THEY LED TRIXIE AWAY in handcuffs, but before they slapped them on her, they allowed her to change from her robe into some clothes. While she was getting dressed, I said to Flint, “I told you about Gary Merker. You told me about the stun gun marks on Martin Benson. Merker was there, he left Trixie a note. I can get it for you.”
Flint looked tired. He was a long way from home, and it was the middle of the night. But he still looked better than the rest of us.
“Mr. Walker, a man was murdered in her house. She fled the scene. She left you handcuffed so you wouldn’t be able to stop her from getting away. That’s what we in the police business call suspicious. Maybe even incriminating. Tell your friend to get herself a good lawyer.” He gave a tip of his hat. “And thanks again, for leading the way.”
“You called the car manufacturer,” I said. “You knew where I was all the time. I was being tracked by satellite.”
Flint smiled, but not as devilishly as he might have been entitled to. “So sorry to have disrupted your evening.”
Upstairs, Trixie was saying goodbye to her sister, to Don. And especially Katie. As Trixie came down the stairs, one officer walking in front of her and one behind, Katie stood, bleary-eyed, on the landing, clutching a yellow blanket and watching, baffled and sad. “When are you coming back?” she asked.
Trixie glanced at her and said, “I might be gone a while, sweetheart, but your other mom will take good care of you.” At the bottom of the stairs, they cuffed her.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Trixie. “It was your car. They used the GPS thing to find it. I led them right to you.”
She smiled tiredly. “It’s okay, Zack. I’m going to make it clear to them that you came up here to get me to turn myself in. Don’t worry.”
“You need a lawyer.”
“I told you about Niles. He handles all my difficulties.” She shook her head. “This one’s right up there.”
“We have to go, ma’am,” said one of the cops.
“See ya, Zack,” said Trixie, and Candace, and Miranda. “Maybe now you’ll catch a break. How much trouble can you get into with me locked up, right?”
I was on the road by six in the morning.
Trixie was right, there was something wrong with the Virtue. I tried to start it, but the engine, or the batteries, or whatever it was that made the damn thing go, failed to make a sound. So I hung on to Trixie’s car. If Detective Flint wanted to put the space shuttle and all the other resources of NASA into keeping track of my movements, he was welcome to. I no longer gave a rat’s ass.
I plugged my cell phone into the cigarette lighter. Long before I was home, it would be recharged, plus I’d be able to make or receive calls during my journey.
I called no one, and no one called me.
There was a lot of time to think on that drive home. And as I reached the city of Canborough and took the bypass, I felt a twinge of guilt. I probably should have driven into the downtown, parked outside police headquarters, and gone in to see Michael Cherry. I had some vague recollection of a promise I’d made to him two days earlier, that if I happened upon any information that would help him with the Kickstart massacre investigation, I’d pass it along.
It was fair to say I had a few new details he might want to have. I’d have a source for life in the Canborough Police Department, helping him crack a triple murder.
Moral dilemma time.
Maybe, for most people, this would be a no-brainer. Trixie had admitted to me that she’d shot and killed three men. Three men who’d raped her before, and were about to do it again. If her claim of self-defense was legit, she could tell it to a judge and jury. He might well agree. So might the jury.
But I could see the prosecutor-and in my mind’s eye he looked a lot like Sam Waterston-approaching the witness box. He was saying, “So tell us, Ms… whatever your name is at the moment. Is it Chicoine? Is it Snelling? So these men, they allegedly attacked you, allegedly sexually assaulted you, on this earlier occasion, you claim, and, let me just check my notes here, and then you went back to work with them? Just a couple of days later? And then, when they allegedly did this again, that’s when you decided to kill them? I’m just having a little trouble with this. Isn’t it more likely that the reason you killed them was because you were ripping them off for half a million dollars? And that this first incident, that this never even happened? That it’s just a very good story to justify what you did? I mean, do we have anything but your word?”
I composed Sam’s entire summation in my head as I drove.
It seemed unlikely that Gary Merker, the only one left alive who’d participated in the rape, would be called to support her testimony.
There was a good chance, I thought, that the evidence would exonerate Trixie in the death of Martin Benson. But if the cops ever knew what she’d told me about that night at the Kickstart, well, I didn’t like her chances of beating that one. Trixie was classic “blame the victim” material, by virtue of the choices she’d made, her line of work, her use of multiple aliases.
They’d tear her apart.
But was it up to me to keep Trixie from having to answer for the things she’d done? Or to at least explain them? Was I responsible for Trixie’s future? And what of my obligations to the Metropolitan? To my profession? If I had any intention of actually writing about this-assuming Magnuson put an end to my suspension, and that was quite an assumption-how could I tell only part of the story? If I couldn’t do the job properly, I had no business doing it at all.
I needed to talk to someone about this.
And the only person I could think of was Sarah.
I reached for my cell, started dialing our home number, glanced at the dashboard clock and realized Sarah would be at work by now. So I started punching the numbers for the main switchboard, since I had no idea what Sarah’s extension was in the Home! section. But when I got to the second-to-last digit, I stopped, and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.
Maybe later.
There was no one home when I got there midmorning. Paul was at school, Angie at college. It looked as though everyone had fled in a hurry, dirty dishes still on the kitchen counter, the cream not put away. I opened the fridge, poured myself a large glass of orange juice, downed it, and trudged upstairs.
I dumped my travel bag on the bed, walked into the bathroom, turned on the radio that sat next to the sink.
I looked in the mirror. I hadn’t yet shaved, my eyes were bleary, my hair a tousled mess. I reached into the shower, turned on the taps, started unbuttoning my shirt.
It was the top of the hour and the news came on. The morning rush-hour traffic had thinned; it would be overcast with the odd sunny break. And then:
“Police have made an arrest in the grisly murder of an Oakwood newspaper columnist who was found dead, his throat slit, in the basement of a dominatrix earlier this week. Charged is Miranda Chicoine, who ran a sex business from her suburban home in Oakwood. Police arrested Chicoine outside of the village of Kelton, at the home of her sister and brother-in-law, Claire and Don Bennet, early this morning. They had been led to her location by Zack Walker, a reporter for the Metropolitan, who had been trying to track down the woman, hoping to talk her into turning herself in, according to police. In Washington-”
I turned off the radio.
I was undoing my pants when the phone rang. I walked back to the bedroom, picked it up.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well, I’ll be damned, you’re there.” It was Dick Colby, the paper’s odiferous crime reporter. “You’re quite the man.”
“What can I do for you, Dick?”
“This story about you and the hooker just broke, police issued a statement, it’s already on the radio-”
“I know.”
“And you didn’t call us first? Fuck, Zack, what’s with you?”
“I just got back, Dick. It’s been kind of a long night.” I glanced into the bathroom, saw steam escaping from around the shower curtain.
“Okay, look, the radio, other papers, all they can get is the basics. We need the good shit, the color, from you. So how did you track her down, this Chicoine chick? That her real name? Because she was going by Snelling, right? Let me check these spellings with you.”
“Dick, I got nothing to say. I’m gonna have a shower. The water’s running.”
“Zack, hello? This is your paper calling. I know you probably think you should write this one up yourself, but you ask me, you’re too close, you’ve got a conflict, just like with those other big pieces you did, but fuck, that was okay with them then, but this time, I don’t think so. So you’re going to have to tell me what you’ve got, I’ll write it up, but you’ll look good just the same.”
I thought I caught a whiff of him over the phone.
“No comment, Dick,” I said. “I’m on suspension.” I hung up.
I was almost back to the bathroom when the phone rang again. I picked up. “Dick, I mean it, I have nothing to say.”
“Zack.” It was Sarah.
“Oh,” I said. “I just finished hanging up on Cheese Dick. I thought it was him.”
“It’s all over the newsroom, the thing about you and Trixie,” Sarah said. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Tired.”
“What happened?”
“I found Trixie. Police were following me. They raided the place in the night, took her away.”
“She did it? She killed that man? The reporter?”
“No,” I said, thinking, not that man. “The cops’ll probably figure that out eventually.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Trixie said she was going to tell them that I went up there to tell her to turn herself in, and that’s the spin I just heard on the radio. I guess we’ll see.”
“Do you want me to come home?”
I shook my head, then realized that Sarah couldn’t see me. “It’s okay. I’m going to shower, maybe go to bed. How’s everything here? Kids okay?”
“They’re fine. Worried about you.”
“And you? How are you doing?” What I really was asking was how we were doing.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m…I can’t stand it here. Working with Frieda. Every day, it’s like we’re planning a church supper instead of a newspaper. I can’t swear here. It’s driving me fucking crazy.”
I let out a small laugh. I couldn’t recall when I’d last done that.
“Is it over, Zack?” Sarah asked.
I wasn’t sure what she was referring to. Us? Was it over between us? “What do you, I mean, I don’t, what?” I said. The steam was still pouring out of the shower.
“All this trouble,” Sarah said. “Is it over? Can you promise me that it’s over?”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes,” I said. “It’s over. It’s going to be up to Trixie now to figure out what she’s going to do. I…I thought I was doing the right thing, figuring out where she’d gone, finding out what really happened, and maybe that was stupid. But now that she’s been arrested, it forces things to a head. She’s got a lawyer, she’ll have to work things out. I guess,” and I paused a moment, and then said, “I’m done with it.”
Quietly, Sarah said, “You have to be.”
“I know.” I heard her say “Fuck” under her breath. “It’s Colby, coming this way. I’m surprised he could find his way to the Home! section.”
“He probably caught the scent of cookies.”
“He looks pissed.”
Then, in the background, I could hear Colby asking, “That him? I want to talk to him. He can’t jerk me around this way.”
“I’ll see you tonight, okay?” Sarah said.
“Yeah, that’ll be nice,” I said.
“Let me talk to him,” Colby demanded.
“Bye,” Sarah said, and hung up.
For the first time in a very long time, I felt good, as though a weight had been lifted off my chest. I took a couple of deep breaths, then thought about how to welcome Sarah home. I’d pick up some steaks, buy a bottle of wine, give the kids some cash to go out for pizza and a movie and-
The phone rang.
The shower still running, waiting for me. I wondered whether there was any hot water left by now.
I grabbed the receiver and said, “Hang on.” I ran into the bathroom, reached past the curtain, and turned off the taps. The mirror was completely fogged. I ran back to the phone, put the receiver to my ear, and said, “Sorry, hi.”
“Mr. Walker?”
“Yeah, I just had to turn off the shower.”
“Where’ve you been? There was something on the radio. I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“Excuse me?” The voice seemed familiar, but at the moment, I couldn’t place it.
“I’ve been calling you for a couple of days now. Haven’t you listened to it? Did you get it?”
“Look, I’m sorry,” I said, “but who is this?”
“Brian Sandler. Oh my God, are you kidding me? Haven’t you listened to the file?”
Sandler. From the health department. The one who wanted to roll over on the Gorkins and the ones he worked with who were on the take.
“Mr. Sandler, of course, I’m sorry. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been through in the last couple of days.”
“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t believe what I’ve been through the last couple of days, either.”
“Okay, look, just start from the beginning. What’s this about a file? What are you talking about?”
“Is your phone secure?”
“What? What are you talking about? Of course my phone’s secure.” But then again, I thought, it might not be. Flint might have had the line tapped, thinking Trixie might call me, tell me where she was.
Fuck it. “It’s fine,” I told Sandler. “What is it?”
“I e-mailed you a file. A recording, of a conversation.”
“What conversation?”
“Me and my boss. Ellinger, Frank Ellinger. I got this digital recorder, left it on in my jacket pocket, went in and saw him, got him to say stuff. I’ve got him admitting to the payoffs from the Gorkin lady and others, letting shithole restaurants stay open even when they don’t meet minimum standards, that kind of thing. It’s all there. Listen to it. You’ll see. You just have to make it clear that even though I make it sound like I’m going along with it, it’s me trapping him, you understand? You have to make that clear when you do your story.”
“Hold on, Sandler. I’ll check it out. I’m sure it’s good stuff. Let me have a listen and we’ll go from there.”
“Let’s meet again, at Bayside Park. We can meet there at nine tomorrow morning. You listen to it, you come and see me, we’ll get these fuckers.”
“Okay, okay, that sounds fine. Let me get some numbers from you.” I opened up the bedside table drawer, found a pen and a piece of paper. “Where can I reach you?”
Sandler gave me his cell, work, and home phone numbers. “Just listen to it, okay? It’s legit. You need to get these guys, and these crazy Gorkin women. I can’t live with this shit anymore, you know?”
“I hear ya.”
“Ellinger, I think he was suspicious at the end, you know? Like he thought I was up to something, so you gotta move on this fast. He might talk to Mrs. Gorkin or something, you never know.”
“Okay, okay. Just calm down. I’ll listen to the file, meet you in the morning.”
“Just listen,” Sandler said, and hung up.
I sat on the edge of the bed a moment, then went into the bathroom and turned the shower taps back on.
Just as I figured. No more hot water.
But there was plenty more waiting for me.