"Then where's the money?"
"I don't know."
"You took it. You saw she was dead, you cleaned her out, then you locked the door and went downstairs and called 911, very, very cool."
"I didn't take anything."
"Where'd she keep it?"
"In the closet. In a pocket of her coat."
"What
coat
?"
"A long gray overcoat she's got in there. There's a zippered pocket in the lining. She kept the money in there."
"And you think it's still there?"
"I don't know."
"It better be there,
Prudencio
. Detective Howell is taking you over there now, and he'd better find that money just where it's supposed to be, because if it's not there we're going to fry you. You understand,
Prudencio
? You're going to need a lawyer real bad if that money isn't there."
The pimp nodded.
Janek
shrugged and left the viewing corridor. He thought
Bitong
was telling the truth. He was a small-time amateur, venal, slippery, slimy, not the sort to cut off a pair of heads, switch them around, then try to make them fit.
Stanger brought in Gary Pierson at four o'clock. He was medium-tall and slim, about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. Friendly face, pleasant smile, soft wavy brownish hair. He wore expensive resort-style clothing, his shoes shone like mirrors and his trousers were perfectly creased. Neat as a pin, compulsive, a little rigid in his posture.
Janek
watched and listened while Stanger doodled him around: hometown, position at Weston, how he'd spent the first half of the summer painting watercolor beachscapes on Nantucket, where he'd rented a little cottage from his aunt.
How had he met Amanda Ireland? They'd both started at Weston three years ago this fall and had struck up a friendship at once. She'd spent a week with him on Nantucket in Julyâidyllic days reading and painting on the beach, stargazing and intimate conversation at night. During school terms they ate lunch together nearly every day, often spent weekend evenings attending movies or chamber-music concerts at the YMHA and the Metropolitan Museum.
When
Janek
had a sense of him he stepped in, was introduced, then motioned Stanger to leave. He looked at Gary hard. The young man evaded his stare. He was nervous, but then he wasn't accustomed to being in a windowless interrogation room where the air didn't smell very good with a gray-faced detective glaring into his eyes.
"How would you describe your relationship?"
"With Mandy? We were very close."
"Lovers?"
Gary smiled. "I'm gay, Lieutenant. I told Detective Stanger that."
"We certainly appreciate your honesty."
"I don't hide it."
"That's very nice. Now what about your relationship? Did you ever sleep with her or not?"
He shook his head. "We necked sometimes. We were more like confidants."
"You exchanged confidences?"
"Yes. She knew everything there was to know about me and I knew everything about her."
"Like what?"
"What do you mean?"
"What did you know about her?"
"I told youâeverything." He paused. "Maybe a lot of the time I talked about myself. I guess I liked to talk about my problems and she just liked to listen."
"So it was one of those one-way confidential relationships?" It pained
Janek
to be sarcastic, but he didn't know any other way.
"She knew all about my affairs. My lovers. My problems. Everything."
"And what did you know about her?"
"I knew who she was."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Her values, feelings. She was a wonderful girl. Decent and sensitive. Thoughtful. Intelligent. I think Mandy Ireland was the most compassionate person I've ever known."
"Was she gay, Gary?"
"Absolutely not!"
"No need to get jumpy about it. If she was I need to know."
"She wasn't gay."
"And she didn't date?"
"No."
"Then what kind of sex life did she have?"
"That's a lousy question."
"I don't think so. We're investigating a homicide."
"I mean what the hell? What difference does it make? She's dead now. She didn't talk about that at all."
"Maybe she didn't trust you."
"I think she did. I just don't think there was much to tell."
"What's not much?"
"I think she was more or less celibate."
"She was good-looking."
"Very."
"And young and single. I don't get it. It doesn't add up. She lived in Manhattan, met people at work, people who must have been attracted to her, at least enough to ask her out. You're telling me she didn't have any kind of sex life. I say that's unlikely. Someone came into her apartment and stabbed her all over her chest. Like sticking his big cock right into her. Like a very sick kind of rape. Now, that's a sex life, or a sex death, whatever you want to call it. In my experience that's some kind of sex."
Pierson was beginning to perspire.
"Shakes you up, doesn't it?"
"Yes. It shakes me up."
'Who did it, Gary? Any ideas on that?"
"I've thought about it, naturally. I told Detective Stanger. She didn't go out. Hardly ever. And she wouldn't let people in unless she was expecting them. She had a chain lock and she used it. She didn't have a boyfriend. I just can't imagine who would want to harm her. She didn't have an enemy in the world."
"Funny the way you reacted when you found her."
"I got sick. It was a sickening sight."
"You never saw anything sickening before?"
"Not sickening like that."
"You live in the Village. You go to bars. Ever go to a leather bar?"
"That's not my scene."
"Been to them, haven't you?"
"Maybe a couple of times."
"Right, and they didn't make you sick? Come on, Gary, all that
sado
stuff right out there for everyone to see..."
"Yes, it made me sick. That's why I never went back."
"You turned away when you saw her."
"Anyone would have turned away."
"You notice something funny, Gary?"
"What?"
"Something funny?"
"What was funny?"
"Strange. Funny-strange. Maybe something about the way she looked."
"There was blood."
"What else?"
"It was awful. Horrible. I felt sick right away."
"You wear glasses?"
He shook his head.
"You're an artist. An art teacher. You're a visual man. You didn't see anything funny when you looked in there, maybe something that
made
you feel sick?"
"I don't know what you're talking about!"
"Then let me spell it out for you. Did you notice, perhaps, that she'd been decapitated? That someone had cut off her head?"
Gary Pierson looked straight into
Janek's
eyes, peered into them to see if he was telling the truth, and when he saw that he was he began to choke. He turned his head to the side and
Janek
could see the tendons in his neck quiver and his throat contract and then something like drool appear on his lips. Watching Gary Pierson try to control himself and swallow,
Janek
was not proud of the way he had delivered the gruesome news. It was an old interrogator's trick and it generally worked. He stood up, moved behind the boy and placed his hands on his shoulders to calm him down.
"Take it easy, son. It was a very bad scene. She was attacked through her shower curtain. The killer was waiting in there when she came in to brush her teeth. We think she had just come back from walking her dog. And just as she started to brush, this guy started stabbing away. He killed her instantly, but he kept stabbing and then later he took something else, a sword maybe, and he cut off her head."
Gary started to choke again, and
Janek
was just about convinced. He knew there were killers who were excellent actors, and there were coldhearted people who pretended to be squeamish, sociopaths who didn't feel anything but could fake it, thinking that's what everybody didâsince they couldn't feel anything they assumed nobody else did, either. But Gary Pierson didn't seem like one of them, and there wasn't anything fake about his convulsions and his sweat.
Janek
could feel his shivers right through his shoulder bones. He believed the kid. He'd never really thought he'd done it, but he had needed to be sure.
He ruffled the boy's hair and left the room. Aaron was waiting just outside. "Great performance in there. You took him to the shithouse, Frank."
"Yeah, and I feel really good about it, too."
"Take it easy. You had to. There wasn't any other way." When
Janek
came back in with Stanger, Gary was still shaking in his chair.
"Look, Gary, we got to find this guy. It isn't enough to say she just stayed home. You have to think back and remember everything she ever said. If someone was following her, for instance, or if she got strange phone calls, heavy breathers or hang-ups in the night. If she was scared about something, or acted peculiar on a certain day, or was suddenly nervous for no reason you could see. You have to think back and tell Detective Stanger everything you know, and then afterwards, if you suddenly remember something, you have to call him and tell him that too. Understand?"
Gary nodded. He said he'd do his best.
Janek
told Stanger to spend another hour with him, going over the past four weeks. Names. Dates. Habits. Hobbies. Doctor. Dentist. Veterinarian. If she really lived by the clock, took the same bus every day, walked her dog at the same time, then she would not have been difficult to stalk.
Janek
wanted her schedule, hour by hour, minute by minute if they could work it out. He wanted to know everything there was to know about Amanda Ireland. Gary Pierson would be Stanger's collaborator. Together they would write a book, the story of her life.
Howell was waiting in the squad room. He had
Prudencio
Bitong
and also Brenda's stash. A roll of soiled bills, sixteen hundred dollars, half a bag of medium-quality pot, and a glassine envelope of cocaine, maybe five hundred dollars' worth. And there was a key too, a safe deposit box key, and Howell was going over to the bank in the morning and get that box opened up. Maybe Mr.
Bitong
would find to his surprise that Brenda Thatcher had been holding back.
I
t seemed to
Janek
that they melted into each other when he arrived that evening at the loft. Caroline took him in her arms, they moved to her bed without a sound and there made love magically, he thought, as if they were made for each other and had known each other for months.
As a lover she employed no tricks, no
actressy
little touches she had learned from someone else. She was merely herself without pretense or illusion, more than enough, he thought, far more than he had hoped. Her lean young body was taut with craving. Her breasts pressed firmly against his chest. Her back was beautiful and proud. Her mouth was hungry. She played her fingers upon his shoulder blades, then thrust them deep into his hair.
He kissed her throat and then her eyes, ran his hands along her perspiring flanks and marveled at the sleekness of her legs. She used her toes to stroke his calves. He was awed by her shudders of desire.
He felt she was a sorceress, that in her embraces he was bewitched. They glided, joined, pulled back, then joined again, their bodies beating out a sweet slow rhythm, a long, slow, intoxicating dance. No frantic whisperings. No "What do you like?" and "Does this turn you on?" No need to ask, because they knew. There was a faultless surety to their every move, a deep, instinctive knowledge that told them how to satisfy.
Afterward, lying back, they looked at one another and broke into smiles.
She served him a simple dinnerâsalad, steak, Italian cheesecakeâand as they ate they regarded each other with delight. Talking casually, he became aware he knew practically nothing about her. Family background, education, the men she had known and lovedâsuch things were normally necessary knowledge if he was to fathom another human being. But now they seemed meaningless in the face of the things he had discovered: her vision of the world imparted through her photographs, and the smell and taste of her body, carnal knowledge he now possessed. It was such a relief not to have to care about the other things, to rely upon his feelings, to leave his detective's processes behind. He wondered why he hadn't learned to do this before, separate his life from his work. Until now repairing old accordions and playing them had been his only escape. How wonderful to have found this passionate woman who made him forget the awful sully of his job.
"Have you talked to Mrs.
DiMona
?"