She shakes her head.
“We found a body in there.”
She gasps and tightens her grip. The corners of her crucifix puncture her skin.
“It was wrapped in plastic, and surrounded by ninety pounds of cat litter.”
“Cat litter?”
“It absorbs the smell.”
“I had nothing to do with it.”
“It seemed odd that Detective Calhoun would dump his car next to a car with a body hidden in it. Odd that we would find the ticket for that car after we’d already searched his desk. It was as though it were placed there for us to find. Odd that your fingerprints are on it. Any idea why he would park there? Any idea how this ticket showed up?”
“No,” she says, but that’s not strictly true. She does have an idea, and she doesn’t like it. Not at all.
He lifts the plastic bag away. The photograph beneath it is of the car she saw parked up the driveway of the house yesterday. The same car Joe left in.
“This is his car. You’re telling me you’ve never seen it?”
“I. . I don’t know,” she says, remembering seeing somebody walk into that house, somebody she recognized from a distance but couldn’t place.
He lifts the photograph away, and beneath it is another evidence bag. Inside it is the small pad she wrote on yesterday. It’s the address of the house where Joe went.
“Why did you write down this address?”
“Is that. . is that the house that burned down?” she asks.
“Yes, it is,” he says. “You had the address written down on a pad in your car.”
“Oh Lord,” she says-not to Detective Schroder, but to herself. She knows why the house looked familiar to her. She saw a photograph of it in the folders at Joe’s house when she flicked through them. The same day she picked up the parking ticket from beneath his bed.
“Joe,” she whispers.
“What?”
She starts to sob. It’s all starting to make sense. The folders. The wound. Joe driving the detective’s car.
“I. . I had nothing.” She chokes on a sob, can’t catch her breath, and feels like she’s going to pass out. She shakes her head, grits her teeth, and inhales loudly. Then, surrounded by more tears, she finishes her sentence. “I had nothing to do with this. Please, you must. Must believe me.”
“Then tell me, Sally. Tell me how I’ve added all of this up wrong. Tell me where I should be looking.”
So she does. She starts by telling him about the smile Joe gave her that day in the elevator two weeks ago, she tells him what a sweet guy Joe is, then starts to tell him the rest.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
The homework has been completed. The work carried out. Now it comes down to the sales pitch.
Melissa walks slowly across the grass toward me. My gun in her hand. She trusts me enough to meet me in a dark park at night, but not enough to come unarmed. No surprise there. Nor is there any surprise for her when I produce Detective Calhoun’s gun and point it at her.
I stand my ground and wait patiently. She stops a few feet away. She’s not smiling. Perhaps she sees no humor in the situation. Nor does she show any fear.
“Seems you can’t get enough of me,” I say, looking her up and down. She looks good.
“Does seem that way, doesn’t it? You got the money?”
I shake the plastic bag I’m carrying. “I’ve got something better than money.”
She lifts the gun to my face. “Oh?”
I hand her the plastic bag. Both of us are keeping our guns trained on the other. She quickly glances into it.
“A video camera.”
“That’s right.”
“What’s this for?”
“You may want to watch the tape.”
“You bastard.”
“Why?”
She flings the camera back at me. “You fucking bastard.”
I start to laugh. From her abuse it’s obvious she’s figured things out.
“I’ve got copies of that tape, Melissa, and if anything should happen to me along the lines of, oh, I don’t know, anything at all, then a copy of that tape will find its way into the hands of the police.”
“You played me,” she says.
“Wasn’t difficult.”
She grunts. “You’re on that tape too, Joe.”
“Actually, I’m not. Not that it matters. If you kill me, what are the police going to do? Dig me up and arrest me?”
She stares at me silently for a few more seconds, then sighs. “It’s a stalemate then. Just as if anything happens to me, Joe-to use your phrase, oh, I don’t know, anything at all-copies of everything I know about you will make their way to those same people.”
“Sounds like a pretty good deal,” I say, and this is the best result I can hope for. It’s the result I’ve aimed for. Sure, I still want to feed her through a branch chipper, but with self-preservation in mind, it’s not the sort of thing I can do. Maybe one day if I can get my hands on the evidence she has against me, or if I ever discover I have cancer and only weeks to live.
She nods and slips the gun back into her handbag. “Well, I can’t say it’s been fun, Joe.”
“Nor can I.” I too put my gun away.
“What did you do with the cop?”
I shrug. “The usual stuff.”
Neither of us turns away. The conversation is over. The rules have been stated and we both understand them. Yet here we are, a few feet apart, neither of us able to turn our back on what’s happened. We’ve gone through so much, and for us to walk away empty-handed would be heartbreaking. It’s anticlimactic. It would be like waking up on Christmas morning and finding out everybody you know has given you the same style of socks.
The moonlight strikes her face and makes her skin look pale. Again I’m struck by how beautiful she is. If it wasn’t for the fact I wanted to take a knife and. . We both step forward into an embrace and start kissing. She’s stuffing her tongue into my throat as if the Holy Grail is down there somewhere, and I’m trying to stuff mine into hers. Our bodies grind into each other. My hands are roaming behind her back. Hers are behind mine and she’s not trying to get my gun.
I can’t understand it, and for a moment I think of Calhoun’s original description of killing Daniela Walker. One second he’d been talking to her, the next she was dead. It’s happening to me right now and I’m hardly aware of it because my body’s on automatic. Ten seconds ago I was staring at her, and now I’ve got my hands digging into her back and squashing her perfect breasts against my chest. After a few seconds we pull back and look at each other, neither of us sure what to say, neither of us sure what the hell is going on. I think she’s in as much shock as I am.
I can see hatred in her eyes, and I’m sure there must be anger in mine. . and then we’re kissing again, harder this time.
We pull back. I can’t tell if the hatred and the anger are fading away or increasing. She opens her mouth to say something, I do the same, but all we end up doing is grabbing hold of each other. We lock in a passionate embrace, our lips mashing and our tongues darting. Nothing else matters anymore, and I have no doubt that all across the world people are finding love at this exact moment. I’ve no idea what I’m finding, but I like it.
Like the week I spent in bed with my ball sac in tatters, time seems to come and go, as though I am in a place where time doesn’t really matter at all, but only events. The moon is still out and we are walking beneath it, trying to hold each other while stumbling. . where?
She takes me back to her place. She drives us there. We keep looking at each other, and every intersection, every traffic light, I keep waiting for the spell to break, but it doesn’t. Then we’re in her bedroom, and if I could think I’d be thinking she’s going to kill me. Only we’re not killing each other, instead we’re both naked and she’s lying on top of me with my testicle pressing against her, and I have no idea how much time has passed since we first kissed. I expect to feel the damp grass on my back, even though I can see her ceiling.
Is this really happening? I look up at her, and she’s got this grin on her face. It’s a similar grin to when she ripped apart my left nut, but I can’t see any pliers nearby. The hatred has gone.