Suspects (29 page)

Today was when he and LeBeau, assisted by whichever helpers the captain would provide them, were to search for the plastic garbage bags in which the super had discarded the rubbish from Lloyd Howland's studio apartment. The dump had at last been established as the Department of Sanitation's No. 3, out where Highland became Route 1-B. It was the newest and largest such facility. Thinking of its vast acreage could make the heart fall, though there was some small solace in the precise identification of the quadrant used exclusively by the trucks that collected from the neighborhood of the shabby building in question. This area was probably no more than a quarter mile in each direction. The DOS would lend them coveralls, rubber boots, and heavyweight protective gloves, but they would be on their own if they wanted respiratory masks.

Dennis was at the desk across from his by the time Moody arrived at the bureau after a stop home to shed the uncomfortable uniform, still painfully tight at the waist even after the latest alterations.

“I would have been late for the church service,” LeBeau explained, with eyes that sought more than usual from his partner. “I could have gone to the cemetery, I guess, but I thought I'd get some work done here. Lab didn't find any traces of blood on the utility knife.”

Moody made no acknowledgment either in voice or gesture, though he had met his partner's glance straightforwardly. He sat down now.

“What I was thinking about the dump,” LeBeau went on, “is if we could get the garbage-truck guys to give us some idea of how big a typical day's haul is. If we just had an estimate of how much they haul per collection, per neighborhood, we might be able to figure out about where the stuff from last Tuesday would be dropped.” He tapped a pencil. “Some specific idea, you know? I mean, we got the general area, but if there was some way to zero in…” He stared across at Moody. “You got a right to be steamed about the apartment. I grant you that.”

“I don't give a shit about the apartment.”

“Sure you do.”

“Don't tell me what I care about, goddammit!” Moody shouted. “You don't know me that well.”

“Have it your own way,” LeBeau said stoically. “What you don't have a right to be is a judge of my private conduct. You're not Crys's father.”

“I'd rip your guts out if I was.”

“And you're not Daisy's father, either, though you might think you are.”

“In other words, I'm not supposed to have any reaction at all?”

LeBeau looked away. “I didn't mean that.”

“You're going to have to decide what it is you do mean,” Moody informed him. “You're a mess, Dennis.”

LeBeau reared back. “That's your theory, is it?”

“Well, look at yourself.”

“Look who's talking.”

“I don't set myself up as an example,” said Moody. “Except as something to be avoided.”

LeBeau grimaced. “You might just listen to my side of it. It's real, Nick. I'm not just playing around. I never did that. I'm in love with her. But that doesn't mean I don't also love Crys and the kids. I can't just walk out on them. You're right. It
is
a mess.”

“Listen to me for a minute.” Moody dropped the indignant tone. “This is an idea I came up with. Before you do anything you'll be sorry for, just think about maybe trying this. You and, uh, her”—he could not bring himself to utter Daisy's name and so acknowledge their illicit connection—“why don't you just try this: set a time limit on it, see. Like as of a certain date, if you still feel as you do now, then see what happens. Say like the end of the month. That should give you time enough to make an intelligent—”

“What are you talking about?” asked LeBeau. “Did you hear what I just said? I'm in love, Nick.”

Moody shrugged. “Yeah, and this is my answer. Think about it. That's all I ask. Take a little time.”

“Don't you think I've
been
thinking about it?”

“I just now told you.”

“Not what you said,” LeBeau cried. “I've been thinking about the situation. I can't sleep because of it.… How in hell can I tell Crystal?”

“Don't,” said Moody. “Like I say, give it more time.”

Dennis leaned forward. Moody had never before seen him in a beseeching role. After the momentary novelty, it was degrading. “Nick, you don't.… Look, it's okay if you disapprove. Hell, you can say what you want about me, I probably deserve it. But I was just wondering if
you
could say something to Crys. It might be easier for her that way. She thinks the world of you. You know, she was always on your side when it came to Dawn. She never could stand her.”

He was referring to Moody's second wife. This was as good an example as any of how naive Dennis was in matters concerning the relations between the sexes. Moody didn't want to hear criticism of Dawn from anyone else: he had married her. He shook his head at his partner. “Man, you're hopeless. I'm supposed to explain what I don't understand myself?” After a pause he said, “I think it's wrong. I think it's stupid. I don't think it's love. I think it's crap. I'm not going to say anything to Crystal. I'm not going to say anything more to your girlfriend, and I'm never going to mention it to you again, you can count on that. From now on, our partnership is strictly professional.”

LeBeau's face hardened. He leaned so he could get a hand in his pocket. “Here's your keys.” He threw them clattering over onto Moody's desktop.

Moody dropped the keys into the waste can at his knee. He sneered across at LeBeau. “I already had the locks changed.” He stood up, adjusting the gun clipped to his belt. “Come on, let's go to the dump.”

Lloyd had a good night's sleep on the air mattress, though it was not as comfortable as the prison bunk. He got up when a shaft of bright sunlight reached his face: long after dawn, for the sun had to climb over the topmost trees in the tall grove at the front of the property.

Having assumed that his host would be an early riser, he was surprised to hear a snore issuing from beneath the heaped blankets on Joe's bed as he passed the open doorway en route to the bathroom.

Lloyd breakfasted on instant coffee and dry graham crackers from a half-depleted box found in a kitchen cabinet. He dunked the grahams in the coffee mug and usually succeeded in getting the wetted portion to his mouth before it fell off, an exercise he had not practiced since childhood. After washing and drying the mug and cleaning away such crumbs as had fallen, he went to the living room.

He had painted about half the longest wall before Joe finally appeared, in jeans and T-shirt, but barefoot, fists grinding into eyes, gaping, still not wide awake.

“Lloyd! I forgot you were here.” He squinted. “You do all that already this morning? Takes me a while to get going.” He yawned, crucifying his sinewy arms. He went closer to the area of new paint, peering. “You done a real nice job cutting in around the molding. Do that freehand? Not bad.” He gave Lloyd the once-over. “I was gonna say you can borrow a pair of coveralls, but I don't see a drop of paint on you.”

“When you're wearing the only clothes you got, you're careful,” Lloyd said. “Look, I owe you some explanation—”

“No, you don't. Molly—”

“Picked me up hitchhiking. She's known me for all of two days. I'm under suspicion of murder. They're just looking for enough evidence to charge me.”

Joe studied his face for a while. “Are they gonna find enough?”

“That's just it.
I don't know.”

Joe's right eye became heavy-lidded. “Lemme get this straight. You don't know if they'll find it, or you—”

“I don't know whether or not I'm guilty.” Lloyd had managed to say something that only a moment before he could not have imagined putting into words for another person. “I was drunk, drunker than I ever had been in all my life. I was all upset about losing still another job. I can't remember what I did for half a day and a whole night. All I know is I woke up next morning in a pool of piss and my face had this scratch.” He touched his cheek. “It's healing up. It looked a lot worse originally.”

“Nobody saw you during this time?”

“The last I knew, I was home. I was still there when I woke up, but what if I went somewhere meanwhile and forgot about it?”

Joe nodded. “Was this in town here? My TV's been broke for a while.”

“Molly hasn't mentioned anything?”

“Naw.” Joe chuckled, but as a courtesy, not in humor. “I guess she was worried I wouldn't let you in if I knew your story.” He waved a hand toward his guest. “Sometimes I get to working on a job back there and don't see anybody for days in a row. Couple years ago there was a war that was over before I heard it started. I was doing some inlaying, every piece of it hand-cut, and if you don't keep your mind on it every second, you're in trouble, at least if you're me. I can't think of two things at once.”

In a rush, lest he break down before he was finished, Lloyd told Joe as much as he knew about the murders, which he realized only now was not much. He had avoided learning the details: he saw that all he had really cared about was his own deprivation.

“I don't know,” said Joe when Lloyd was done, taking a moment for conspicuous thought, with furrowed forehead. “Wouldn't you of gotten some blood on yourself?”

“It looked like my shower was used sometime during the period I can't remember.” Lloyd chewed his lower lip. “There was a T-shirt on the shower floor that looked like it might have had some blood on it. It was pinkish and soaking wet, like some attempt had been made to wash it. Maybe the blood came from the cut I
maybe
got when shaving.”

Joe stared at him. “Why would you of committed these murders, Lloyd?”

“Not for any sane reason.”

“You mean you might be crazy?”

“It happens, doesn't it? People lose control and do something terrible for no reason?”

“I'm a carpenter,” said Joe. “I guess if you really want to find out, you ought to go to somebody who specializes in that trade.”

“A psychiatrist?”

Joe shrugged with his long arms. “Whoever it takes.… I mean, that is, if you really want to find out.”

“I don't know if I've got the guts.”

“Well, you can always just wait around for the cops to pin it on you,” said Joe. “If they got the idea you're the one, they'll be glad to nail you. It's their profession, you know?”

“I've never had a profession,” Lloyd said. “I've never got to where things begin to connect and make sense so that next week you can look back and see where you've been and how you got there and what you have accomplished.…” He bent to pick up the roller. It had absorbed too much paint. He ran it over the corrugations at the high end of the tray, to squeeze off the excess.

“Hell,” said Joe, “there's no hurry about that.”

“I'd like to get it done before I have to go back to jail.” But suddenly he dropped the roller and straightened up. “Look, if you didn't know all of this about me, then I'm here under false pretenses. You thought I was just in some kind of minor trouble with the law?”

Joe spoke in mock horror. “Yeah, I'm not going to forgive that Molly, bringing around somebody like you, might cut my throat while I'm sleeping!” He grew sober. “You
could
be crazy and dangerous. Some people are, I'm told, and others around them don't find out till it's too late. But maybe
I'm
nuts—I got a hunch about you. You worry too much about what don't matter—no, that's not right, either. It
does
matter, but not in the way you think.… I only wish I could say what—“ He frowned, then brightened. “It's what's
necessary
. That's the only thing to worry about.”

“How do you decide what's necessary?” Lloyd asked. “That's my problem.”

“I guess it's between what you can live with and what you can't live without.”

“I guess that's it.” Lloyd reached down again for the roller and brought it up to the wall.

Marevitch assumed that the funeral would be the worst experience that remained for him to survive, but he was wrong. There really was a useful purpose in such ceremonies, which transformed what was personal and weak and limited into the institutional, with all its resources and possibilities. Though a functional atheist, he could nevertheless agree with Stephanie, who was not, that Artie somehow was able to look down and see the display and be made proud.

Afterward a couple of dozen members of the department closest to Art McCall, and their families, gathered at the Marevitch home, where Stephie, assisted by their daughter and several other cops' wives, put out a buffet of baked ham, fried chicken, meatballs, and accompaniments. Jack directed people to the tub full of beer cans and melting ice cubes, back on the kitchen counter. Big bottles of soda were on hand for the kids, and Marevitch saw that the teenagers stuck to the sanctioned beverage and did not grab a brew, though he was under no illusions that any, including his seventeen-year-old daughter, were teetotalers when not under surveillance—or virgins either, for he had spent his own teen years getting drunk and looking for tail, which did not mean he would tolerate the same in those who were youths now he was an adult: that was the way standards were maintained, as many elements of society had forgotten to their peril or, worse, had never learned.

His new partner, Patrolman Felicia Ravenswood by name (he had yet to meet her face to face), being one of the cops who had to stay on duty while the others were at the ceremonies, crime taking no holiday, therefore could not come to the house and give his wife a chance to look her over, as he knew Stephie was anxious to do despite her pretense of indifference. His own concern was much greater, but he could not yet admit as much even to himself. He was still capable of very little except to point the way to the beer. He had not yet even been able to deliver the carton of Artie's possessions, taken from the locker, to McCall's twenty-three-year-old widow, married a little more than two years and seven months pregnant with their first child.