Paz was spending his first day of administrative leave with Lorna Wise, who had also taken the day off, and had called him early and then turned off her phone. He was surprised to have been thus called, but he had driven over, and now they were sitting in her little terrace out back under a mango tree, drinking iced tea together like old friends, which they certainly were not, but there was something working there, under the surface.
She asked whether he was in any trouble, and he explained that it was what they called a good shooting, and why.
” ‘A good shooting,’ ” she said. “What an expression!”
“As opposed to a bad one, the old lady shot in the back because a cop was under the impression that she was a crazed felon with a shotgun about to attack.”
“Does that happen?”
“In Miami? More than it should. We got a bunch of detectives on trial now for running sort of a death squad, whacking bad guys they didn’t like. How are you feeling, by the way?” He had noticed a crinkling around her eyes, as if she were going to cry.
“A little numb. I never saw anyone killed before. I never even saw a dead body, except for my mom.” She took a long, deep breath. “I guess you have, though.”
“Lots.” He paused and smiled slyly. “Would it be more comforting if I said you never get used to it or if I said oh, yeah, after a while it stops bothering you?”
“How about the actual truth?”
“Ah, the truth! Okay, the truth is, it depends on the condition and type of the corpse. A three-year-old kid’s been in a cardboard box for a week in August is rough, and a fresh gangbanger with one through the ear is no big deal.”
“What about killing people. Does that depend too?”
“I’m not sure on that one. I only ever killed two people, including your guy.”
“The other was that voodoo one.”
“Yeah, that one,” said Paz in a tone that closed the subject like the hatch on a sub.
He drank some tea and said, “So. We need to discuss a little. Off the record, for starters. I noticed you policed up that book your guy dropped. Emmylou’s notebook.”
“Yes. And please stop calling him ‘my guy,’ like we were dating.”
“Sorry. Anyway, the notebook. Technically, that’s violating the integrity of a crime scene.”
“Is it? I noticed you didn’t say anything about it to your colleagues. Technically, isn’t that abetting the violation of the integrity of a crime scene?”
He twitched his eyebrows like Groucho. “Yeah, we’re a couple of felons together. Meanwhile, are you going to let me read the thing?”
She put her iced tea down on the picnic table and walked off. Paz watched her body as she did so. Paz was an ass man, although he was amusedly conscious of how banal that preference was in a man of his culture. There it was, however, and it could not be denied that Lorna Wise had a terrific butt, although she had no idea of how to display it. In fact, he did not think he had ever seen a woman less at ease with her body. He studied her also as she came out of the house toward the little patio. A Gap dresser, naturally, khaki bermudas and a light blue T-shirt, wonderfully convexed. Paz did not mind a decent rack, the absence not a deal breaker for him as it was for some men, more of a nice-to-have, but clearly their owner did not agree. It was like she was trying to cross her shoulders over them. Peculiar, but interesting in a way.
“What?” she said, noticing at last. “Do I have egg on my shirt?”
“No, you’re egg free,” he replied and gestured at the notebook. “There it is. Do you mind if I read it now?”
“Not at all. I have some things to do around the house. Take your time.”
He did and it wasn’t easy, a little battle between his detective’s urge to seek out and absorb all evidence and his personal desire never to have anything more to do with Emmylou Dideroff or any of her works. He had hoped that it would be a regular confession, a list of facts, of crimes committed, not something so intimate, not something directed at him, Paz, as if he were a literal confessor. He felt as if she were looking into him in that hideous way she had in the interview room,something looking at him through her. He made himself finish it and then leaned back and closed his eyes. He was going crazy, getting undeniable now, it was affecting his work already, and now this flesh-crawling nauseated feeling as he read the notebook, he was going mad, or else…
His mind skipped a little, like a scratched record. He was going mad, or else…or else it was…Paz’s well-oiled circuit breakers popped. When he opened his eyes again, Lorna was sitting across from him, in the warm mango-scented shade.
“So, what do you think?”
He blinked and sat up. She said, “You were sleeping. Was it that boring?”
“No, I was just thinking,” he said, rubbing his face.
“No one will ever admit that they’re asleep, except when they’re in bed. I wonder why that is?”
“You’re the psychologist, Lorna. You tell me.”
She let this pass, pointing to the notebook. “Any conclusions?”
With some effort, Paz reinhabited his cop persona. “No, but I’m dying to hear the rest of it. Any chance of us doing a full-scale interrogation at this point?”
“On a mental patient? Look, this has to come out as it comes. She gets extremely hostile when you press her on stuff that’s outside the stream of the narrative. She seized the last time I pushed her.”
“But she’s playing with us. I mean you picked that up, right? You got that whole cornpone peckerwood thing, and there’s what sounds like an educated woman looking over her shoulder and making wiseass remarks, and then there’s the religious nut quoting St. Augustine. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not anything like a real confession.”
“No, but you’re not looking at an integrated personality here. We all agree that she’s seriously deranged.”
Paz got up abruptly and paced a few times across the flagstones, then turned to face her, pointing. “Say I give you that. Say it’s sound and fury, she’s traumatized, whatever, multiple personalities?”
“I didn’t say multiple personalities….”
“Well, whatever?deranged, like you said. The key thing here, thekey thing, is what’snot in that book. Hm?”
“The dog that didn’t bark in the night.”
“That dog.” A quick grin. “Which is, there is absolutely nothing there that would make anyone take the risk of doing a B and E to get it. An armed burglary, which is very rare. Burglars are almost never armed. I mean why risk it?the whole point of burglary is in-and-out, nobody sees you.”
“There’s the sexual stuff.”
“You mean for blackmail? No, the perp is dead, and I can’t see old Ray Bob’s family wanting to protect his good name after all these years. Okay, there’s the Foy dope dealing too, but I can’t see that either. She could say she bought smack from the governor, it’s not probative, it don’t mean anything without concrete evidence. It could be the ravings of a lunatic, no, itis the ravings of a lunatic. So why is it maybe worth killing for?”
“You think it’s connected to…”
He rolled his eyes. “Well, hell, yeah! The vic, the Arab, comes to town, he sells some oil and talks about a huge oil find, it’s going to change the world oil situation, and he also says he’s hiring muscle, he’s scared of something. Then, of all the people he could possibly meet in Miami, who does he run into but our girl Emmylou, who has a reason to whack him, and who gets found in his place after he gets slammed on the head with an auto part out of her truck and tossed off his balcony? You think that’s a coincidence?”
“It could be,” she says weakly.