Without being asked, she went out of the bedroom and into the bathroom, flicking on the light as she entered. She opened the vanity, turned and looked at the two of us, her hand up over her mouth. “His toothbrush,” she said. “His toothbrush is gone.”
“When’s the last time you saw your husband?” Trimble asked.
“At, at breakfast. Actually, now that I think about it, he did say he had stuff to do after work tonight, and that he’d be home late. So I went to bed without him. But he never said anything about going away anywhere, about having to pack his boxers and a toothbrush. Did he have to go away on secret government business?”
Trimble said, “Your husband got a cell phone?”
She nodded. Trimble told her to call. She went downstairs to the kitchen, flicking lights on along the way, and sat down at the kitchen table, where the phone sat. She tapped in a number, held the receiver to her ear. “It says the number’s not in service. Why would it say the number’s not in service? That doesn’t make any sense at all. Maybe he’s in a bad area.”
Trimble had a look at the phone. “This is one of those new ones,” he said. “It shows who’s called you recently.”
“That’s right. Edward said we should get that, but I don’t think it’s worth the extra money.”
“And you can call up the last ten numbers that have been dialed.”
“I didn’t know that,” Mrs. Mayhew said.
Trimble took a chair across from her, swung the phone around so that it was in front of him. “I’m going to call out some numbers to you and you tell me if you know what they are.”
He did the first one.
“That’s my sister Cleo, in Milwaukee. I called her this evening, to see if she was still coming to visit in April. We’re very close, but we don’t get together as often as we’d like. She married this man, he’s not very nice, he doesn’t like to travel.”
Trimble gave her another number. “That’s Edward’s work,” she said. “I called him around three, but he was out.”
Then another. Mrs. Mayhew shook her head. “That one doesn’t ring a bell.”
Trimble hit the button that would immediately connect him to the number, waited, and then said, “Oh, hello. I was wondering, which Ramada is this? Uh-huh. Okay. I’m trying to track down a friend of mine, we’re supposed to have breakfast together. Do you have an Edward Mayhew registered there?” He nodded. “That’s great. And what room is he in? Thanks very much.”
He hung up the phone, looked at me. “Eddie’s at the Ramada. The one by the airport. I’m guessing he’s booked on a morning flight.”
“What?” said Mrs. Mayhew. “No no, you must have that wrong. Eddie’s not going away! We don’t take separate vacations! We certainly never have! What does he think he’s doing? He’s up at the Ramada, you say? He’s going to get a piece of my mind!”
“Mrs. Mayhew, I’m afraid I can’t have you getting in touch with Eddie right now.”
“That’s ridiculous. Give me that phone.”
Trimble sighed. “Mrs. Mayhew, let’s go back upstairs.”
“What? You can’t stop me from calling my husband.”
“Listen,” I said. I almost said, “Listen, Trimble,” but felt using names in front of Mrs. Mayhew might not be advisable. “Let’s just head out there, it won’t take that long.”
“We can’t have her warning him,” Trimble said.
“What do you mean, warning him?” Mrs. Mayhew demanded to know. “And just who are you people, anyway? I think it’s high time that you answered a few of my questions for a change.”
“Upstairs,” Trimble said, the gentleness gone from his voice. He grabbed Mrs. Mayhew by the arm and started dragging her out of the kitchen.
“Hang on!” I said. “What are you going to do?”
“Yeah, what are you going to do?” Mrs. Mayhew asked as Trimble ushered her up the stairs, his gun out and poking her in the side.
I couldn’t stand by and let him kill her, if that was what he planned, although I didn’t know how I’d stop him. The gun I’d borrowed for the evening was out in the car.
I grabbed at his shoulder. “Can’t you just tie her up or something, till you can get to the hotel?”
He looked at me, weighing things. I could see he didn’t want to kill Mrs. Mayhew, but there was a risk in letting her live. Trimble knew Eddie Mayhew would likely be dead by morning, and a police investigation would lead to Mrs. Mayhew and her tale of two nighttime visitors.
“Shit,” he said quietly to himself. He pushed Mrs. Mayhew ahead, back into the bedroom, and went over to the dresser. He rummaged through the drawers and tossed out a couple of pairs of pantyhose onto the bed. He whirled around, looked at me, pointed the gun, and said, “Do it.”
“What?”
“Tie her up.” Mrs. Mayhew’s eyes were darting back and forth between us.
“I hardly know her,” I said.
“Would you rather I shot her?”
Mrs. Mayhew looked back at me. “I’d rather not be shot,” she said, and I proceeded to do as I was asked, tying her wrists together and securing them to the headboard.
Trimble, not trusting my handiwork, double-checked that Mrs. Mayhew was secure, then grabbed the second pair of pantyhose and gagged her.
“Fuck,” he grumbled. “Let’s take a drive.”
33
“Trimble!” I said as we stepped out the door. I had just glanced at my watch. It was one minute past two. “You have to call in! Right now!”
“Let’s get on the road first, then I’ll call.”
“No,” I said, with more forcefulness than I knew I had. “Now.”
“Fine,” he said, and got out his phone. “This is a huge pain. Now that Barbie’s got to prove himself, he’s got all these little plans and procedures. Fucking intercoms and phone-ins and—”
Someone picked up. “Yeah, it’s me, checking in, talk to you in thirty.”
As we walked back to the car he said, “Mayhew must have already made his deal. He’s got his money, and he’s getting out of the country.”
“Am I still driving?” I asked, sounding positive, like I was happy to help, but mostly wanting to make sure Trimble didn’t see the gun down by the accelerator pedal.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, waving his hand.
Once we were both in the car and back on the road, Trimble shook his head. “Man oh man, things are not unfolding the way they should.”
“What?”
He kept shaking his head, made a fist and pounded it repeatedly on the top of the dashboard. I hoped he wouldn’t set off the passenger-side airbag. “We made a big mistake back there. I should have killed her.”
“No, you shouldn’t have killed her.”
“Oh man,” he said, putting his fist back to his mouth. “I’ve really fucked up this time.”
“You couldn’t kill her. There was no way you could kill her.”
“Don’t you see how this is going to play out? Eddie, he’s on borrowed time, it’s all over once Bullock’s had a chance to talk to him. And then when the cops come to interview her, you think she’s not going to talk? That she’s not going to be able to provide a description of me?”
I swallowed. “And me.”
Trimble waved his hand dismissively. At first, I thought that simply meant he cared more about his own skin than mine. But then I realized it was more likely that my being picked out of a lineup by Mrs. Mayhew was never going to happen. I was as unlikely to see the sun come up as Eddie.
“Fuck,” he whispered under his breath. “Fuck.”
“You’ve never had to kill anyone for Bullock, have you?” I asked. “You’ve done lots for him, but never that.”
His silence was as good as a yes.
“So there’s at least one line you have trouble crossing,” I said. “But if you’re not willing to kill for him, how can you stand by and let him kill others? Because that’s what he’s going to do. To Eddie. To me. And to Angie.”
“That’s not for sure.”
I almost laughed. “Well, that’s comforting.”
“I shouldn’t have left her alive back there.”
“I’m not turning around,” I said. “If you tell me to turn around and take you back there so you can kill that woman, I’ll run us off a bridge. I’ll floor it and run us into a tree. But I won’t go back.”
“What about your daughter?” Trimble asked. Not in a threatening way, more like he was just interested.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll try to smash your side of the car, so you’re dead, and I survive, long enough to call the cops, the good ones, see if they can save Angie.”
“Oh, that’s a good plan,” Trimble said. “A carefully engineered car wreck.”
He shook his head a couple more times, stared straight ahead out the window. “God,” he said under his breath. “This is one very deep hole to crawl out of.”
We got back onto the expressway, but instead of driving all the way back into the city, took the highway that skirted the city’s north side and went past the airport.
“Let me ask you this,” I said. “All that shit about his dead sister and weird mother aside, what kind of guy has a Barbie collection like that?”
Trimble must have waited a good ten seconds before he responded. “Fucking nutjob, that’s what,” he said.
We drove awhile longer, neither of us saying anything. Then Trimble said, “Have you been to see Lawrence, in the hospital?”
“Yeah.”
Trimble paused. “How is he?”
“He’s bad.”
And then the car went quiet again.
Nearly half an hour after we left the Mayhew house, we pulled into the parking lot of the airport Ramada. I pointed out the time to Trimble, and he put in a call to Bullock as required to protect Angie. The hotel was dead, no cars going in or out, no one in the lobby. We parked around the side, but it was after midnight, and every access was locked except the main doors out front.
“Just walk in like you own the place, like you’re a guest here,” Trimble said. “Head straight for the elevators.”
We walked through the lobby, the two employees behind the desk paying no attention to us. Once we were at the bank of elevators, we were out of their sight, and Trimble said, “He’s in room 1023. At least he better be.”
The doors opened and we stepped inside. Trimble found the button marked “10” and tapped it with his index finger. The doors parted, and Trimble scanned the markers indicating where the rooms were. Suites 1020 to 1034 were down the left hall, so we bore left.
We stood in front of 1023 and Trimble rapped on the door. “Mr. Mayhew?” he called out, friendly like. He rapped a bit harder. “Mr. Mayhew?” He stood right up close to the door, so if Eddie looked through the peephole, he’d wouldn’t see much more than a couple of nostrils.
We heard some stirring inside, then a muffled voice at the door. “Hello?”
“Mr. Mayhew?”
“Yes? Yes? Who is it? Yes?”
“I’m from the front desk. We thought we should tell you, there were some suspicious-looking men asking for you, and we thought you should know.”
“Oh God, oh my God, oh, oh, oh my God,” he said.
“We don’t like to see our guests have any trouble, so we told them you’d already checked out.”
“Oh God, really? You really did that? Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. Oh God, thank you so much.”
“No problem, sir.”
“What did they look like? Did you see them? Did you see what they looked like? I mean, I guess you did, if they were here. You saw them?”
Trimble looked me up and down, glanced at himself. “Two men, white, one in a suit, the other more casually dressed.”
“And they left? They’re gone? They’ve gone away?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh my God, that’s good. That’s good. Listen, stay there a moment, I’d like to give you something. Just stay there a sec, I’m getting you a tip.”
“Oh, really, that’s not necessary,” Trimble said.
“No no, just give me a minute, I’ll get you something for your trouble, you did a wonderful thing, a terrific thing,” he said, his voice fading back into the room. Trimble got ready. He took a step back from the door, so he’d be able to take a run at it. Then we heard the deadbolt slip back, the chain slide off its track, and then the door began to open.
“And if they come back, there’s more where this came from—”
Trimble hit the door like a freight train, propelling Eddie back into the room and onto the floor. The door must have caught his toes, at least on one foot, because he was already holding them in both hands, screaming, as we came in.
Trimble had his gun out and pressed up against Eddie’s forehead. “Stop your whimpering.”
“My toes, man! Oh my God, my toes! They’re all broken! You’ve broken my toes!”
“We’ll call a toe truck,” Trimble said, glancing at me and grinning. “I haven’t used that joke since I was six.”
Eddie eyes were squeezed shut, and he was rocking back and forth on his butt, still holding on to his foot. He was wearing nothing but a pair of green boxers with a tear in the crotch, and I looked away, not really interested in a peek at his luggage. He was thin and kind of bony, his back was splattered with pimples and blotches, and his short, curly hair was wet, like he’d been in the shower recently.
“Come on, Eddie, pull it together,” Trimble said. “We got a lot to talk about.”
He opened his eyes, looked at Trimble, then at me. He recognized me, but couldn’t remember exactly who I was.
I helped him out. “We met yesterday, at the auction.”
Mayhew could figure out why Trimble was here, but my presence was a mystery. “What, what are you doing here? Why are you here?” he asked.
“I’m doing a feature on a day in the life of a bad cop, and Detective Trimble here kindly allowed me to tag along.”
“Get up,” Trimble said, grabbing Eddie under the arm and hauling him onto the bed. It was a nice-size room, with a sitting area and a set of sliding glass doors that led out to a balcony.
“I don’t think I can walk,” Eddie said. “You’ve crippled me. You’ve crippled me for life.”
“I think that’s the least of your problems,” said Trimble, walking around the room. On top of the dresser, next to the television, he found a small folder. “What’s this, Eddie? These look like airplane tickets.” He took them out of their folder. “Let’s have a look here. Rio? You’re going to Rio? Now, here’s something interesting. There’s no return ticket here. That’s really dumb, Eddie. That just makes people suspicious. Even if you aren’t planning to come back, you buy a return ticket.”
“I just wanted to get away, just for a few days, a little break, get some sun, you know, just a little break.” He looked pitiful sitting in the middle of the king-size bed. “I wasn’t sure exactly what day I was coming back, you know, like maybe Wednesday, but maybe Thursday, could be Saturday, you know, depends.”
“I see. And you’re going alone? No ticket for the missus?”
“We like to take separate vacations sometimes. It’s good for a marriage, you know? Kind of heats things up, once you get back.” He tried to smile, force a laugh. I tried to picture things heating up between Eddie and Mrs. Mayhew.
Trimble pulled up a chair, sat down by the foot of the bed. “Have any idea why I’m here, Eddie?”
He shrugged, smiled. “Honestly, for the life of me, I can’t begin to guess. You’ve got me. I’m absolutely dumfounded. This is a total bafflement to me.”
“Barbie Bullock sent me.”
Eddie’s grin evaporated. When he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Really? He sent you to find me? What for? Why would a guy like that want anything to do with me?”
“He got a big surprise tonight. He was tearing apart that car, the one he told you he was interested in, the one you gave him the address for, of the guy who
bought it at the auction?”
“Sure, yeah, I remember. It’s sort of coming back to me. I was just a bit fuzzy there for a minute. Was there a problem? Car not start or something?”
Now Trimble chuckled. “There was nothing in the car, Eddie. Nothing at all.”
Absolute astonishment. “Are you serious?” Eddie, still holding on to his toes, shook his head in wonderment. “That’s crazy, totally crazy, unbelievable, totally totally unbelievable.”
“The stuff’s missing,” Trimble said. “And then, what do you know, here you are in a hotel, ready to fly off to Rio with a one-way ticket, your closet cleaned out at home, and your wife has no idea that you were planning a little getaway.”
“You talked to Rita? You didn’t talk to Rita, did you?”
Trimble nodded. “She’s very upset. I think she’d like to take a vacation, too. Maybe to visit her sister in Milwaukee.”
“I was going to have her come down and join me in a couple days. Soon as I find us a nice spot. I was going to give her a call.”
Trimble nodded, like it all made sense. “That’s what I always do when I go to a foreign country, Eddie. Try to find my accommodation once I get there.”
I said, “Eddie, here’s the deal. Bullock has my daughter. If we don’t come back with the drugs, or the money you got for the drugs, then I’m guessing he’s going to kill her. And if that happens, all the bad cops in the world couldn’t do as much to you as I will.”
“I don’t know anything about any money,” Eddie Mayhew said quietly.
Trimble got up, grabbed the over-the-shoulder bag that was sitting on a chair, and dumped it onto the bed. Socks, underwear, a belt, some sundries, tumbled out. And a thick white envelope.
Trimble opened it, thumbed a thick stack of cash. “That looks like three thousand or so right there.” He slipped it into his jacket, walked over to the closet, and took out Eddie’s coat. Seconds later, he had another thick envelope in his hand. “That looks like another three or four. Where else you got it hidden?”
Eddie hung his head, unwrapped his hands from around his foot. The toes were red and bloody. He began to cry.