“What you got, Matilda?” he said.
She told him, and he turned north on Tuttle. All the Major Case detectives in the department, including his partner, a tough female former New York cop named Betty Mudd, happened to be at a law-enforcement conference in Vegas. So he caught the call. His expression tightened as he considered the complications that were sure to come with this one. Murder was not exactly a welcome tourist in Paradise.
At 7:38, after season, it was only a six-minute drive up the Trail to the public boat ramp. By the time Alfie got there, three units had already secured the area and a coast guard chopper circled above, as if someone might be making an escape by sea. No civilian cars were sitting in the parking lot, but Patrick Pride of the Herald Tribune was parked as close as he could get. As soon as Alfie got out of his car, Pat rushed over to block his progress.
“Alfie, old buddy, what’s the story?” If he got one step closer, he’d be treading on the detective’s snakeskin cowboy boots.
All the annoyance that had been building up since before dawn finally exploded out of Alfie. He sneezed loudly. Patrick Pride wasn’t his buddy, and nobody else in the department was Pride’s buddy either. The young man was in his first newspaper job – maybe first job ever, and he was a real dickhead when it came to getting his stories straight. This guy wasn’t about the facts, and the pisser was that nobody at the paper cared about his tactics. The crime beat at the Herald was the lowest rung of the ladder, from which the most inexperienced newcomers started the climb. Alfie only just refrained from elbowing the youngster in the chest. “You’re the reporter, you tell me,” he said as he pushed past him.
“Looks like a murder-suicide.” Undaunted by the reception, Pat trotted along beside him.
“Don’t make it up as you go along like last time, buddy,” Alfie warned him, trying to make an impression. “It matters.”
“He did her and then himself. You want to tell me who they are?” Patrick Pride wasn’t a good match for his name. He was short and soft in the belly, didn’t look as if he had to shave more than once a week. His shirt hung out, and he wasn’t wearing socks. He didn’t smell as if he’d bathed too recently either. He was twenty-one, maybe, just old enough to buy a drink.
“Come on,” he wheedled, a wart that wouldn’t go away. His notebook was out, and already a page was full of scribbles.
Alfie glanced at it, then over at the officers guarding the scene. He could see blood on the truck window but not the mess that was inside. Crime Scene hadn’t arrived yet, and it looked as if no one had disturbed the bodies by searching for IDs. “Beat it,” he said, “and don’t speculate.”
“Come on,” Pat protested.
“I mean it. Don’t make any more trouble with your fictions,” Alfie said.
“I don’t write fiction.” He spit the word out with contempt. “Just do my job, same as you.”
“Yeah.” Alfie sneezed again. “Someday I’ll show you how,” he said, and left him there, writing something. Later, Alfie thought he should have grabbed that notebook and given Pat a real verbal kick in the ass. But it seemed he wasn’t that good at lecturing on Wednesdays. In any case, his eyes had already focused on that bloody window, and he wasn’t thinking about anything else.
The bodies were in the cab of a Ford truck, with the logo BLACKWOLF CONSTRUCTION on the doors. A man and a woman. Young, not more than thirty or so. A few years younger than Alfie. To the left of the parking lot was a boccie court, where Italians in white shorts and shirts played on Sunday. Straight on was the bay, where the sailboats from City Island held their races on Friday afternoons. People used the boat ramp for the sleek go-fast boats and for fishing runabouts. Except for the bloody truck and the police cars, it was deserted now. Nothing to the right except swamp and then low buildings and businesses, and then the wall of condos marching north up the Trail toward the airport. It was not brightly lit at night. He was thinking witnesses. Who might have seen something?
The officers stepped back as Alfie took his look. First thing he noticed was the pistol in the hand of the male deceased. What up north they called a “Saturday night special.” Nothing fancy, just something to get the job done. The bullet had not entered his head cleanly and had made a mess of his face, which had probably been good-looking enough in life. Alfie speculated that he might have been a novice shooter and hadn’t held the gun steady when it went off. He might have aimed at his heart, his neck, or the side of his head, and missed them all. Or else he’d tried to shoot in the air and missed that too. A saliva test would show if he’d ever put the barrel in his mouth. The doors were locked, and he’d been knocked back against his window, but maybe, somehow, he hadn’t done himself. Those were Alfie’s first thoughts.
In another life, up north, Alfie had seen an autopsy of an apparent suicide. Everyone thought the man had jumped off the terrace of his apartment until the ME found a bullet in his brain. The entry wound had been in his mouth, and he couldn’t have jumped after he was already dead, now could he? Alfie had learned back then never to assume. In any case, the bullet in this DOA’s face went where not even a suicidal person would want a bullet to go, and the man might even have lived a little while in agony, with the car doors locked and a dead girl no help beside him. There was plenty of blood to support that conjecture.
The dead woman, by contrast, was leaning against the passenger door with a clean hit from the driver’s side – bullet in the heart, probably. She seemed to have been taken by surprise. Her mouth gaped, as if she hadn’t expected the evening to end this way. Or the morning to begin this way, either one. She was a pretty blonde; what else could she be in Paradise? Alfie had to admit that it looked like a boyfriend/girlfriend thing after all. Homicide-suicide, just like Pat Pride had said. Open-and-shut case. All it needed was a few weeks of paperwork to clear the case. He tapped his boot tip to get on with it.
CSI came eventually, the chopper dipped away, and deconstruction of the scene began. It looked like what it looked like, and the girl’s name was Lydia Florence Dale. Lydia Dale’s driver’s license and twelve credit cards were in her purse by her feet. She was thirty-two. The male DOA had no ID on him, but they guessed he was the owner of the truck. Alfie wondered where the guy’s wallet was. Lost it? Left it on a motel bedside table? Someone lifted it at a bar? He ran a check of the license plate and came up with a name.
REED LUSTFIELD LIKED to leave home early, sometimes as early as five o’clock. His wife, Julie, wasn’t always out of bed when he left. What was the point? He was a good-looking guy, and she’d been proud of him when they married a decade ago. He’d built her this house, down in North Port, a tidy three/four bedroom because they’d expected to have a bunch of kids right away. But it didn’t happen. Turned out, she was okay in the reproduction department, but Reed had a problem. Handsome hulk as he was – as healthy as he looked – his sperm turned out to be sparse and lazy. It came as a shock. With the knowledge, he lost his sex drive. Ten years into the marriage, the two of them were still trying to figure out what to do with the devastating information. Julie knew that Reed would have been able to deal with a flaw in her much better than one in himself. He’d shut down. Now she was thirty-three and didn’t jump out of bed to fill his lunch bucket so often anymore.
Reed was busy building two mansions up in Panther Ridge, where the lots were three acres or more, and it took forty-five minutes to get there. He didn’t build houses like theirs anymore, homes where people could live comfortably. Now his houses were so large that it was a major commitment just to go down to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Half-mile walk through a maze of rooms and down a couple of flights of stairs. Each house was filled with brass hardware and marble bathrooms and granite kitchens and acres of travertine floors. They took forever to get done, and each project was a protracted migraine headache for Reed. Suffice it to say, he was gone a lot, managing an army of subs who couldn’t speak English.