Saturday, October 19, 2013
There is a warrant out for Paula´s capture and arrest. I´m checking her background, something I should´ve done from the start, only to discover that she´s married to a Matthew Hawkins.
I went to her apartment, right beside Jimmy´s place. We had to knock the door down. Everything looks normal, as if they would be back at any moment.
I check up on Matthew, a freelance designer without a fixed job. This makes my work harder to find his whereabouts. But in his e-mails, I find a lot from his mother, asking him to get in touch, and from a couple of pissed-off clients, complaining about undelivered projects from two months back.
I get in touch with Matthew´s mother. I can tell she´s upset upon hearing I´m a police inspector, she tells me she hasn´t heard from her son since the beginning of September and that Paula hasn´t been in touch either.
We put the man on the missing persons list and begin to search for him.
“What a flake... she did her husband in too. How much do you want to bet?” Stuart laughs, getting on my nerves as usual.
I can´t rebuke him, neither can I argue against his assumptions, because deep down inside, though I don´t want to believe it, I agree with him. Paula is a mental case whose first killings -covered up by Peck – have turned her into a monster. A heartless criminal. The Goddess I once saw in her is gone, but my obsession with her remains.
In the evening, once rid of Stuart´s prattle, I go to Jimmy´s. I greet the bouncer, who, as usual, puts on airs but finally agrees to answer my questions. I show him a picture of Paula and he shakes his head an turns his eyes.
“Some kook,” he begins, “she´s the one that jumped all over me the other night, when I laughed at her because she was talking to herself. She was screaming all kind of nonsense at the thin air. She even pretended she was pushing someone. And that´s not the first time. I can´t recall what night it was, but she stumbled out of here, drunk as a skunk. She was talking to herself and couldn´t stop laughing. The barman can tell you, she´d order two Bloody Marys, and would only drink one! She left half of them on the bar.
“Do you recall if it was Tuesday, the eighth of October?”
“I´m really bad with dates, boss.”
Of course, that was the date. I remember well. I saw her, I saw the redhead woman that could barely stand. As a matter of fact, I found it so funny, that I described the whole scene to Paula the first time we met here.
John is staying at my house. When I get home, he´s sitting on the sofa watching some cop flick.
“Did you get dinner, Peck?” I ask, leaving my keys on the entrance table.
“No. Should we order some pizza? Melinda never lets me eat pizza. I have to make the best of these days here in New York.” He winks at me, obviously enjoying himself, something he used to do when we worked together.
“Done.”
I sit beside him, folding my arms across my chest. I glance at him.
“Is there something you haven´t told me Peck?”
“What´s that?” He asks, bewildered and smoothing his bushy white mustache.
“Forget it. Let’s order those pizzas.”