Hotline to Murder (13 page)

The man came up to him and stuck out a giant
hand saying, “I am the Reverend Luther Hodgkins.”

Tony said, “Tony Schmidt,” failing to match
the resonance of the Reverend’s voice. His hand got lost in that of
the larger man. He was dark-skinned, with graying hair, and could
have played football with Detective Croyden. He was dressed in a
colorful Hawaiian shirt.

“Who is this parishioner of whom you speak?”
Reverend Hodgkins asked, or rather rumbled.

“His name is Nathan…” Tony tried to remember
Nathan’s last name.

“Nathan Watson?”

“Watson…right. He’s white.”

“We do not discriminate at the Church of the
Risen Lord. What has Nathan told you about the church?”

“Nothing, actually. He said he had attended
an evening service here on Thursday, August 29.”

Reverend Hodgkins stepped past Tony and
opened the outside door, letting in a slanting ray of light from
the setting sun, which momentarily blinded him. The Reverend turned
around and surveyed Tony, who realized he had let in the sunlight
so that he could see him better.

“Are you with the police?” the Reverend
asked.

“No sir,” Tony said, blinking to regain his
eyesight. He stepped back from the doorway so that the sun wasn’t
in his face. “Nathan and I, ah, work together. I was interested in
finding out more about the church.”

“Nathan is a faithful member of the Church.
However, I’m not surprised that he has not told you anything
specific about our beliefs, because we have been ridiculed by
nonbelievers in the past. However, if you are serious about wanting
to learn the truth, I will be glad to enlighten you. Take a
seat.”

Reverend Hodgkins sat down at the end of the
last pew and motioned Tony to sit in the pew across the aisle from
him. Tony wasn’t sure he wanted to learn so much about the Church
that he be required to sit down to do it, but he was under the
spell of the Reverend. He sat.

“First, I must apologize for the lack of
lights,” the Reverend said. “The electric company lists its
employees among the nonbelievers. However, we will not be needing
electricity or anything else of the material for very long.”

As soon as Tony sat down, his feeling of
tiredness came back to him, and he slumped on the hard, wooden
bench. However, the statement of Reverend Hodgkins woke him up with
a jolt. The Reverend was looking past him, lost in some sort of
reverie. Tony waited for him to continue.

“All churches seek the truth. Few find the
whole truth. Others have tried to pinpoint the Day of Judgment.
They have failed, resulting in great embarrassment and financial
loss. It is only now, with the advent of powerful computers and the
Internet, that I have been able to do what others failed to
do.”

“The Day of Judgment?” Tony had been raised
in a Protestant church-going family, but it had been years since he
had been inside a church, except for weddings and his grandfather’s
funeral.

“The day when Christ shall return to earth
and clasp the faithful to his bosom. The day when the believers
shall rise triumphantly into heaven. The day when we will no longer
need the worldly goods that keep us fettered. The day when the
chains of greed and ambition shall be cast off.”

The Reverend’s voice grew louder as he
talked, filling the small church auditorium. He was no longer
seeing or speaking to Tony. He went on in the same vein, while Tony
wondered whether he was going to preach a whole sermon. He
apparently came back to reality, because he stopped after a couple
of minutes.

Tony said, “Reverend, when is this Day of
Judgment?”

Reverend Hodgkins looked at him. When he
spoke, it was back in his normal voice, which was loud enough. “It
is for the believers to know when the great day will occur. Our
parishioners will be ready. Ready to be swept up to glory.”

“In other words, I have to join your Church
in order to receive this information?”

“In one word—yes.”

Tony remembered hearing stories about people
who thought they had pinpointed the Day of Judgment. “So all your
followers are selling or giving away all their possessions and
meeting on a hilltop on this glorious day?”

Reverend Hodgkins fixed Tony with a
disconcerting stare. Perhaps a suspicious stare. He stood up. Tony
stood up. The Reverend walked to the entrance and said, “Brother, I
have things to do, and I’m sure you do too. I hope that God goes
with you on your journey.”

The interview was over. Tony had enough
presence of mind to shake hands with the Reverend as he went out
the door and say, “Thank you for a most enlightening conversation.
God be with
you
, Reverend.”

The Reverend stood in the doorway and
watched Tony as he climbed into his Porsche. Or perhaps he was
looking at the car. There was a gleam in the Reverend’s eye that
Tony didn’t think he had seen before in a man of the cloth.

CHAPTER 15

When Tony reached home, he wanted nothing
more than to drink a beer, eat a frozen dinner heated in the
microwave, collapse in front of the television set for a couple of
hours, and then retire to bed for some much-needed sleep. As he
pulled into his carport, he saw that Josh’s car wasn’t in the space
next to his and that buoyed his spirits. He wasn’t up to facing
Josh at the moment, especially after their fight last night.

The temporary uplift was dashed when he
opened the refrigerator and discovered that all the beer was gone.
Josh and his buddies had drunk it all. Unless there was some left
in the cooler. He fruitlessly looked for that container in the
living room and finally went out onto the patio and discovered it
upside down, where it had been left to drain. Beerless.

He settled for a glass of white wine from a
half-empty bottle in the refrigerator. It was the cheap stuff from
Trader Joe’s, but it wasn’t bad. He found a dinner in the freezer
that he knew would be the consistency of wood chips and dirt, with
a taste to match, but he didn’t care. He placed the container in
the microwave and turned it on.

Tony sipped his wine and checked the
messages on his answering machine. Two for Josh, both from males.
None for him. While he waited for the dinner to heat up, he thought
about his roommate. He remembered for the first time in his busy
day that he had wondered last night whether Josh was Joy’s killer.
Now, after a day had elapsed, he couldn’t picture Josh as a
murderer, but he knew the thought would nag him unless he made
sure. He had to find out what Josh had been doing the night of the
murder.

Josh was probably at work at the television
station, but he might be coming home any time. Tony raced upstairs
and into Josh’s room. He turned on the light and then remembered
that since Josh’s room faced the carport area, if Josh drove in
right now, he would see the light on in his room and become
suspicious.

Damn. Tony turned off the light, went down
the hall to his own room, and retrieved a small flashlight. This
was going to make the job harder. Returning to Josh’s room, he
wondered whether Josh had left his calendar there. Tony knew that
Josh had recently started using an electronic calendar at work, but
he was suspicious of automation and had loudly proclaimed that he
was still going to maintain his manual calendar.

Josh was messier than Tony. The bed was
unmade. Dirty clothes were piled on the only chair. A distinct
locker-room odor emanated from them. Tony was thankful he didn’t
ordinarily have to look inside this room. It was a better situation
than college, when they had shared a single room. Josh did have a
table, which he used as a desk. Papers were piled on it in
seemingly random fashion.

Tony quickly leafed through them, using his
flashlight to see, looking for a calendar. He heard the sound of an
engine in the carport area. It was either Josh or a neighbor. He
went to the window and peeked out between slats of the blinds. He
saw Josh’s car pulling into his carport. Tony figured he had thirty
seconds.

He riffled quickly through another pile of
papers. In the middle he found the calendar, one page per month,
not exactly state-of-the-art. It was open to September. He went
back one page and checked the square of August 29. Nothing was
written in the square. It was completely blank. Other days had
notices of appointments or social engagements, so Josh was still
using the calendar.

Tony could hear Josh coming in through the
unlocked door from the patio. He quickly shoved the calendar back
into the stack—too hard. The whole stack of papers fell onto the
floor. Frantically, Tony scooped them up with both arms and plunked
them on the table. Then he took two giant steps out of the room and
closed the door. At the last instant he remembered to close it
softly. As he was going down the stairs, Josh started up them.

“Hey, Tony,” Josh said as they passed each
other. “How was your day?”

“Tiring,” Tony said warily. “And yours?” At
least he hadn’t called him Noodles.

“Swinging. We got a scoop on network news in
the case of the kidnapped little girl.”

“Wonderful,” Tony responded, but he was
already down the stairs and headed back into the kitchen. Josh
didn’t seem to be in a bad mood. Now if only he didn’t notice that
his papers were messed up. And if he didn’t bring up last night,
Tony wouldn’t. Tony retrieved his TV dinner from the microwave,
poured himself another glass of wine, and sat down at the table in
the family room, which doubled as a dining room.

Josh came downstairs five minutes later,
looking comfortable in baggy shorts and a T-shirt. He opened the
refrigerator. After a few seconds of searching, he said, “Looks
like I blew it. Drank up all the beer. Sorry about that. You want
me to make a beer run?”

“Don’t do it for me,” Tony said. “I’m going
to bed early tonight.”

“I’ll get some tomorrow.”

The area between the family room and the
kitchen was mostly open, so Tony watched as Josh poured himself a
glass of wine from the bottle on the counter and then took a
package of wieners out of the refrigerator. He stabbed one with a
fork and held it over the flame of a burner on the gas stove, as if
he were at a wiener roast. He whistled as the wiener started to
sizzle. Tony cringed as he watched the grease drip onto the burner,
but he was determined not to say a word, especially one that might
upset Josh.

“I haven’t heard anything new about the
Hotline murder for several days,” Josh said. “Have you got any
inside information for me that I can put on the air?”

“Nothing new.”

Josh ate this wiener right off the fork and
then stabbed a second wiener and held it over the flame.

Tony saw his chance. “Detective Croyden has
been checking the alibis of everybody who was connected to Joy in
any way. When he asked me about my alibi, I realized that I didn’t
have anybody to vouch for me that night.” He forced a smile. “I
went to a movie all alone. I don’t remember where the hell you
were. Where were you, anyway?” He said this in what he hoped was a
jocular tone.

Josh turned his wiener over to sear the
other side. With his free hand he scratched his head. “Where was I
the night of the murder? I’ll have to think about that.”

Josh fell silent as he finished cooking his
wiener to his satisfaction and ate it off the fork. Tony felt
frustrated that the opportunity to get Josh’s alibi had apparently
been lost. If he asked again, Josh was sure to get suspicious. Josh
brought his glass of wine over to the table and sat down.

He said, “Was Joy one of the girls that was
here the day you had the Hotline people over when I was out of
town?”

The question startled Tony. He had never
told Josh that he had invited the class over and had hoped he
wouldn’t find out. He said, “What are you talking about?” still
trying to maintain a bantering tone.

“Don’t pull that shit with me. Rob told me
all about it. He said the pool was full of young babes in bikinis.
He and some of the other guys who live here sat around the pool,
drank beer, and watched. But you did it behind your old roommate’s
back.” Josh affected a hurt look.

Watched. Ogled. Tony remembered that well.
Rob was a neighbor. Since the pool was in the common area, he
couldn’t exactly drive them away.

“They particularly mentioned a tall,
gorgeous blonde,” Josh continued. “Stacked.” He placed his hands
around imaginary breasts. “I kind of figured that might be
Joy.”

“It was Joy,” Tony conceded. “In fact, that
was the only time I ever saw Joy.”

“You’re one up on me. I have to live with
the pictures we got from her parents. But I’m still pissed that you
left me out.”

“I didn’t want you ravishing all of them. My
reputation is that of a good guy, and I can’t let them know I have
you for a roommate. They’d probably kick me out of the
Hotline.”

“That might be the best thing that could
happen. I don’t like what you’re turning into.”

Josh kept score of all the beautiful girls
he saw, dated, bedded. It was a contest for him. Still, he had no
reason to kill one.

“In a theoretical sense, I can understand
the attraction,” Josh said, as if analyzing a movie. “A beautiful
but unobtainable girl. If you can’t have her, then nobody can have
her. Kill her while she’s still perfect. Then you’ll have a memory
that nobody else can have. Forever.”

Or
did
he have a reason to kill her? Tony
remembered something—the missing underwear. He needed to search the
drawers of Josh’s dresser. But he would have to be more careful the
next time he went into his room.

CHAPTER 16

As Tony entered the Hotline, office he saw
two people in the listening room. Young people on the four-to-seven
shift. He signed in. It was only Wednesday, and he wasn’t scheduled
to work again until Friday, but he had decided to come in tonight
because curiosity had gotten the best of him. He had called the
office and talked to Gail, who had told him that Nathan was working
the seven-to-ten tonight. Tony had decided to work with him.