Arthur Hailey - Detective

Having made clear the difference in authority between them a major was three ranks higher than a sergeant and that no shred of a personal relationship remained, Cynthia had posed sharp questions about her parents' murders.

Even while probing and listening to answers, she was aware of Malcolm's appraisal and welcomed it. From the way he looked at her, she knew he had noticed her especially red-rimmed eyes. His facial expression reflected sympathy. Good! So her grief at her parents' deaths was evident, and Malcolm did not doubt it; therefore objective number one had been achieved.

A second objective was to make her official authority so strong and demanding, with insistence on a speedy solution to her parents' killings, that it would simply not occur to Ainslie that she could be involved in any culpable way. As the interview progressed, Cynthia knew she had succeeded.

Toward the end she was conscious of a wariness on Malcolm's part when she questioned him about the symbols he had linked to Revelation. She also suspected that he did not intend to keep her as fully informed about all special task force developments as she demanded. But she decided not to press too far, having handled what could have been an uneasy confrontation with so much advantage to herself.

Finally, as the door closed behind Ainslie, Cynthia reflected that perhaps she had overestimated his talents after all.

* * *

The elaborately formal funeral for Gustav and Eleanor Ernst, with all the trappings of officialdom, was preceded by a wake the day before, lasting eight hours and attended by an estimated nine hundred people. The entire two-day observance was something Cynthia knew she had to go through, though she longed for it all to be over. Her role was to behave as a bereaved daughter, yet maintain a composure and dignity befitting her senior police rank. From overheard remarks, and condolences addressed to her, she knew at the end she had succeeded rather well.

One conversation occurring during the wake would, she hoped, have an ongoing effect. It was with two people whom she knew well: Miami's Mayor Lance Karlsson and City Commissioner Orestes Quintero, one of the two remaining commissioners. She had met both frequently before. The mayor, a retired industrialist, normally jovial, spoke sadly of Cynthia's father, adding, "We shall miss Gustav greatly." Quintero, younger and heir to a liquor fortune, nodded agreement. "It will be difficult to replace him. He understood the city's workings so well."

"I know," Cynthia replied. "I only wish there were some way I could pick up where he left off."

She saw the two men glance at each other. A thought clearly struck both; the mayor gave the slightest of nods. "I should talk to some other people; please excuse me," Cynthia said. As she moved away, she knew she had effectively planted a seed.

At both the wake and the funeral she saw Ainslie several times. He was second-in-command of the police honor guard and looked smart in dress uniform, something she had not seen him in before. Gold aiguillettes and white gloves heightened the ceremonial impact. She learned from another honor guard officer that at every free moment, in a rear room, Ainslie was on the radio, communicating with his special task force surveillance teams, now maintaining a twenty-four-hour watch on six possible suspects in the serial killings.

After their earlier meeting, Cynthia was unsure how to treat Ainslie, and simply ignored him.

* * *

A day after the funeral, Cynthia was at her desk in Community Relations when she received a phone call that the caller described as confidential. She listened for a few moments, then answered, "Thank you. My answer is yes."

Twenty-four hours later the Miami City Commission, headed by Mayor Karlsson, announced that, as permitted by city charter, Cynthia Ernst had been named to complete the remaining two years in her father's elected term as a commissioner.

The next day Cynthia announced her resignation from the Miami police force.

* * *

As more days passed, and Cynthia assumed her new responsibilities, she felt increasingly secure. Then, two and a half months later, one of the suspects who had been under special task force surveillance, Elroy Doil, was arrested and charged with murder. The arrest was at the murder scene of Kingsley and Nellie Tempone, with "Animal" Doil's guilt conclusive, and from additional evidence it was believed by police, the media, and the public that he was guilty of all the preceding serial killings.

Only one factor clouded the successful end to the task force's operation. That was a decision by State Attorney Adele Montesino that Doil would be tried for only one double murder the Tempones' where, in Montesino's words, "we'll have a cast-iron prosecution" and an "airtight certain case." In the remaining cases, she pointed out, the evidence, while strong, was less conclusive.

The decision had provoked protests from the families of other serial killing victims, in which Commissioner Cynthia Ernst joined, wanting Doil to be convicted of her parents' murders, too. But in the end it made no difference. Doil denied doing any of the murders, including the Tempones', despite his presence at the murder scene. A jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to die in the electric chair a process speeded up by Doil's own decision not to exercise his rights of appeal.

* * *

During the seven months between Animal Doil's sentencing and his scheduled execution, something happened to provide an unnerving shock to Cynthia Ernst.

Amid the increasing activity of her new life as a city commissioner, a thought occurred to her one day out of nowhere, it seemed that a task she had intended to complete a long time ago had never been done. Incredibly, she had forgotten the box of evidence, put together the same night that Patrick admitted having shot and killed Naomi and Kilburn Holmes. What she needed to do, Cynthia now realized in fact, ought to have done long ago was dispose of that box and its contents, completely and forever.

She knew exactly where the box was stored. After carefully taping and sealing it at her own apartment, she had taken it to her parents' house and her private room.

Although, since her parents' deaths, the Ernst house had been mostly unoccupied, Cynthia had left it pretty much as it was, waiting until Gustav's and Eleanor's wills were finally probated before deciding whether to sell it or even, perhaps, move into Bay Point herself. In the end she alone would decide because she was the major beneficiary under both her parents' wills. Occasionally, Cynthia used the house for entertaining and continued to employ the butler, Theo Palacio, and his wife, Maria, as caretakers.

Cynthia chose the following Wednesday to take the action so long overdue. She told her secretary, Ofelia, to reschedule her appointments for that day and not to make any others. At first she considered moving the box to a public incinerator, then learned that many had closed for environmental reasons, and at the few remaining it was no longer possible for an individual to throw an object in a furnace personally. Unwilling to trust anyone else, she returned to her original idea of deep-sixing the box.

She knew a charter boat owner who had done jobs for her father in the past a closemouthed, surly ex-U.S. Marine with the reputation of operating on the borders of legitimacy, but who was reliable. Cynthia phoned him, learned he was available on the chosen date, then instructed, "I shall want your boat all day and will be coming with a friend, but there's to be no crew except you." After grumbling about having to do everything himself, the boat owner agreed.

The statement about a friend was a lie. Cynthia had no intention of bringing anyone, and she would only retain the boat for as long as it took to reach deep water, throw the box overboard by then inside a metal trunk and return to shore. She would pay for a full-day cruise, however, which would keep the owner quiet. She also knew of an out-of-the-way store where she could buy a suitable trunk, paying with cash the day before.