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Mooney had gotten the registration number from the cabby’s identification card and had come back into the apartment to call the company to see if the number was still good. The picture on the card was of a Vietnamese, Hoang Lam.
Haydon had gone through the trunk of the car, looked under the back seat, felt down in the cracks of the front seats, under the front seats, under the floor mats, through the ashtrays, the glove compartment, through the junk in the plastic tray on the dash, and through the papers attached to the sun visors with rubber bands. He was sitting behind the steering wheel with the front door open looking through the windshield at the flashing lights on the patrol units and the morgue van. Policemen were milling around the opened front door of the apartment waiting for the coroner’s investigator and the lab men to finish with the girl.
A clutch of people were gathered around the outside of the apartment staring toward the policemen and the lighted doorway and hoping to get a glimpse of the sheet covered corpse on the stretcher or to see some of the blood they had heard was splattered all over the walls.
There was a shuffling movement on the far side of the crowd, and it opened up to let through Dystal and Lapierre. They started toward the cab, Dystal rolling with a heavy footed gait, Lapierre glancing back at the people.
Dystal approached the cab, bent down with his forearms resting on the windowsill of the opened door, and looked at Haydon.
“Anything of interest in here?” he asked.
Haydon shook his head. “Mooney’s checking out the owner. A Vietnamese.”
Lapierre came around and opened the opposite door and sat down like Haydon, with the door open.
“The black is Grover Ellis,” he said. “He worked for a couple of city politicians and won a lot of recognition in the black community as an up-and-coming young man. He’s considered running for the city council next time around. Owns some rental property in East Houston, married, with a family, well liked, well educated. He played football with Bill Langer at Rice. There’s a file if you want to read it.”
Haydon looked at Dystal, who raised his eyebrows and remained silent, peering through the opened window.
“What about the video tape?” Haydon asked. “Is Murray going to be able to make anything out of it?”
“He said it was going to be tough. When the camera was close enough to the crates to pick up the stenciling, there was a low light situation. When they were standing near the door, there was just that single bulb hanging down. When the lighting was better, where all the men were sitting down, the camera was farther away from the stacks of crates, and the stenciling might be too small. He’s working on it. He’s going to get good stills of all the men, though. They came in right under that bulb at the door.”
“When will he have something for us?”
“Maybe midmorning tomorrow.”
“And the list of warehouses?”
“Tomorrow morning too. They’re on computers. There’ll be a printout of addresses with property descriptions. That might help. Then I can spot them on a map.”
Haydon nodded. He could see a little of the living room through the opened door of the apartment. There were strobe flashes. The crime lab photographer would record her death from every necessary angle. The girl would be uncovered now. Everybody looking. Some people never got tired of looking at something grisly.
“If you’re not going to want anything else from me,” Lapierre said, “I’m going inside to help Mooney go through the rooms.”
“Go ahead, Pete. Thanks.”
Lapierre got out of the cab and walked back to the apartment, moving through the crowd, and disappearing inside.
“Did you look in there?” Haydon asked Dystal.
“Yeah, we looked. We talked to Ed.” Several streaks of perspiration emerged from a clipped sideburn and sparkled in the flashing lights as they trailed down his rounded jaw.
“I think we should come down on Ellis,” Haydon said. “We’re going to have to find out what Toy recorded. The other men in the film are going to be old hands at stonewalling. They’re going to be used to playing games, not so easily frightened. I may be underestimating Ellis, but at least he’s not going to have that kind of background, that kind of experience.”
“I think you’re right. I’d rake him over the coals.” Dystal unconsciously fiddled with the outside rearview mirror on the car door. “You don’t think they got Toy and the other girl?”
“No. We would have found them all like the girl inside. Or at least both girls.”
“You want to have Langer picked up?”
“Not until we talk to Ellis.”
“What about Toy? What do you think his situation is right now?”
“He’s probably in a real bind,” Haydon said. “Rental car, maybe. No clothes because everything’s in there. He may not have any money with him except what was in his wallet. Of course, he cashed the four-thousand dollar check, but that was nearly a week ago. We don’t know how fast they’ve been spending it. Ed and Pete may find a chunk of it hidden in there somewhere, or Toy might carry all of it with him just in case something unexpected like this should happen. Or maybe they won’t find anything in there, not because Toy didn’t leave it behind but because whoever killed the girl found it and took it with them. If we don’t find the money it doesn’t mean Toy has it. I doubt if he’s going to go to the trouble to get another apartment. He’ll be traveling light now. A hotel or motel. Or a friend. Mr. Hoang Lam might be able to help us out there.”
“There’s a lot of fancy video equipment in there,” Dystal said. I guess Toy’s got duplicates of that damn tape scattered in hidey holes all over the city. I’ll bet he’s got his ass covered on that point.”
Haydon nodded.
“How was he registered here?”
“Richard M. Kaun. K-A-U-N.”
“Then he’s probably got some kind of ID in that name. I’ll bet he used it to rent a car. I’ll have them start checking the agencies. And the banks too. No tellin’ how many bank accounts he’s got squirreled away in different names.”
“If he rented a car in that name, he will have abandoned it by now.”
“Maybe so.”
Haydon saw Sublette’s stocky frame coming through the crowd to ward them. Perspiration was coming through the light blue uniform shirt in dark splotches under his arms and across the top of his stomach. All the beef he had put on lifting weights in the department gym was suffering in the still night heat. He approached the car.
“Excuse me,” he said to both men. “Detective Mooney wants y’all to look at something.”
Dystal straightened up from the car window and looked at the young officer. There was a salty drop of sweat on the tip of Sublette’s nose.
“Hot in there, son?”
“Yessir. There’s no circulation back in those bedrooms.”
“You look purty damn soggy,” Dystal said.
“I always sweat a lot,” Sublette said. He grinned a little and wiped his nose on his shirtsleeve with a shrug of his shoulder.
The three men returned to the apartment. The girl’s body was covered again, and Gibbs’s men were bringing in the gurney to pick her up. The crime lab technicians were still occupied in various parts of the apartment. Everyone was soaked with sweat.
“You guys can have it,” Gibbs said to Haydon, as he stood back and watched his two assistants fold the sheet under the girl and then lift the whole bundle onto the aluminum gurney. “You’re not going to be able to stand it in here in another couple of hours if somebody don’t clean this up. Next people who rent this place gets a new carpet, new paint job. They’ll think, ‘All right. Lucky us!’ And then the first person they meet that lives here is gonna say, ‘You know why you got a new carpet and a new paint job?”‘ He laughed. “Think they’ll want to lay on the floor there and watch Love Boat?”
He laughed again, including them in the humor he imagined at the expense of the next tenants, and followed his men as they wheeled the gurney out the door to give the crowd the brief glimpse of the sheet covered body they had waited so long to see.
Haydon and Dystal followed Sublette down the hallway to the last bedroom on the left. The room was a mess. Everything that could be taken apart and scattered had been. Mooney and Lapierre were standing in the middle of the rubble looking at something Mooney was holding.
“They really went through here,” Mooney said, looking up as they walked in. “Pete and I got to looking around, and everywhere we thought to look they’d beat us to it. Everywhere.” He grinned. “Almost.” He handed an object to Haydon.
Haydon recognized it instantly, a small plastic ivory colored box with a false front that looked like an electrical wall outlet. Inside were three keys.
“I see those things advertised all the time,” Mooney said. “In those sections stuffed in Parade magazine that always fall out when you open it up. Peddle all sorts of nifty gadgets like teeth whitener and fifty-piece tool sets for five bucks.” He pointed to the plastic box in Haydon’s hands. “Keep your valuables in there and the burglars don’t find them. Simple enough to install. Just unwire the real outlet, tape up the wires, push ‘em aside, and slip that thing in. I don’t even know what made me check it out.”
Haydon looked at the keys. “Three different numbers. Three different boxes? They’re all Mosler keys. Every safety deposit box I’ve ever seen has been a Mosler box. They all could be in the same bank, or three separate banks.” He handed everything to Lapierre. “Pete, you’d better get down to Intel Bancshares in the morning.”
“They didn’t have him listed with a safety deposit box,” Lapierre said. “Just the checking and savings accounts.”
“Then you’d better start calling all the banks and savings and loans in the morning.”
“There’re some commercial security vaults too. I think a couple of ‘em are open twenty-four hours,” Dystal said. “That’d be his speed. He could get to it in a hurry.”
“The telephone book’s in the dining room,” Lapierre said, stepping over the junk in the room and disappearing down the hall.
“Anything else?” Haydon asked.
“Nothing yet. Either Toy was a paranoid housekeeper regarding his personal records, or whoever beat us here swept it clean. We couldn’t even find grocery receipts in the kitchen trash. The man left no trace.”
Haydon stood in the middle of the room and looked around at the stripped mattresses, the tangle of coat hangers and clothes and shoes, the broken and gutted clothes chest. Whoever had been here had left nothing behind but refuse. The girl too. Nothing but refuse.
Lapierre stepped in the door. “There’s only one commercial safety deposit facility that’s open twenty-four hours. It’s way out in Town and Country Village. They wouldn’t give me any information over the telephone. I’m going to have to go out there. I don’t think it’ll take too long if I cut across Gessner.”
“Good,” Haydon said. “Take one of the patrol units outside with you. If Toy actually has an account there, and he hasn’t already beat you to it, take whatever’s in the box and stake the place out. Have the patrol unit stay out of sight as backup. Wait all night if you have to. Let me know the account’s status as soon as you can.” He turned to Dystal. “Bob, can we have someone to start trying to locate those other boxes first thing in the morning? We might get lucky. In the meantime, Ed and I will go talk with Hoang Lam and Grover Ellis.”
~
WHEN HE SAW THE TWO police cars turn off Fondren ahead of him, he tensed. But he didn’t say anything. Lai was fooling with her Walkman, trying to get another station. He slowed and cut in on Clarewood, meaning to come in the back way on Bonhomme. After a couple more turns he eased into the intersection that would give him the first view of the apartments. He saw the flashers bouncing cherry and sapphire off the apartment building across from their front door. His ears began to ring. He rounded the corner and approached the drive into the apartment building. There was a police car at the mouth of the drive and a police officer with his cap pushed back on his sweaty forehead waving on the slowing traffic. As he passed the drive entrance he looked down the row of cars, saw the police cars, the crowd, and the morgue van backed in among the cars. At that moment Lai glanced up, stared blankly a second, and screamed.
He swung at her with an opened hand, missed, then grabbed her wrist with his right hand and jerked her away from the half opened car door as she tried to get out. With his left hand he whipped the steering wheel around and plunged the car into a drive-through behind another complex. He made two more quick turns, accelerating in the straights down the alleys as Lai screamed and fought him, before he brought the car to a screeching stop near the entrance of another street. He pulled her over to him and held her, squeezing her to him, burying her wailing mouth in his chest, holding tight to keep himself from flying apart as much as to comfort her.
Jesus Christ, how had they done it? They had found her and they had tried to make her talk. That was all it could be. He no more doubted what had happened than he doubted what would happen. It hadn’t had to be this way. There were other ways Roeg could have dealt with it. If he wasn’t going to go for it, there were other ways. He hadn’t had to do it like this.
Lai fell into a rhythmic, incessant sobbing. She was clinging to the front of his shirt with a gripping rigidity, and he could feel the dampness of her tears through the thin cotton. He let her cry for what seemed too long before he eased her down in the seat. She lay on her side and curled in a fetal position, her head next to his thigh. He leaned across and locked her door. Her crying was wrenching, the sound of faraway times and faraway places. He had heard women cry like this in dozens of countries around the world. It was always the same. There was only one language for this kind of emotion.
He slowly pulled out of the alley and made his way over to Bellaire and turned west. Every moment counted now. Everything was shattered, and he had to regroup. But he needed his tools. In a few blocks he reached Gessner, turned north, and headed toward Town and Country Village.