.
"The incident that Temple wants me to tell you," Matt went on, "was one I was reluctant to report to anybody. I'm simply not sure who I've been talking to all these weeks. This call came Sunday at about midnight."
Molina was no longer riveted on Matt, but on his testimony. And she didn't interrupt him as much as she did Temple. Sexist!
Matt toyed with a leather button on his new jacket. That way he could look down and talk more to himself.
"I tried not to judge him, but he would never take positive steps to work on his addiction. I found out last week that he was calling me not only from out of town--I was supposed to think I was vital to him--but that he'd been calling other phone counselors." Matt smiled sadly. "He had to know more than whomever he was dealing with. A tragic personality."
Molina could wait no longer for the tale to tell itself. "So. Sunday night. At midnight."
"I got another call. He alternated between dependency riffs and angry rejection."
"Of you?"
"Of course of me. In these situations, the counselor is the punching bag. He is everybody the caller thinks failed him in life. And then, his tone suddenly changed. I could hear him moving around with his portable phone, answering the door. Apparently what he craved was standing right there. 'Hello, baby,' I heard him say. 'Just what the doctor ordered. Come on in!' He hung up before I heard his visitor speak. That's all."
"That's all? You could have heard the arrival of the last person to see Darren Cooke alive."
"Yes, but what good does that do? I don't know who came to visit, or why or what happened next. Temple's main concern is that you find the missing letters. Perhaps his widow wo uld know where to hunt for them. She found Temple's card quickly enough."
"Temple's card. Marked with the ritual seal of successful seduction." Molina smiled conspiratorially at Matt. "Is our little Miss Temple as innocent as she would have us think? She has a nasty habit of withholding information from the police. See the Mystifying Max."
Temple jumped in. "I never knew where Max was or why he might have been gone."
"But now that he's returned . . . don't you know more?"
Temple hesitated. "Not enough," she muttered.
Molina hit the flat of her hands on the desk in dismissal.
"I've made what notes are relevant. Miss Barr, if we find that missing manila envelope, I'll have to ask you to identify the contents. Mr. Devine, I presume your hot line doesn't have caller ID?"
He shook his head.
"Why didn't you simply refuse this tiresome sexual addict's calls?"
"I didn't have the heart to cut him loose. He was genuinely troubled, and trying to find a way to help himself, albeit falteringly."
"Albeit. An old-fashioned term. Bet you learned that in seminary." Molina nodded. "Okay, youse two disreputables can go. Frankly, I don't think either one of you concealed anything worth spit, but don't do it again."
"Yes, ma'am," Temple said.
"Thanks," Matt added with a slow smile
They left, both feeling quite virtuous.
"Confession is good for the soul," Temple said en route to the parking garage.
"That's what I was brought up to believe."
"I'm glad she took it so well."
"That's because she doesn't think that what you saw and what I heard are important, thank God. I hope that this doesn't turn out to be one of your murders."
"What do you mean, 'my murders.' "
"Only that you are a verifiable murder magnet. Suicide would be a nice change of pace; though, speaking from a religious point of view, it's the far more tragic death."
"Can't go to heaven, and all that? That's the Holy Roman Catholic Church for you; kick even the dead when they're down."
Matt stopped under the low, dark concrete beams. "The sin of suicide is in the enormity of denying God's will in your life by taking your own life. A great sin. Granted, the suicide himself is a pathetic soul, often under the influence of severe depression."
"Then why punish him after death? In absentia. Seems cowardly to a mealy-mouthed Unitarian like me."
"We'd have to go into about two years of theology to examine all the issues."
"That's it. Why can't religion be more accessible than that? Why can't mercy be the operating system, instead of right and wrong as written down somewhere by self-proclaimed holy men who are afraid to let women and children and suicides speak?"
Matt shook his head as he buttoned his jacket. "I'm not going to argue theology with you; it's too darn cold. Better bundle up for the trip back."
Temple suddenly produced a wicked grin. "I will."
The Vampire coughed before the engine released its full power and took the motorcycle by the throat.
Temple donned Electra's helmet and hopped aboard, only wincing slightly at the stretch.
This time she wrapped her arms all the way around Matt until they met in front.
If he found their riding arrangement more claustrophobic than before, he couldn't say a thing over the warming engine's roar. They swooped down the corkscrew exit ramp, Temple wanting to scream as if she were on a roller coaster. She caught her breath while he paused to pay the ticket. Matt got the financially short end of the deal. Temple, clinging like a leech for the chilly ride home, couldn't get to the money she had jammed in her jacket pocket when leaving her trademark tote bag behind.
Outside, stars gleamed high in the sky. Except for a red lashmark along the horizon, the sun had vanished, letting the lights of Las Vegas perform their nocturnal magic.
Temple did feel she was on a roller coaster as streetlights streaked by. Passing cars became greased lightning as the wind pulled and pushed the Vampire to top speed.
Matt didn't go straight home, but headed into the dark desert, where the highway eventually became a road that swelled up and down, that curved right and left. Temple's bare fingers stiffened in the brunt of the wind, but that only locked them tighter into position, and pressed her closer to Matt, thigh to thigh, chest to back, warm cheek to chill faux sheepskin.
Not being able to talk over the wind rush and the Vampire's lonely howl in the wilderness underlined the ride's strange intimacy. After only a few minutes, the Vampire etched a semicircle in the empty, sand-dusted highway. In front of them, the lights of Las Vegas now beckoned on the horizon like an electrified bonfire.
The Vampire sped straight for that tropical, topical warmth. Temple no longer considered the motorcycle a machine under human control, but an animate, metaphorical beast, a steed ...