Heartstopper (38 page)

John wondered if Fiona Hamilton had a tattoo. She hardly seemed the type, although that
Property of
business was rather ominous. He wondered if Candy Abbot had had a tattoo. But Candy Abbot had been missing for months, and if this was her body, that meant she’d either been kept alive until several days ago or that her body had been stored in a freezer. Both were possibilities, he realized, although neither felt right. “Anything else?”

“No, sir. No shell casings or stray bullets.”

Which meant she’d probably been killed elsewhere, John concluded, then dumped here for someone to stumble across. Her killer hadn’t even attempted to bury the body this time, which meant either he’d been interrupted, was getting cocky, or that he’d wanted her to be found quickly. And if he’d wanted her to be found quickly, that raised another interesting question.

Why?

An hour later, John drove Sandy’s car back to her house, followed by another officer, who pulled his cruiser into Cal Hamilton’s driveway behind Cal’s splashy red Corvette. Sandy greeted John at her front door. “I think he’s home,” she said instead of hello, glancing at the house next door. “The music’s been blasting for the last twenty minutes.”

John signaled for the other officer to approach. “Stay inside and keep away from the windows,” he directed Sandy.

“You think there’ll be trouble?”

“Hopefully not.”

“Mom?” Sandy’s son approached, stopping behind his mother. “What’s going on?”

“Just returning your mother’s car,” John told him.

“You got towed?” Tim asked incredulously.

“Not exactly,” Sandy said.

“Your mother will explain later. Now, if you’ll excuse me …” John heard Sandy’s door close behind him as he cut across her front lawn to Cal Hamilton’s house, the music getting louder, more insistent, the closer he got.
I’m sorry, Mama
, Eminem wailed.
Wailed
being the operative word, John thought as he knocked loudly on Cal’s door. You couldn’t really call that singing. Although he harbored a grudging admiration for the young man’s obvious talent. The punk had learned how to channel his anger into something not only productive, but immensely profitable. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone could do the same? Too bad rage was easier to channel than creativity, he thought, feeling his own ire rise as he knocked on the door again, harder this time. “Cal? Cal Hamilton, this is the sheriff. Open up.”

“Should we break it down?” his deputy asked.

“Only if you want to get your ass sued from here to kingdom come,” John told the overly eager young man with the short, dark hair and soft, wide mouth. “This is a courtesy call, remember? We’re asking this man’s help in identifying a
body, very possibly his wife’s. We’re not here to make an arrest.”
Yet
, he added silently, before knocking a third time.

The music retreated to a dull throb. “Hold your horses,” came a voice from inside. “Jeez, what’s going on here?”

Even before Cal appeared in the doorway, wearing only a pair of tight-fitting, black jeans and a lopsided smile, John knew he was high on something.

“Why, Sheriff Weber, how nice to see you again so soon. To what do I owe this great honor?”

“Get your shoes on,” John told him. “And a shirt. I need you to come with me.”

“Are you arresting me again? ’Cause whatever it is, I didn’t do it. I’ve just been sitting here all day listening to music and minding my own business.”

“You’re not under arrest.”

“Good.” Cal slammed the door in John’s face.

John began pounding on the door as the voice of Eminem returned full force. He was debating whether he should leave and come back later when suddenly the caterwauling stopped and the door reopened.

“I have a bell, you know,” Cal said, his eyes as smooth and expressionless as glass. “It’s right there.” He pointed. “All you have to do is press it.” He demonstrated. The melodious sound of bells filled the air.
You are my sunshine.
“Cute, huh?”

“I need you to come with me,” John said.

“And why is that?”

“We’ve found a body,” John said with deliberate bluntness. “It could be Fiona.”

Cal’s reaction was both extreme and unexpected. He staggered back into the main part of the house, as if he’d been struck. “What?”

“Does your wife have any tattoos?” John asked, following after him. Immediately he recognized the cloying smell of hashish. Empty beer bottles were everywhere.

“She has a little one on her ankle,” Cal replied after a long pause. “Why?”

“Can you describe it?”

“’Course I can describe it. I know every inch of that woman’s body. It says
Property of Cal Hamilton.”

John lowered his head, released a deep breath of air. “I’ll need you to make a positive identification.”

“You’re saying it’s her?”

“The body we found has a tattoo on her ankle similar to the one you’ve just described.”

“What do you mean, similar?”

“We’ll need you to make a positive ID,” John repeated.

“I don’t understand. You’ve met my wife. You’d know if it was her. What are you telling me?” Cal backed even farther into the room, until his legs hit a chair and he collapsed into it. “You’re saying she doesn’t have a face? That some lunatic blew it away, same as with Liana Martin?”

“If you’d prefer to give us a sample of your wife’s hair, perhaps from a brush …”

“No.” Cal jumped back to his feet, shaking his head as if to clear it. “I want to see her. I want to see her.”

John waited as Cal slipped a white T-shirt over his head and stuffed his feet into a pair of black sneakers by the door. “I’ll take you to her,” John said.

“I already told you, she was alive and well yesterday morning when I left for work.” Cal was sitting in the small, windowless room that was used to interrogate suspects. The room was sparsely furnished, containing only a rectangular oak table with a small chair on either side of it. Two similar chairs stood against an unadorned wall. The air-conditioning in the room was kept just above freezing. John reasoned that the more physically uncomfortable a suspect felt, the more likely he was to talk. Cal had started sweating almost as soon as he’d been ushered inside.

A two-way mirror filled the top half of the wall across from the closed door. John knew that Richard Stahl, the sheriff for all of Broward County, was standing on the other side of that glass, watching him. The mayor had called him as soon as he’d found out about Fiona Hamilton and requested he drive up to Torrance to oversee John’s investigation.

A week ago John might have felt threatened by the mayor’s preemptive actions, even more so by his supervisor’s unscheduled appearance. But today he felt curiously sanguine about being judged. While he’d never had much patience for the mayor, whom he considered a pompous ass with a Napoleonic complex, he both liked and respected the sheriff of Broward County. Besides, John had never believed in cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. If Richard Stahl had some fresh ideas that might help solve this case, John was more than willing to listen to them.

Normally he would have preferred to wait at least a couple of hours before questioning a man who’d just identified his wife’s corpse. But Cal Hamilton wasn’t just any man. He was a hothead who’d already been arrested for assaulting one woman and was probably a wife beater as well. And while he’d seemed genuinely shaken at the sight of Fiona’s lifeless form, he’d regained his composure with remarkable speed.

“Did anyone else see her?” John asked.

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Had you been fighting?”

“Everybody fights.”

“Not everybody uses their fists.”

“You accusing me of something?”

“Her body was covered with bruises, Cal. Old bruises. I’m sure that once the medical examiner has a look at her, he’ll find lots of old wounds, maybe even a few broken bones.”

“Okay, so I may have hit her a couple of times. Trust me, she gave as good as she got.”

“You’re saying
she
hit you?”

“I’m saying she wasn’t exactly a saint. Sometimes I had to protect myself.”

“You outweighed her by a good eighty pounds,” John pointed out.

Cal made a dismissive sound, somewhere between a laugh and a snort. “She could be pretty fierce when she got angry.”

“What was she angry about, Cal?”

“The usual. She thought I was playing around. You know, being unfaithful.”

“And were you?”

“It didn’t mean anything.” Cal glanced toward the recessed fluorescent lights of the ceiling. “What’s with the look, Sheriff? You trying to tell me you never cheated on your wife?”

John tried not to flinch. “I’m telling you it takes a special kind of coward to hit a woman.”

The same derisive sound as before. “Hey, you can call me all the names you want. A coward and a wife beater and an adulterer. It doesn’t mean I killed my wife. I loved that woman.”

“You sure had a funny way of showing it.”

“To each his own.”

“What happened, Cal?” John asked, trying a different approach. “She’d had enough of the abuse? She told you she wanted out? She threatened to leave you?”

“She wasn’t going anywhere.”

“Not if you had anything to say about it, she wasn’t.”

“I didn’t have to say anything.”

“No, you just had to stop her.”

“I sure as hell didn’t shoot her,” Cal said.

“You own a gun, don’t you?”

“Yeah. So what? It’s my right under the Constitution to bear arms.”

“Is it registered?”

“’Course it’s registered. I’m a law-abiding citizen.”

“What kind is it?”

“Forty-four Magnum.”

“Pretty powerful weapon.”

“Powerful enough to blow a man’s head clear off,” Cal said, paraphrasing Clint Eastwood’s line from
Dirty Harry
and looking directly into John’s eyes. “Trust me, Sheriff, if a .44 had been used on Fiona, there wouldn’t have been anything left of her face at all.”

“That’s pretty cold for a man who just lost his wife.”

“You expecting tears?”

“Where do you keep the gun, Cal?”

“Nightstand beside my bed.”

“You won’t mind if we take a look at it?”

“I’m sure you’re waiting on the search warrant as we speak,” Cal said with a shrug. “You know we’re just wasting time here. You know you’re dealing with a serial killer.”

“What makes you so sure it’s a serial killer?”

“Well, it certainly doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. He’s killed two women already. Maybe more.”

John leaned forward in his chair, dug his elbows into the table, intertwined the fingers of his left hand with those of his right. “What makes you think there are more?”

“I said there
may
be more. You’re dealing with a nut bar, Sheriff. You really think he’s gonna stop at two?”

“What makes you think the same man killed both Liana Martin and your wife?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Two women disappear; they turn up a few days later with half their faces blown away. Call me crazy, but it doesn’t sound like a coincidence to me.”

“Me neither. Could be we have a copycat on our hands.”

“Could be.”

“I’ve always found copycats kind of pathetic,” John said, hoping to provoke the man across the table. “I mean, it speaks of a certain lack of imagination, don’t you think?”

“Cut the crap, Sheriff. We both know you think I killed my wife. So the real question is, Did I try to make it look like it was the work of the same guy who offed the Martin girl, or did I kill Liana Martin too?”

“Which is it?”

“It’s neither, you moron.”

John felt his body tense. He lowered his arms to his sides, made fists with both his hands. Instinctively he felt that Richard Stahl was doing the same thing on the other side of the glass.

“Shit. I’ve been raising holy hell ever since Fiona disappeared,” Cal continued, “trying to find out what happened to her. I got myself arrested, for Christ’s sake. I’d have to be pretty stupid—”

“Or pretty smart,” John interrupted.

“You’re giving me a lot of credit, Sheriff. You’re saying I staged the whole thing?”

“It’s possible.”

“So I’m either lacking in imagination or swimming in it,” Cal said with a laugh. “Better make up your mind.”

“It’d be a lot easier if you’d just tell me what went down.”

“You want me to do your job for you?”

“I want you to start telling the truth.”

“Yeah? Well, the truth is my wife is dead. The truth is if you hadn’t been so damned convinced she’d run away and started searching the area yesterday, like I wanted to do, instead of harassing me and throwing my ass in jail, we might have been able to find her before she ended up in a field with half her face blown away.
That’s
the truth, Sheriff. Now either arrest me or let me go home.”

John rose from his seat, turned to face the two-way mirror, and stared into the faces he knew were watching on
the other side. Were they wondering the same things? he thought. “Arrest him,” he said.

They found the gun in the night table beside the bed, exactly where Cal had said it would be.

“Doesn’t appear to have been fired recently,” Deputy Trent said, raising the weapon to his long, crooked nose.

“A .44 didn’t kill Fiona Hamilton,” John said, glancing around the room. Or Liana Martin, he added silently, noting the pale blue of the bare walls and the surprisingly small brass bed. The size of the bed was surprising because he would have thought a man like Cal Hamilton needed more room to stretch out. Then he pictured the dark blue tattoo on Fiona’s ankle.
Property of Cal Hamilton.
A double bed would certainly have enforced physical intimacy, kept Fiona closer to his side. The bed was unmade, its dull white sheets pushed to the foot of the bed in a heap, its blue cotton blanket draped carelessly toward the floor. Cal was right about one thing: a .44 would have done significantly greater damage. “Keep looking. Who’s to say we might not find another gun?”

Across from the bed was a tall wicker dresser, its top drawers filled with literally dozens of sexy push-up bras and skimpy thongs, crotchless panties, silk teddies, and velvet corsets, as well as a variety of sex toys. John found a ballpoint pen he realized too late was actually a tiny vibrator, and he dropped it back into the drawer as if it had suddenly caught fire. Talk about multitasking, he thought to himself, opening the drawer directly below. It was filled with white cotton panties and plain cotton bras. John checked the sizes, discovered they were the same size as the more risqué underwear. One set for day, and one for night, John assumed, trying not to imagine Fiona Hamilton in either.