Thomas Perry - The Butcher's Boy

He took out the ballpoint pen he’d brought with him and held it up out of the deep shadows. He took out the clear plastic refill and looked at it. To any other eye it looked like nothing, a refill that only had about a third of its ink left. But the last two thirds were a clear liquid, like water only thicker.

Touching the window with his handkerchief, he quietly slid it aside and slipped into the room, closing it behind him and moving away from the light. He stood there, silent and unmoving, studying the room. Claremont was sound asleep, his slow, regular breathing faintly audible.

Now to find just the right thing, he thought. A bottle of pills, maybe. Or a laxative. Old people make a big deal out of taking a shit. He saw a glass on the coffee table, so he went over and sniffed it—liquor. That wouldn’t do now. He could feel the seconds slipping past him, seconds he needed. He moved into the bathroom straining his eyes to find something for his purpose, but no—it was too dark. He thought of just forgetting the whole thing and smothering him with a pillow, but that was too dangerous and chancy. The bed was next to the wall, and all the old bastard would have to do was pound it once or twice in the struggle and that would be that. Old or not, he could make noise. He came out of the bathroom and stared at the sleeping figure. There was nothing—only the bed, the nightstand with the lamp and the glass. The liquor would have been great if he’d managed to get here in time to help with the mixing, he thought, but not now. And then he realized it wasn’t the same glass. The liquor glass was on the coffee table.

Slowly and carefully, he drifted over to the bed and stared at the nightstand. He had to look a little to the side to discern anything much in the darkness. He brought his face close to the glass and then almost laughed out loud. Of course, he thought. False teeth! He slowly reached over and poured the contents of the pen refill into the glass.

Then he drifted back out to the balcony and closed the sliding window behind him. In a few seconds he was already on the third balcony and putting down his portable bridge to the second. He looked down again, this time elated by the height, but he held himself in check. Always work slowly when you’re tired, he reminded himself. He channeled his concentration into his work, moving along the shelf and then pulling it after him, setting it on the next shelf and easing himself onto it. And then he was there. He slipped back into the room and closed the window, this time letting it lock. Then he went to the closet and set the shelf back on its supports. For a second he considered just leaving it, but no. Later he’d regret it. He took out his knife and carefully replaced the screws. Then he forced himself to stand quietly for a moment. Did he have everything? Was anything out of place? He reached into his coat pocket and screwed his pen back together. Then he took a few deep breaths, listened, and stepped out into the hallway.

At the elevator he pressed the button for the parking garage. The doors sighed and opened immediately. That was a good sign, he thought. In all that time since he’d come up, nobody had used that elevator. He glanced at his watch. It was only one fifteen. And then he realized he was getting an erection. It struck him as funny, but he didn’t dare laugh yet.

When the elevator doors opened again and he felt the cold night air he forgot about it. He moved across the parking ramp and out to the lot. At the fenced-in dumpsters he stopped and retrieved his suitcase, then kept on going. At the first public trash can he came to, he broke his pen in two and threw it in among the crumpled cups and napkins and bottles and cans. He moved again, nursing his injured knee into exactly the right pace for a man disappearing into the night.

THE SENATOR STIRRED, then woke up. The room seemed awfully cold. The Constellation hadn’t been the same since they’d remodeled it in 1972, he thought. It was those damned fancy windows and balconies and things. The workmanship just wasn’t any good anymore. People didn’t take pride in their work. But then he reminded himself that he was an old man, a cranky one at that, and it was probably just his bad circulation. He rolled over and composed himself to go back to sleep. “A goose probably just walked over my grave.”

7

When the telephone rang it tore Elizabeth out of sleep, leaving her in an unknown place. After a second or two she remembered it was Ventura and a motel room, but it took four rings for her to see the telephone and one more to get her hand on it. The call was from Hart, who wanted her to be ready for breakfast in twenty minutes.

Elizabeth hung up and went to the nightstand for her watch. Seven o’clock exactly. Then she went off to the bathroom to brush her teeth and see about a shower. As she hurried through the morning rituals she tried to keep herself from becoming too excited. Even if there were a clue, something to go on, it would probably take months to follow it up, and by then the case would be common property. A hundred people in a dozen overlapping agencies would be involved. And there still wasn’t any reason to believe she had finally crossed the trail of a genuine professional hit man or that he’d be of any use if they caught him. It was like trying to capture an animal that was so small and rare and elusive that you sometimes doubted that it existed, but if it did exist it would be capable of killing you. No, this was worse, because there wasn’t any point in hunting it down unless you could keep it alive and teach it to talk.

WHEN THEY WALKED INTO the foyer of the Ventura police station, a sergeant carrying a mug of coffee was crossing the floor toward a corridor of tiny offices. He veered toward them, giving a reassuring half-smile. “Hi. Are you being taken care of?”

“Agent Hart, FBI, and Miss Waring, Justice Department, to see the chief,” said Hart, flashing his badge.

“Okay,” said the sergeant. “This way, please.” He shot a look over his shoulder as he conducted them down the hallway. “Chief know you’re coming?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Hart.

Elizabeth said nothing, having reminded herself as they were coming up the steps that she’d learn more by listening and watching than by trying to take charge. But the fact that Hart had said FBI and Justice department hadn’t been lost on her. Technically the FBI was just one of the divisions of the Department of Justice although that had been very easy to forget the few times she’d been inside the massive J. Edgar Hoover Building with its millions of files and hundreds of millions of fingerprint records and its museum. For the moment, anyway, she would leave Washington protocol for Washington.

The sergeant led them into one of the tiny offices, where an older version of himself sat behind a wooden desk, frowning over some papers as though he were translating them with difficulty from a foreign language. When he saw he had visitors he looked relieved. He turned the papers face down in a far corner of his desk and popped up, his hand held out. “You must be agents Hart and Waring,” he said. “I’m Bob Donaldson. Always happy to cooperate with the FBI.”

“Thank you,” said Elizabeth, forestalling the correction Hart would probably feel was necessary. “As they probably told you on the phone, we’re interested in the Veasy murder.”

“Well now, ma’am,” said the chief. “We’re still not absolutely and completely sure it was a murder yet. We’re coming around to that hypothesis, but we aren’t sure.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling. “I misspoke, calling it what we’re looking for rather than what we’re looking at.”

He seemed appeased. “I’ve notified the homicide squad that you’d be here, and told them to be ready with the reports of the investigating officers and so on. Beyond that I thought we’d just wait and see, let you look around and pick out the leads you want to follow.”