His voice faltered and we all became aware that Midge Pope had appeared in the doorway. His bloody shirt was half off, he now wore thonged sandals on his sockless feet, his hair was damp as if he’d held it under a stream of cold water and he looked ghastly. But though his hand held a half-empty bottle of Early Times and though his hand shook as he pointed it at Lev, his voice was strong when he roared, “You Jew bastard! You killed my wife!”
“Hey, now, Midge,” said Smith, grabbing Pope before he could swing that bottle at Lev.
“He did, Quig. I saw him. I was standing right at those windows and I saw him. Bastard sat right out there in his boat and took aim at Linvie with his rifle and dropped her like a beautiful loon. You know how beautiful they are, Quig?”
“I know, Midge. I know.”
“I told Linvie, I said, ‘Honey, you look cuter’n a loon today in your black-and-white checked feathers,’ and she laughed and time I got to her, she was gone, Quig. Gone.”
Rage dissipated into grief.
“What’d you do then, Midge?” Smith asked gently.
“Tried to call you, but the damn phone wouldn’t work,” he sobbed. “And he followed me up to the house, but I saw him coming,” he said with drunken craftiness, “and I locked the doors so he couldn’t get in, but the phone...“
He pulled away from Smith and shambled toward the dock.
“Aw now, Midge, you don’t want to go out there,” said Smith. “How ‘bout you let ol’ Simon here take you inside and get slicked up first? Linville wouldn’t want people to see you looking like this, now would she?”
McGuire sprang up and Midge Pope allowed himself to be led away.
Silence enveloped the terrace.
“Now just a damn minute here,” said Lev. “You’re not going to believe an anti-Semitic alkie that hasn’t drawn a sober breath in two weeks, are you? Red?”
Smith raised his eyebrows at that. Until then, he hadn’t realized that we knew each other, but he didn’t let that deter him. “No, sir, I’m not saying I do; but just because Midge is drunk don’t mean he can’t see. You admit that you followed him here to the house.”
“No, I do not admit that. When I pulled in at the dock, I did not see anybody except Mrs. Pope lying there alone. I’m not saying he didn’t go out and touch her, not with all that blood on his clothes, but he sure as hell wasn’t there when I got here. How do you know he wasn’t the one who shot her and then went out to check that she was dead?”
“Yes, that’s a possibility,” Smith admitted, “and that’s why I’m going to ask Judge Knott here if she’ll sign a probable cause warrant for me to search this house for a recently fired gun, even though it could be lying off the end of the dock out there in the mud somewhere for all I know.”
I nodded mutely and he summoned one of the uniformed deputies to go out to the car and get him a couple of search warrant forms.
“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, Mr. Schuster, but I’m gonna ask to search your boat, too.”
“You don’t need a warrant, Detective Smith,” Lev said hotly. “I’ll waive my Fourth Amendment rights and you can go take a look right now.”
“Lev,” I said warningly.
“I’ve got nothing to hide, Red.”
“Well, now, if it’s all the same to you and the Judge, I’d just as soon do it by the book,” said Smith.
“I quite agree,” I said crisply.
In the ensuing awkward silence, Lev suddenly seemed to notice the scratches beneath my makeup. “You hurt yourself.”
“It’s nothing. I wasn’t watching where I was going,” I said, but my injuries reminded me that I’d wanted to tell Quig Smith about Andy Bynum’s papers. This wasn’t the time or place though.
The officer returned with the forms and Smith filled them out in scrupulous detail, affirming that the only object he would search for would be a recently fired shoulder weapon. “‘Cause Midge does know guns,” he told me, “but at that distance, it could’ve been a single-barreled shotgun or a rifle.”
He passed the forms over to me and I signed and dated them both.
“You mind if one of my men uses your dinghy, Mr. Schuster?” Smith asked.
“You sure you don’t want her to sign a form for that, too?”
“Well, now—”
“Oh, go ahead!” he said tightly.
Smith instructed his officers, then told me I could leave if I wanted.
“I’ll wait,” I said.
“Not on my account, I hope.” Lev’s voice was bitter.
“If you like, I can call Catherine Llewellyn to come,” I offered.
“You honestly think I’m going to need professional counsel?”
“No, but you were the one who used to say anybody that represented himself had a fool for a client.” I tried to make my tone light and I got a ghost of a smile beneath his beard.
“I didn’t shoot her, Red.”
“I know you didn’t.”
For the first time since Midge Pope had leveled that accusation, Lev seemed to relax. “For a minute there—”
The rest of his words were drowned out as a helicopter suddenly appeared from nowhere and hovered over the pier where Linville’s body was being loaded onto a gurney. It bore the logo of a Raleigh television station and must have been filming another story in the area to have arrived so quickly. Smith’s men tried to wave it off, but it settled gently in a cleared space on the far side of the house and a cameraman quickly swept the whole area with his camcorder.
Soon as I realized what he was doing, I turned my face. All I’d need at this point was for my family back in Colleton County to see that I was involved in two separate murders down here in Carteret and I’d have to take my phone off the hook if I wanted to sleep tonight.
“We’re going indoors,” I called to Smith, but two seconds after we stepped inside I realized we’d avoided Scylla only to run afoul of Charybdis.
Local news reporters had arrived, along with cameramen from Greenville and New Bern. (We later learned a general had called a news conference to discuss whether or not Cherry Point would be affected by this newest wave of congressional base closings.) They swarmed through the open door as Linville’s body was taken out to the ambulance, and strobe lights and microphones seemed to be everywhere. Fortunately, no one seemed to recognize me or to connect me with Andy Bynum’s death. They were too interested in trying to get to Midge Pope or to get a statement from Quig Smith.
Simon McGuire had blocked access to Midge’s wing and Smith was promising he’d take questions just as soon as he knew a little more himself.
The violent death of a woman this prominent was let’s-go-live news in this area, of course, and if they hurried, they might even slide in a bulletin before the six o’clock report ended, so the first wave of questions was quick and dirty; and by the time they were ready for greater in-depth “details-at-eleven” interviews, Quig Smith had sent someone to escort us behind the yellow tape barrier.
The dinghy returned to the dock and the officer who’d searched the Rainmaker reported that he’d found no guns. Another had found Linville’s gun case, but all the slots were filled and none of the weapons seemed to have been fired that day.
Smith announced we were both free to go and Lev said, “Come with me, Red? I can bring you back for your car after the feeding frenzy’s over.”
“Thanks, Lev, but I really think I’d rather run the gauntlet and go on back to Harkers Island.”