Finders Keepers (29 page)

He dries off and goes back into the office, dropping the towel and bloody shirt by the body. His jeans are also spattered, a problem that's easily solved by what he finds on a shelf in the closet: at least two dozen tee-shirts, neatly folded with tissue paper between them. He finds an XL that will cover his jeans halfway down his thighs, where the worst of the spotting is, and unfolds it. ANDREW HALLIDAY RARE EDITIONS is printed on the front, along with the shop's telephone number, website address, and an image of an open book. Morris thinks, He probably gives these away to big-money customers. Who take them, say thank you, and never wear them.

He starts to put the tee-shirt on, decides he really doesn't want
to be walking around wearing the location of his latest murder on his chest, and turns it inside-out. The lettering shows through a little, but not enough for anyone to read it, and the book could be any rectangular object.

His Dockers are a problem, though. The tops are splattered with blood and the soles are smeared with it. Morris studies his old pal's feet, nods judiciously, and returns to the closet. Andy's waist size may be almost twice Morris's, but their shoe sizes look approximately the same. He selects a pair of loafers and tries them on. They pinch a little, and may leave a blister or two, but blisters are a small price to pay for what he has learned, and the long-delayed revenge he has exacted.

Also, they're damned fine-looking shoes.

He adds his own footwear to the pile of gooey stuff on the rug, then examines his cap. Not so much as a single spot. Good luck there. He puts it on and circles the office, wiping the surfaces he knows he touched and the ones he might have touched.

He kneels by the body one last time and searches the pockets, aware that he's getting blood on his hands again and will have to wash them again. Oh well, so it goes.

That's Vonnegut, not Rothstein, he thinks, and laughs. Literary allusions always please him.

Andy's keys are in a front pocket, his wallet tucked against the buttock Morris didn't split with the hatchet. More good luck. Not much in the way of cash, less than thirty dollars, but a penny saved is a penny et cetera. Morris tucks the bills away along with the keys. Then he re-washes his hands and re-wipes the faucet handles.

Before leaving Andy's sanctum sanctorum, he regards the hatchet. The blade is smeared with gore and hair. The rubber handle clearly bears his palmprint. He should probably take it along in one of the Tuff Totes with his shirt and shoes, but some
­intuition—too deep for words but very powerful—tells him to leave it, at least for the time being.

Morris picks it up, wipes the blade and the handle to get rid of the fingerprints, then sets it gently down on the fancy desk. Like a warning. Or a calling card.

“Who says I'm not a wolf, Mr. McFarland?” he asks the empty office. “Who says?”

Then he leaves, using the blood-streaked towel to turn the knob.

6

In the shop again, Morris deposits the bloody stuff in one of the bags and zips it closed. Then he sits down to investigate Andy's laptop.

It's a Mac, much nicer than the one in the prison library but basically the same. Since it's still wide awake, there's no need to waste time hunting for a password. There are lots of business files on the screen, plus an app marked SECURITY in the bar at the bottom. He'll want to investigate that, and closely, but first he opens a file marked JAMES HAWKINS, and yes, here is the information he wants: Peter Saubers's address (which he knows), and also Peter Saubers's cell phone number, presumably gleaned from the voicemail his old pal mentioned. His father is Thomas. His mother is Linda. His sister is Tina. There's even a picture of young Mr. Saubers, aka James Hawkins, standing with a bunch of librarians from the Garner Street branch, a branch Morris knows well. Below this information—which may come in handy, who knows, who knows—is a John Rothstein bibliography, which Morris only glances at; he knows Rothstein's work by heart.

Except for the stuff young Mr. Saubers is sitting on, of course. The stuff he stole from its rightful owner.

There's a notepad by the computer. Morris jots down the boy's cell number and sticks it in his pocket. Next he opens the security app and clicks on CAMERAS. Six views appear. Two show Lacemaker Lane in all its consumer glory. Two look down on the shop's narrow interior. The fifth shows this very desk, with Morris sitting behind it in his new tee-shirt. The sixth shows Andy's inner office, and the body sprawled on the Turkish rug. In black-and-white, the splashes and splatters of blood look like ink.

Morris clicks on this image, and it fills the screen. Arrow buttons appear on the bottom. He clicks the double arrow for rewind, waits, then hits play. He watches, engrossed, as he murders his old pal all over again. Fascinating. Not a home movie he wants anyone to see, however, which means the laptop is coming with him.

He unplugs the various cords, including the one leading from a shiny box stamped VIGILANT SECURITY SYSTEMS. The cameras feed directly to the laptop's hard drive, and so there are no automatically made DVDs. That makes sense. A system like that would be a little too pricey for a small business like Andrew Halliday Rare Editions. But one of the cords he unplugged went to a disc-burner add-on, so his old pal could have made DVDs from stored security footage if he had desired.

Morris hunts methodically through the desk, looking for them. There are five drawers in all. He finds nothing of interest in the first four, but the kneehole is locked. Morris finds this suggestive. He sorts through Andy's keys, selects the smallest, unlocks the drawer, and strikes paydirt. He has no interest in the six or eight graphic photos of his old pal fellating a squat young man with a lot of tattoos, but there's also a gun. It's a prissy, overdecorated P238 SIG Sauer, red and black, with gold-inlaid flowers scrolling down the barrel. Morris drops the clip and sees it's full. There's
even one in the pipe. He puts the clip back in and lays the gun on the desk—something else to take along. He searches deep into the drawer and finds an unmarked white envelope at the very back, the flap tucked under rather than sealed. He opens it, expecting more dirty pix, and is delighted to find money instead—at least five hundred dollars. His luck is still running. He puts the envelope next to the SIG.

There's nothing else, and he's about decided that if there
are
DVDs, Andy's locked them in a safe somewhere. Yet Lady Luck is not quite done with Morris Bellamy. When he gets up, his shoulder bumps an overloaded shelf to the left of the desk. A bunch of old books go tumbling to the floor, and behind them is a slim stack of plastic DVD cases bound together with rubber bands.

“How do you do,” Morris says softly. “How
do
you do.”

He sits back down and goes through them rapidly, like a man shuffling cards. Andy has written a name on each in black Sharpie. Only the last one means anything to him, and it's the one he was looking for. “HAWKINS” is printed on the shiny surface.

He's had plenty of breaks this afternoon (possibly to make up for the horrible disappointment he suffered last night), but there's no point in pushing things. Morris takes the computer, the gun, the envelope with the money in it, and the HAWKINS disc to the front of the store. He tucks them into one of his totes, ignoring the people passing back and forth in front. If you look like you belong in a place, most people think you do. He exits with a confident step, and locks the door behind him. The CLOSED sign swings briefly, then settles. Morris pulls down the long visor of his Groundhogs cap and walks away.

He makes one more stop before returning to Bugshit Manor, at a computer café called Bytes 'N Bites. For twelve of Andy Halliday's dollars, he gets an overpriced cup of shitty coffee and twenty
minutes in a carrel, at a computer equipped with a DVD player. It takes less than five minutes to be sure of what he has: his old pal talking to a boy who appears to be wearing fake glasses and his father's moustache. In the first clip, Saubers has a book that has to be
Dispatches from Olympus
and an envelope containing several sheets of paper that have to be the photocopies Andy mentioned. In the second clip, Saubers and Andy appear to be arguing. There's no sound in either of these black-and-white mini-movies, which is fine. The boy could be saying anything. In the second one, the argument one, he could even be saying The next time I come, I'll bring my hatchet, you fat fuck.

As he leaves Bytes 'N Bites, Morris is smiling. The man behind the counter smiles back and says, “I guess you had a good time.”

“Yes,” says the man who has spent well over two-thirds of his life in prison. “But your coffee sucks, nerdboy. I ought to pour it on your fucking head.”

The smile dies on the counterman's face. A lot of the people who come in here are crackpots. With those folks, it's best to just keep quiet and hope they never come back.

7

Hodges told Holly he intended to spend at least part of his weekend crashed out in his La-Z-Boy watching baseball, and on Sunday afternoon he does watch the first three innings of the Indians game, but then a certain restlessness takes hold and he decides to pay a call. Not on an old pal, but certainly an old acquaintance. After each of these visits he tells himself Okay, that's the end, this is pointless. He means it, too. Then—four weeks later, or eight, maybe ten—he'll take the ride again. Something nags him into it.
Besides, the Indians are already down to the Rangers by five, and it's only the third inning.

He zaps off the television, pulls on an old Police Athletic League tee-shirt (in his heavyset days he used to steer clear of tees, but now he likes the way they fall straight, with hardly any belly-swell above the waist of his pants), and locks up the house. Traffic is light on Sunday, and twenty minutes later he's sliding his Prius into a slot on the third deck of the visitors' parking garage, adjacent to the vast and ever metastasizing concrete sprawl of John M. Kiner Hospital. As he walks to the parking garage elevator, he sends up a prayer as he almost always does, thanking God that he's here as a visitor rather than as a paying customer. All too aware, even as he says this very proper thank-you, that most people
become
customers sooner or later, here or at one of the city's four other fine and not-so-fine sickbays. No one rides for free, and in the end, even the most seaworthy ship goes down, blub-blub-blub. The only way to balance that off, in Hodges's opinion, is to make the most of every day afloat.

But if that's true, what is he doing here?

The thought recalls to mind a snatch of poetry, heard or read long ago and lodged in his brain by virtue of its simple rhyme:
Oh do not ask what is it, let us go and make our visit
.

8

It's easy to get lost in any big city hospital, but Hodges has made this trip plenty of times, and these days he's more apt to give directions than ask for them. The garage elevator takes him down to a covered walkway; the walkway takes him to a lobby the size of a train terminal; the Corridor A elevator takes him up
to the third floor; a skyway takes him across Kiner Boulevard to his final destination, where the walls are painted a soothing pink and the atmosphere is hushed. The sign above the reception desk reads:

WELCOME TO LAKES REGION TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY CLINIC

NO CELL PHONES OR TELECOMMUNICATIONS DEVICES ALLOWED

HELP US MAINTAIN A QUIET ENVIRONMENT

WE APPRECIATE YOUR COOPERATION

Hodges goes to the desk, where his visitor's badge is already waiting. The head nurse knows him; after four years, they are almost old friends.

“How's your family, Becky?”

She says they are fine.

“Son's broken arm mending?”

She says it is. The cast is off and he'll be out of the sling in another week, two at most.

“That's fine. Is my boy in his room or physical therapy?”

She says he's in his room.

Hodges ambles down the hall toward Room 217, where a certain patient resides at state expense. Before Hodges gets there, he meets the orderly the nurses call Library Al. He's in his sixties, and—as usual—he's pushing a trolley cart packed with paperbacks and newspapers. These days there's a new addition to his little arsenal of diversions: a small plastic tub filled with handheld e-readers.

“Hey, Al,” Hodges says. “How you doin?”

Although Al is ordinarily garrulous, this afternoon he seems
half asleep, and there are purple circles under his eyes. Somebody had a hard night, Hodges thinks with amusement. He knows the symptoms, having had a few hard ones himself. He thinks of snapping his fingers in front of Al's eyes, sort of like a stage hypnotist, then decides that would be mean. Let the man suffer the tail end of his hangover in peace. If it's this bad in the afternoon, Hodges hates to think of what it must have been like this morning.

But Al comes to and smiles before Hodges can pass by. “Hey there, Detective! Haven't seen your face in the place for awhile.”

“It's just plain old mister these days, Al. You feeling okay?”

“Sure. Just thinking about . . .” Al shrugs. “Jeez, I dunno what I was thinking about.” He laughs. “Getting old is no job for sissies.”

“You're not old,” Hodges says. “Somebody forgot to give you the news—sixty's the new forty.”

Al snorts. “Ain't
that
a crock of you-know-what.”

Hodges couldn't agree more. He points to the cart. “Don't suppose my boy ever asks for a book, does he?”

Al gives another snort. “Hartsfield? He couldn't read a Berenstain Bears book these days.” He taps his forehead gravely. “Nothing left but oatmeal up top. Although sometimes he does hold out his hand for one of these.” He picks up a Zappit e-reader. It's a bright girly pink. “These jobbies have games on em.”