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He had named it after his ex-wife, who had divorced him when, after two years of marriage, she realized that she couldn’t change him. She wanted him to leave the police department, to become a real-estate agent, to dress with more style, and to have his scar fixed.
The marriage collapsed when she bought him a pair of tasseled loafers. He wouldn’t wear them. She wouldn’t return them to the store. He wouldn’t allow them in his closet. She tried to put one of them down the garbage disposal. The Roto-Rooter bill was huge.
Now, as sharp-toothed Lucille peered down at him with one glaring gimlet eye, Pete Santo stood at his desk, watching as the Department of Motor Vehicles home page appeared on the computer screen. “If you can’t tell me what it’s about, who could you tell?”
Tim said, “Nobody. Not yet. Maybe in a day, two days, when things … clarify.”
“What things?”
“The unclarified things.”
“Oh. That’s clear now. When the unclarified things clarify, then you can tell me.”
“Maybe. Look, I know this might get your ass in a sling.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters,” Tim said.
“Don’t insult me. It doesn’t matter.” Pete sat at the computer. “If they bust me out of the department, I’ll be a real-estate agent.”
He entered his name, badge number, and access code, whereupon the Department of Motor Vehicles records surrendered to him as a nubile maiden to a lover.
Bashful Zoey, a black Lab, watched from behind an armchair, while Linda dropped to one knee and, with cooing sounds and declarations of adoration, tried to coax the dog into the open.
Pete typed the license number that Tim had given him, and the DMV database revealed that the plates had been issued for a white Chevrolet registered not to any law-enforcement agency but to one Richard Lee Kravet.
“You know him?” Pete asked.
Tim shook his head. “Never heard of him. I thought the car would turn out to be a plainwrap department sedan.”
Surprised, Pete said, “This guy you want to know about—he’s a cop? I’m scoping out a cop for you?”
“If he’s a cop, he’s a bad cop.”
“Look at me here, what I’m doing for you, using police power for a private inquiry. I’m a bad cop.”
“This guy, if he’s a cop, he’s seriously bad. At worst, Petey, by comparison, you’re a naughty cop.”
“Richard Lee Kravet. Don’t know him. If he has a shield, I don’t think it’s one of ours.”
Pete worked for the Newport Beach Police Department, but he lived in an unincorporated part of the county, nearer to Irvine than to Newport Beach, because even pre-divorce, he couldn’t afford a house in the city that he served.
“Can you get me this guy’s driver’s license?” Tim asked.
“Yeah, why not, but when I’m a real-estate agent, I’m going to wear whatever shoes I want.”
On her belly, Zoey had crawled halfway around the armchair. Her tail thumped the floor in response to Linda’s coaxing.
The one small lamp left most of the room dusted with shadows, and the alchemic light from the monitor gave Pete a tin man’s face, his smooth scar shining like a bad weld.
He was handsome enough that a half-inch-wide slash of pale tissue, curving from ear to chin, did not make him ugly. Plastic surgery would reduce or even eliminate his disfigurement, but he chose not to submit to the healing scalpel.
A scar is not always a flaw. Sometimes a scar may be redemption inscribed in the flesh, a memorial to something endured, to something lost.
The driver’s license appeared on the screen. The photo was of the killer with the Mona Lisa smile.
When the printer produced a copy, Pete handed it to Tim.
According to the license, Kravet was thirty-six years old. His street address was in Anaheim.
Having rolled onto her back and put all four paws in the air, Zoey purred like a cat as she received a gentle tummy rub.
Tim still had no evidence of a murder-for-hire plot. Richard Kravet would deny every detail of their meeting in the tavern.
“Now what?” Pete asked.
As she charmed the dog, Linda looked up at Tim. Her green eyes, though remaining wells of mystery, floated to him the clear desire to keep the nature of their dilemma strictly between them, at least for the time being.
He had known Pete for more than eleven years, this woman for less than two hours, yet he chose the discretion for which she wordlessly pleaded.
“Thanks, Pete. You didn’t need to climb out on this limb.”
“That’s where I’m most comfortable.”
This was true. Pete Santo had always been a risk-taker, though never reckless.
As Linda rose from the dog, Pete said to her, “You and Tim known each other long?”
“Not long,” she said.
“How’d you meet?”
“Over coffee.”
“Like at Starbucks?”
“No, not there,” she said.
“Paquette. That’s an unusual name.”
“Not in my family.”
“It’s lovely. P-a-c-k-e-t-t-e?”
She didn’t confirm the spelling.
“So you’re the strong silent type.”
She smiled. “And you’re always a detective.”
Shy Zoey stayed close to Linda all the way to the front door.
From various points in the night yard, a hidden choir of toads harmonized.
Linda rubbed the dog gently behind the ears, kissed it on the head, and walked across the lawn to the Explorer in the driveway.
“She doesn’t like me,” Pete said.
“She likes you. She just doesn’t like cops.”
“If you marry her, do I have to change jobs?”
“I’m not going to marry her.”
“I think she’s the kind, you don’t get a thing without a ring.”
“I don’t want a thing. There’s nothing between us.”
“There will be,” Pete predicted. “She’s got something.”
“Something what?”
“I don’t know. But it sure is something.”
Tim watched Linda get into the Explorer. As she pulled the door shut behind her, he said, “She makes good coffee.”
“I’ll bet she does.”
Although the secreted toads had continued singing when Linda had walked among them, they fell silent when Tim set foot on the grass.
“Class,” Pete said. “That’s part of the something.” And when Tim had taken two further steps, Pete added, “Sangfroid.”
Tim stopped, looked back at the detective. “Sang what?”
“Sangfroid. It’s French. Self-possession, poise, steadiness.”
“Since when do you know French?”
“This college professor, taught French literature, killed a girl with a chisel. Dismembered her with a stone-cutter.”
“Stone-cutter?”
“He was also a sculptor. He almost got away with it ’cause he had such sangfroid. But I nailed him.”
“I’m pretty sure Linda hasn’t dismembered anyone.”
“I’m just saying she’s self-possessed. But if she ever wants to dismember me, I’m okay with that.”
“Compadre, you disappoint me.”
Pete grinned. “I knew there was something between you.”
“There’s nothing,” Tim assured him, and went to the Explorer in a silence of toads.
Nine (#u65e7b131-c2e7-55e0-bb92-b6c31e1b1967)
As Tim reversed out of the driveway, Linda said, “He seems all right for a cop. He has a sweet pooch.”
“He’s also got a dead fish named for his ex-wife.”
“Well, maybe she was a cold fish.”
“He says he won’t mind if you want to dismember him.”
“What does that mean?”
Shifting into drive, Tim said, “It’s sand-dog humor.”
“Sand dog?”
Surprised that he had opened this door, he at once closed it. “Never mind.”
“What’s a sand dog?”
His cell phone rang, sparing him the need to respond to her. Thinking this might be Rooney with some additional news, Tim had it on the third ring. The screen didn’t reveal the caller’s ID.
“Hello?”
“Tim?”
“Yeah?”
“Is she there with you?”
Tim said nothing.
“Tell her she makes an excellent egg-custard pie.”
Conjured by the voice, into memory rose those impossibly dilated eyes, greedy for light.
“Her coffee isn’t bad, either,” said Richard Lee Kravet. “And I liked the mug with the parrot handle so much that I took it with me.”
This residential neighborhood had little traffic; at the moment, none. Tim came to a stop in the middle of the street, half a block from Pete Santo’s house.
The killer had gotten Tim’s name from someone other than Rooney. How he had obtained the unlisted cell-phone number was a mystery.
Although she couldn’t hear the killer, Linda clearly knew who had called.
