“Being watched like a hawk, and you can bet he knows it. The good news is he’s not likely to try whacking anyone. The bad news is he’s got time to destroy any evidence we missed. Like the murder weapons.”
“The alleged missing gym bag.”
“Don’t add up that we couldn’t find it. We did everything short of tearing up his floorboards.”
“Maybe you should have torn up his floorboards.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
I was trying to think where else Spurrier might have hidden a gym bag when it occurred to me. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier.
“How is Spurrier built?”
I asked.
“He ain’t very big, but he looks pretty strong. Not an ounce of fat.”
“Then he probably works out, exercises.”
“Probably. Why?”
“If he belongs to some place, the YMCA, a fitness club, he might have a locker. I do at Westwood. If I wanted to hide something, that would be a good place to do it. No one would think twice when he walked out of the club with his gym bag in hand or when he returned the bag to his locker.”
“Interesting idea, ” Marino said thoughtfully.”I’ll ask around, see what I can find out.”
He lit another cigarette and unzipped his briefcase. “I got pictures of his crib, if you’re interested.”
I glanced up at the clock. “I’ve got a houseful downstairs. We’ll have to make it quick.”
He handed me a thick manila envelope of eight-by-tens. They were in order, and going through them was like seeing Spurrier’s house through Marino’s eyes, beginning with the Colonial brick front lined with boxwoods and a brick walk leading to the black front door. In back was a paved drive leading to a garage that was attached to the house.
I spread out several more photographs and found myself inside his living room. On the bare hardwood floor was a gray leather couch near a glass coffee table. Centered on the table was a jagged brass plant growing out of a chunk of coral. A recent copy of the Smithsonian was perfectly aligned with the table’s edges.
Centered on the magazine was a remote control that I suspected operated the overhead television projector suspended like a spaceship from the whitewashed ceiling. An eighty-inch television screen was retracted into an inconspicuous vertical bar above the bookcase lined with VCR tapes, neatly labeled, and scores of hardbound volumes, the titles of which I could not make out. To one side of the bookcase was a bank of sophisticated electronic equipment.
“The squirrel’s got his own movie theater,” Marino said. “Got surround sound, speakers in every room. The whole setup probably cost more than your Mercedes, and he wasn’t sitting back at night watching Sound of Music, either. Those tapes there in the bookcase” – he reached across my desk to point them out. “They’re all Lethal Weapon-type shit, flicks about Vietnam, vigilantes.
Now on the shelf right above is the good stuff. The tapes look like your everyday box office hits, but you pop one of them in the VCR and get a little surprise. The one labeled On Golden Pond, for example, should be called On the Cesspool. Hardcore violent pornography. Benton and I were together all of yesterday viewing the crap. Friggin’ unbelievable. About every other minute, I felt like taking a bath.”
“Did you find any home movies?”
“No. Not any photography equipment, either.”
I looked at more photographs. In the dining room was another glass table, this one surrounded by transparent acrylic chairs. I noticed that the hardwood floor was bare. I had yet to see a rug or carpet in any room.
The kitchen was immaculate and modern. Windows were shrouded with gray mini-blinds. There were no curtains, no draperies in any room I had seen, not even upstairs where this creature slept. The brass bed was king-size, neatly made, sheets white, but no spread. Dresser drawers pulled open revealed the warm-up suits Marino had told me about, and in boxes on the closet floor were packets of surgical gloves and booties.
“There’s nothing fabric,” I marveled, returning the photographs to their envelope. “I’ve never before seen a house that didn’t have at least one rug.”