It was 7:30 p.m. when Noah turned into the little Monolith Plaza shopping center near his home and went into Frank's Liquors and Fine Wines and bought two large bottles of white Folonairi Soave. He went next door to Randall's and got a two chicken breasts, a jar of olives, and a crock of brown mustard. He stood in line oblivious to everyone else around him and thought about Ottie Needham sitting in her dim, smoke-filled living room drinking beer and grieving over what she'd lost and what she had left. They must've seemed like equally empty considerations. Ottie Needham had a great deal to get used to, and it didn't look as if she had a very promising start.455Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU6DzPPgknm
Outside, Noah carried his sack of groceries across the parking lot in the copper glow of the streetlamps that had just come on and were creating a metallic haze in the dusk. He put the wine and groceries in the car and pulled out on Paringa, drove through the intersection and turned into a Stop 'N Go convenience store to get gas from one of the pumps out front. While he held the nozzle in the tank, he continued to think about Ottie Needham. She'd been a surprise all the way around. Obviously, she'd been hit hard by Dowey's death, and it seemed to Noah that she had been closer to her former sister-in-law and friend than she had been to her brother. Of course, considering what Noah had learned so far about Stanley Needham, that was totally understandable. The kind of man who would readily blackmail his sister and his former wife was not exactly a man of great heart. Noah also wondered what it was that Needham had on the two women that they would continue to fork over a significant amount of their income to keep it quiet.
The automatic cutoff snapped in the gas pump handle, startling him and splashing him with gasoline. He swore, wiped his hands on a pink paper towel he got from a dispenser beside the pump, and walked inside the store to pay.
It was only a few minutes to his house, and a blue evening light was settling in and darkening the trees that lined the street. He parked in the curved drive at the front door, got out, unlocked the door of the house, and shoved it open. Then he returned to the car and wrestled the grocery sacks into his arms and closed the car door with his hip. He went inside the house, closed the house door with his hip also, then walked into the living room, where he turned down the air-conditioning thermostat, and then continued through the dining room and into the kitchen.
Within thirty minutes he had taken a cold shower and changed into a cotton shirt and blue jeans and was in the kitchen pouring a glass of Folonari, his damp hair (what there was of it) cool as if feathered over the top of his head. He had intended to grill the chicken breasts, but now he thought it was too late and he was too tired to bother. Standing barefoot at the cabinet, he mixed a green salad with lettuce, yellow and red bell peppers, cucumbers, rings of red onions, and olives. He wondered if Ottie Needham had lied to him about the blackmail. Maybe, despite, her vituperation against her brother, she and Lauralee Dowey were really supporting him, helping him stay a fugitive. It didn't seem to make sense, but then Noah had learned a long time ago that "sense" was a relative term. It didn't look the same to everybody, and even the most twisted mind, the mind guilty of the most unbelievable horrors----he thought of Dowey's lidless state----did things because they made "sense" within the context of its reasoning.
When Noah stopped and looked down at what he was doing, a pile of sliced olives, enough for four salads, was heaped in the bed of lettuce in his plate. Wearily, he picked out the surplus and put it in a small glass bowl in the refrigerator. Cutting a thick slice of bakery bread, he buttered it, put it on his plate with the salad, and took it all into the living room and set it down on the floor in front of the TV. He didn't want to think about anything to do with Dowey or San Felipe while he ate. He grabbed the remote control and flipped it on. Though he refused to watch sitcoms, he would always watch movies, practically any movie, and be grateful for the length of time it would take him to finish the salad.
He found an old Truffaut film and picked up his glass of wine and took a sip. He put his plate in his lap and leaned back against the front of the sofa, his legs straight out and crossed at the ankle as he listened to the French and read the poorly contrasting captions at the bottom of the screen.
The telephone rang seven minutes later. He automatically punched up the time on the television, punched off the sound, and leaned across and dragged the telephone off the coffee table.
"Hello."
"This is Matt Ashton, FBI, in Quantico. Am I speaking to Detective Noah Bain?"
"This is he." He swallowed the bit of salad and tried to get out from under the plate and away from the glass without dumping everything on the floor.
"Sorry about calling you at home," Ashton said. "But you said in your application that this would be acceptable."
"Sure, it's fine. I appreciate your doing it."
"Listen," Ashton's voice was mellow and casually precise, like a news commentator or public speaker in private conversation. "You've got two interesting cases here. Anything new from the labs during the day?"
"Not really, but our primary suspect...."
"Hold on. Excuse me," Ashton interrupted her. "But I don't want to know anything about your suspects. It could prejudice me as to what I see in the crime scene. It's best if I read it 'blind.' All I want to know is what he did, but I want to know as much as I can about that. Nothing new forensically, then?"
"No. There hasn't been time."
"Okay, fine. I want you to keep me posted, too, regarding victimology. I got a good picture of both victims from your report, but it would help to know anything new immediately." He heard him shuffling papers. "Focus on her circle of friends---and any men who are known to several of her friends." He paused, apparently making noises. "Okay, if anything else comes up, anything you can add to it, call me and fax it up here. I've called only to tell you that I'm sending some material about the profiling process. Articles, papers. I've Federal Expressed them so you should have them in the morning before 10:00. If you read them it'll help us communicate.
"I'm going to concentrate on this tonight and tomorrow and then sometime tomorrow I'll call you with a preliminary reading. This will only be preliminary. I want to stress that. I'll make a more complete report later, but I think this is something that'll need immediate attention."
Noah couldn't argue with that.
"You think this guy's on a biweekly schedule?"
"Well, I just guessed....both killings occurred on Thursdays, two weeks apart. I'm going to be a little nervous on the eighth."
"I'm not so sure you'll have to wait that long. Listen, why don't you...."
"Wait a minute," Noah interrupted him. "Why do you say that?"
"I think it would be best if you read the material I am sending you first. I'll call you back tomorrow....tomorrow night, probably, and we'll talk about it."455Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7k0dFU2Uxz
"Appreciate it," Noah said, a little pissed off at the aborted reference.455Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPU0Iok0q2m
"No problem. Get a good night's sleep."455Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡz9CzMJ9RnO
He was off the phone, and Noah was left looking at a silent TV screen. A man and a woman were walking away from the camera down the middle of a wet cobblestone street strewn with damp autumn leaves.455Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV8HUjL1oQj
