WIDOW (12 page)

“You squirrely mutt. Come on, then, go out and dig some holes so I can make my coffee in peace.”

Pavlov ran to the back door, then sat on his haunches as he had been taught, waiting. Mitchell opened the door and the dog vanished out the crack like escaping steam. Holding open the door on the rising sun, Mitchell grinned watching the dog run in fast circles before pulling up short, turf flying, and scratching with his back paws like a bull. He lifted a leg over a dying rose bush and pissed. All the while he smiled at Mitchell as if to say, when I tell you I have to go out, I have to go OUT. Whatta you think, I'm kiddin'?

The phone screamed, causing Mitchell to flinch. He left the door partially open so the dog could come in when he wanted, and warily lifted the receiver off the wall hook. “Yeah?”

“Double trouble. Murder-suicide. Need you here, chop chop.”

Mitchell's lieutenant spoke in code language. For some reason it always required a like response. You couldn't hold a decent English conversation with the guy. He wouldn't know a complete sentence if it slugged him in the back. “Just happen?”

“Hour ago. Looks like murder-suicide. Could be something else. A hit. Contract. Ain't kosher, maybe.”

“I'm on my way. Let me feed my dog.” And make my coffee.

He ran water into the dented aluminum percolator, dumped lots of Folger's grounds into the leaning basket, and switched the gas burner on high. On the counter was a bag of powdered-sugar donuts. He ate half a dozen while waiting for the coffee to perk. He glanced out the window over the sink at Pavlov digging holes to China. The back yard looked like an archeological dig. But Pavlov loved it so much. You couldn't kill the few delights an animal discovered.

Gulping the coffee—so hot it scorched his vocal cords—Mitchell carried a cup with him as he dressed in the bedroom. Pavlov had let himself in again so that now he trailed behind every step Mitchell made. He was a pest and ingratiating as hell, licking a hand here, butting a leg there, but he was the best boxer Mitchell thought he'd ever owned. And one helluva watchdog, too. The house had never been burglarized. That said a lot for a house so exposed, empty overgrown lots on each side, crack dealers down on the corner.

In the kitchen again, fully dressed except for his shoes, Mitchell shut and locked the wide-open back door, dumped a couple of coffee cans of dog food into Pavlov's tray, changed his water, and refilled his own cup with coffee from the stove. In the living room he slipped on soft leather Italian loafers, his one outrageous big-ticket vanity, and made for the door.

Pavlov sat in the middle of the room and threw back his thickly muscled neck to let out a howl.

“Hey, you think I don't miss you, too?” Mitchell rushed over to rub the dog's neck once more before breaking from the house, coffee slopping over his hand and burning his knuckles on the way to his car.

“God, I love that dog,” he said, shaking his head in astonishment.

Pavlov came from a litter of twelve, and he was the runt. Long-legged, black mask, not much white (which made him far less than show quality, not that Mitchell cared), he had done that flipping in the air trick one time, just two months old then, and stole Mitchell's heart.

“He's kind of skinny,” he said to the professional dog breeder. “And look at those legs. He looks like a race horse instead of a dog.”

“Well, he'll fatten up. And grow into the legs. I can let you have him for four hundred since he's the last one to go. He's smart. He learned that jump trick on his own.”

The gangly puppy grinned and butted Mitchell's leg and Mitchell pulled out his checkbook. How often could you find a puppy with a smile? And who was going to buy him, skinny legs and all, if Mitchell didn't?

Life in the house was never the same again. Although Mitchell had owned boxers before, none of them tore up the place like Pavlov. Then again, the dog made a good excuse for the sloppy rooms when company came calling—what little company Mitchell allowed. He could always say my dog did this. He's a scoundrel.

Which was the God's honest truth. Pavlov had a thing about pillows. He mangled them when left alone, dragging them through rooms and tossing them into the air until they shredded. He pawed his tray until the dog food splattered all over the kitchen floor. He slopped water everywhere and often drank from the toilet when running low. He hated the mailman so that each day he heard the mailbox slot clanging on the porch, he tried to tear down the front door. There were deep scars in the wood where he'd tried to rake and gnaw his way through. If he ever made it the mailman was dead meat.

What with buying new pillows all the time, cleaning up behind Pavlov, and having to replace the front door, Mitchell figured having this dog had cost him plenty of money and aggravation, but all Pavlov had to do was twitch his lean muscular body in a flying pirouette and all was forgiven. Mitchell knew he'd grieve forever when this dog died one day. It had occurred to him that God made dogs to teach people how to love and let go. Dogs never lived as long as man; they came, captured your love, and one day when you least expected catastrophe, they lay down and died, breaking your fucking heart.

Mitchell hurried into the bullpen, slipped past two detectives stuffing themselves with tacos that were going to rot their guts this early in the morning, and confronted Lieutenant Tom Epstein on his way to the john. Epstein reached into a stained jacket pocket and handed over an address written on a yellow Post-it note. “Here,” he said, still walking so that Mitchell had to follow. “Cleanup's half through. Hurry so they can finish. I've already sent Donaldson over.”

Donaldson. Mitchell wished Epstein had paired him on this new case with one of the other detectives. Donaldson had an attitude. He thought his shit didn't stink. “Why contract?” Mitchell asked, trying to get a handle on this thing so he wouldn't be walking into the situation blind.

“Looks like murder-suicide. Wife, husband. Hubby, though, he's holding the pistol.”

“Yeah?”

“In the wrong hand.”

“Yeah?” Now it was making sense.

Epstein paused with one palm on the men's room door. “Sister showed up. Got hysterical. Said hubby was right-handed.”

“The gun's in his left,” Mitchell supplied, way ahead of the story.

“See you. I got gas.” Epstein opened the door and disappeared.

On the way out one of the taco-eating detectives offered an extra one to Mitchell, holding it like a cracker smeared with caviar. “Want soma this?”

“You think I care to die? Not on Wednesday.” Mitchell moved on past, the scent of fried meat, taco seasoning, and hot sauce in his nostrils. Then what he'd said hit him. Wednesday. Christ, he was having lunch downtown with Patty. He'd almost forgotten. How was he going to make it if he got hung up with a murder-suicide?

He'd have to try. He'd stood Patty up once too often lately and she was complaining loud enough to make his balls crawl up his legs.

By twelve-fifteen he had wrapped the scene, had them bag the male victim's hands to check for residue, taken all his notes, and sighed at the work ahead of him. It definitely looked like a set-up. The sister insisted her brother wouldn't do this—he loved his wife, he loved life. Didn't he pull down a hundred thousand a year selling Houston real estate? And the way he held that gun, he didn't do it, she kept telling him. He wasn't a lefty. Didn't she know her own flesh and blood?

He figured she did. The murder scene stunk. It was way too perfect. The bullet entrance angles were correct. But the wife was on the sofa, slumped to the right, and there was no sign of a struggle. Give me a wife, Mitchell thought, who sees Hubby Boy coming for her with a gun, and tell me she's going to sit still for it. She'd be off that sofa and fighting for her life, not content to let it happen. A magazine she had been leafing through had not even fallen to the floor! Then hubby went to the easy chair facing the TV and put the gun to his left forehead. And him a righty.

Nope. Someone had it in for Mr. Real Estate, that was obvious. He was just too clean with it, though. Made it look too packaged. And he hadn't done his homework if he messed up on hubby's gun hand. Lab results would show if the victim had even pulled the trigger.

Now there might be months of intense investigation before Mitchell ferreted out Mr. Real Estate's enemy, but he'd do it. There were a lot of cases that were so cold when he got to them, he never dredged up the facts. But this one was going to make him happy. It was going to give Epstein cause for applause. He just had to find the motive—women, money, or sour business deals—and he'd find the person who had hired the contract killer.

He checked his watch and made for the door. “Wrap it up,” he told Donaldson. “I have an appointment.” Donaldson lifted one side of his upper lip in resentment. The crime scene men gathered their baggies and equipment.

Mitchell made it to lunch with Patty only half an hour late, but she was there, drumming her nails on the table top, drinking white wine, looking like a pissed-off dream.

“I'm sorry . . .” he began, unbuttoning his coat, pulling out the chair.

“You've already made me late for a meeting.”

“I imagine. I said I was sorry. Murder-suicide.”

“What?”

He had to start again. He was still talking shorthand like Epstein. “I was out all morning on a murder-suicide case. Except it isn't. Murder-suicide, I mean. It's plain shoot-the-poor-bastards-in-the-head murder.”

Patty's upper lip stiffened. He knew what that meant. She didn't like to hear about his cases. Crime insulted her. She said the city was turning into the Bangladesh of Villainy. That's how she talked. Her job with the housing authority was “the Cape Canaveral of City Politics.” His job was “the Marketplace of Lost Souls.”

Just a quirk she had. If she wasn't so pretty, he'd tell her that silly, pompous, creative mouth of hers should be used for the “Sucking of Big Dicks.” But she was, so he didn't.

Mitchell ordered what Patty was having. It turned out to be cold salmon with cream sauce and he hated it. He should have taken the taco at the station. While he poked the flaky fish apart with a fork, she told him how her mother thought it was time to see a printer for the invitation cards. Mitchell hadn't been listening that closely so he asked, “For what? You throwing a party?”

She gave him a squinty look. “For the wedding. Or had you forgotten all about that?”

He shrugged and, to keep from replying, took a big bite of the fish. It sat in his mouth like cold raw hamburger. Why the hell didn't they warm this fish up, for Pete’s sake?

“Mitchell, I don't know what's wrong with you lately. It's not like I asked you to marry me. Is it? My memory tells me you did the asking. If we're going to do it, it has to be done right. And to do it right, we have to pick out invitations, hire a photographer, make up a guest list, decide on a tux . . .

He nearly choked. He swallowed noisily and groped for the wineglass. God, what were people doing eating cold creamy fish? The world had collectively lost its mind. And if she thought she was going to get him in a tux . . .

“Well? You want to back out?”

She was tapping her nails again. And that pretty squint wasn't all that pretty now.

“Uh . I never said . . . you know, about a tux . . . they . . . uh . . . I don't really . . .”

“Forget all about it.” She stood, folding the napkin from her lap into a rectangle with sharp edges. “Just forget I ever said anything. I knew this was coming. I've known it for months, Mitchell. You never wanted to get married. Cops hate marriage. You even admitted it yourself. Your last marriage didn't last two years. I wasn't going through with it anyway, how do you like that?”

She was into it now, boy, was she into it. Her color was high and her shoulders were back. Her voice went up another register and pretty soon he'd have wine in his face. He stood with her, reached for her arm, hoping to soothe the beast he'd unleashed.

She was right, of course, he didn't want to get married. It had been a mistake to ask her. He must have gone round-the-bend la-la romantic, and she was terrific in bed, but there was no way he could live with a squinty, nail-tapping woman who preferred cold fish for lunch. And there was no way in this life he was ever going to don a tux and pick out invitations just to please another mother-in-law. Fuck that dull American-made-dream shit.

“Patty, it's not like that.” He came in close, hoping to head off the big scene in the restaurant, the one that always got out of hand and wound up incredibly messy. Oddly, he couldn't get the dead couple out of his mind, that woman slumped over sideways on the sofa, a fine stream of blackish blood curling down over her brow like a trail of hair dye. Had she insisted on invitations and a tuxedo? Did she ever want children? Had she loved her pudgy husband with his salesman gift of gab? That was marriage, wasn't it? If you didn't die of murder, you could probably find a way to die of boredom.

“Let me go!” Patty tore his hand from her arm and turned her back on him. He watched her high heels click across the fashionably tiled floor. He loved how she swung her ass when she was angry.

That bolted him from the spot where he'd been glued. He braced her in the lobby, turning her to face him. She was too good for him, that was the problem. He didn't deserve as good as this. “Patty, I don't want you to hate me. I care a lot for you. I never meant to hurt you. It's just that one bad marriage scared me shitless. I'm so afraid . . .”

She didn't let him finish. “You are the royal asshole of the universe. Don't bother calling.”

As she left him, swinging that great body through the door with enough energy to shatter the glass, he thought he could see his title all in capitals. ROYAL ASSHOLE OF THE UNIVERSE. And at that moment he thought he probably was. If he'd been an honest man, he would have straightened out that marriage-proposal fiasco long before now. He couldn't think how it had ever happened. Maybe in bed one night she had brought up the subject and he had said sure, fine, anything you want, while his mind wasn't on her words so much as it was on her body.