“Freeze that!” Proctor cried out.
The frame froze. Proctor leaned in, staring, hardly able to believe what he saw. His world fell in upon him.
The frozen video — grainy, seamed by horizontal lines that slowly rose up the screen — could not be denied. The image was all too clear: the dark hair, the full lips, the violet eyes wide open, the once-beautiful face frozen in a rictus of death.
He sank into a nearby chair. He could no longer delude himself. Constance was dead. She’d never suffered from heart trouble. She couldn’t have died of natural causes on the plane; she’d been murdered. Murdered. And Diogenes was the murderer.
Vaguely, as if from far away, he realized the man was talking to him again.
“I am sorry,” the official told him, wringing his hands with genuine angst. “Very sorry. But — you wanted to be certain.”
“Yes,” Proctor said, not looking at him. “Thank you. I… I need to find them, recover my daughter’s body. They are bad people. Do you have any idea where they took the body?”
A hesitation. “They did not leave the airport with the hired doctor. This I know, because I watched the doctor depart. The circumstances were unusual, you see — even for here. They went to an establishment that leases automobiles — jeeps, trucks, vehicles for desert use. It is next to the airport, across from the Millennium Business Park. It is the only place open after dark. They put the stretcher in a waiting van and drove across the street.”
Proctor leapt to his feet.
“It is very late now,” the man said. “They are almost certainly closed—”
But he was speaking to an empty room. Proctor was gone.
9
The Windhoek-Detmonk Automobile Agency — as it was advertised by two signs, one in Afrikaans and the other in English, along with the proprietor’s name, Lazrus Keronda — was a two-acre lot located amid a sad-looking, business-zoned neighborhood on the main east — west highway just south of the airport. Despite the seediness of its signage, the rental agency was ringed by expensive sodium vapor lights that lit up the night, and a dozen vehicles could be seen through the security fence.
It was the only business still open, and as Proctor marched quickly across the four-lane highway — quiet at this late hour — the external lights began to snap off, one by one.
The temperature hovered at just around one hundred degrees, and the Oosweer—the hot wind that often blew in from the coast this time of year — showered him in fine sand as he walked. The low hills of Progress could barely be seen in the distance: ghost reflections of the lights from the city. He glanced at his watch: just past ten o’clock.
A short, pudgy man in rumpled shorts and a khaki shirt with buttoned pockets was pulling a chain-link gate across the main entrance to the dealership. Proctor gave him a brisk tap on the shoulder and the man turned, blinking against the blowing sand.
“Hoe gaan dit met jou?” he said, looking him up and down in the way of salesmen the world over.
“Baie goed, dankie,” Proctor replied. “But let’s talk in English.”
Proctor prided himself in being an expert at reading people. Even now — dead tired, in deep shock, stricken to the core with grief and self-reproach — he could tell there was something wrong about this man. The nervous way he kept running one hand through his hair as the wind disarranged it; his habit of not meeting Proctor’s eyes; the very tenor of his voice — all told Proctor that the man was dirty and intended to lie to him.
Now the salesman frowned. “Ek vertaan nie,” he said.
“Oh, you understand me just fine, Mr. Keronda.” Proctor opened his bug-out bag, flashed a wad of cash.
“We are closed,” the man said, switching abruptly to unaccented English.
“Let’s talk in there.” And Proctor pointed toward a small, dimly lighted shed in the middle of the lot that, it appeared, served as an office.
“We are—” the man began again, but Proctor gave him a shove that pulled his hand from the gate and sent him stumbling back in the direction of the office.
Inside the building, Proctor gently but firmly guided the man to a chair behind a battered desk, pushed him down into it, then took a seat in front. “I’ll tell you just once,” he said. “No games. I’ve run out of time and patience. You have information I need. Give it to me and you’ll be rewarded.”
The man patted at his hair again, wiped sand from his forehead. “I do not know anything.”
“You had a customer here,” Proctor said. “About ninety minutes ago.”
The man shook his head. “There has been nobody,” he said.
Proctor took a deep breath. “I’m asking politely. Next time I’ll be rude.”
“We have been closed for hours,” the man said. “The only reason I am here so late is because I’ve been doing paperwork—”
The storm of emotions that had been slowly gathering within Proctor — frustration at the absurd dance Diogenes had led him on; self-loathing for his failure in ensuring Constance’s well-being; staggering grief at the news of her death — came together in a white-hot implosion of rage. Yet externally he remained completely calm — save for the sudden, snake-like quickness with which he moved. Snatching a large letter opener off the desk, he brought it down into the man’s left hand, shattering the trapezoid bone and burying the point half an inch into the scarred wood.
The man’s eyes rolled white and he opened his mouth to scream. Proctor grabbed an oil-soaked rag off the floor and jammed it into his mouth. He clamped his powerful hand over the man’s jaws, preventing him from crying out.
The man writhed, moaning through the rag. Blood began seeping around the edges of the letter opener and trickling through the fingers and onto the desk. Proctor kept the man in position for well over a minute before speaking again.
“When I take the rag out of your mouth,” he said, “you’re going to answer my questions. If you lie, I’ll respond appropriately.”
The man nodded. Proctor removed the sodden rag.
“As God is my judge,” the man began again, “I have not seen anybody all—”
Proctor pulled a rusty, four-inch awl from among an adjacent workbench of tools, seized the man’s free elbow, yanked the arm forward, slammed the right hand on the table, and stabbed the awl through it, pinning it to the table as well.
The man screamed in agony. “Laat my met rus! Polisie!”
“Nobody can hear you,” said Proctor. With a short, sharp movement, he kicked the man’s chair straight back from his desk. Affixed as he was to the table, the man fell forward off the chair, his knees hitting the floor, arms straight out in front of him, hands pinned to the table by the letter opener and the awl. He uttered another inchoate scream.
From his bag, Proctor pulled a blacked-out KA-Bar knife with a serrated edge. With two quick flicks of the blade, he cut through the man’s belt and sliced away his zipper. And then he picked a heavy set of hose clamp pliers off the workbench. “Last chance,” he said, hefting the pliers. “Your balls are next.”