The driver didn’t speak a word except to inquire about directions, though he must have wondered who the man was that had arrived on a special flight. Perhaps he had many such jobs, Kelly mused as the car pulled off Loch Raven Boulevard, enough that he’d stopped wondering about things he’d never be told.
‘Thanks for the lift,’ Kelly told him.
‘Yes, sir, you’re welcome.’ The car pulled away and Kelly walked to his apartment, amused that he’d taken his keys all the way to Vietnam and back. Did the keys know how far they had come? Five minutes later he was in the shower, the quintessentially American experience, changing from one reality into another. Another five and he was dressed in slacks and a short-sleeve shirt and headed out the door to his Scout, parked a block away. Another ten and he’d parked the car within sight of Sandy’s bungalow. The walk from his Scout to her door was yet another transition. He’d come home to something, Kelly told himself. For the first time.
‘John!’ He hadn’t expected the hug. Even less so the tears in her eyes.
‘It’s okay, Sandy. I’m fine. No holes or scratches or anything.’ He was slow to grasp the desperation of her hold on him, pleasant as it was. But then the face against his chest started sobbing, and he knew that this event was not for him at all. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘They killed Doris.’
Time stopped again. It seemed to split into many pieces. Kelly closed his eyes, in pain at first, and in that instant he was back on his hilltop overlooking SENDER GREEN, watching the NVA troops arrive; he was in his hospital bed looking at a photograph; he was outside some nameless village listening to the screams of children. He’d come home, all right, but to the same thing he’d left. No, he realized, to the thing that he had never left, which followed him everywhere he went. He’d never get away from it because he’d never really finished it, not even once. Not even once.
And yet there was a new element as well, this woman holding him and feeling the same blazing pain that sliced through his chest.
‘What happened, Sandy?’
‘We got her well, John. We took her home, and then I called today like you told me to, and a policeman answered. Doris and her father, too, both murdered.’
‘Okay.’ He moved her to the sofa. He wanted at first to let her calm down, not to hold her too close, but that didn’t work. She clung to him, letting out the feelings that she’d closeted off, along with worry for his safety, and he held Sandy’s head to his shoulder for several minutes. ‘Sam and Sarah?’
‘I haven’t told them yet.’ Her face came up, and she looked across the room, her gaze unfocused. Then the nurse in her came out, as it had to. ‘How are you?’
‘A little frazzled from all the traveling,’ he said, just to put words after her question. Then he had to tell the truth. ‘It was a washout. The mission didn’t work. They’re still there.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘We were trying to get some people out of North Vietnam, prisoners – but something went wrong. Failed again,’ he added quietly.
‘Was it dangerous?’
Kelly managed a grunt. ‘Yeah, Sandy, you might say that, but I came out okay.’
Sandy set that one aside. ‘Doris said there were others, other girls, they still have ’em.’
‘Yeah. Billy said the same thing. I’m going to try and get them out.’ Kelly noticed she didn’t react to his mention of Billy’s name.
‘It won’t matter – getting them out, unless …’
‘I know.’ The thing that kept following him around, Kelly thought. There was only one way to make it stop. Running couldn’t distance him from it. He had to turn and face it.
‘Well, Henry, that little job was taken care of this morning,’ Piaggi told him. ‘Nice and clean.’
‘They didn’t leave -‘
‘Henry, they were two pros, okay? They did the job and now they’re back home, couple hundred miles away. They didn’t leave anything behind except for the two bodies.’ The phone report had been very clear on that. It had been an easy job, since neither target had expected anything.
‘Then that’s that,’ Tucker observed with satisfaction. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a fat envelope. He handed it to Piaggi, who had fronted the money himself, good partner that he was.
‘With Eddie out of the way, and with that leak plugged, things ought to go back to normal.’ Best twenty grand I ever spent, Henry thought.
‘Henry, the other girls?’ Piaggi pointed out. ‘You’ve got a real business now. People inside like them are dangerous. Take care of it, okay?’ He pocketed the envelope and left the table.
‘Twenty-two’s, back of the head, both of ’em,’ the Pittsburgh detective reported over the phone. ‘We’ve dusted the whole house – nothing. The flower box – nothing. The truck – nothing. The truck was stolen sometime last night – this morning, whatever. The florist has eight of them. Hell, we recovered it before the all-points was on the air. It was wise guys, had to be. Too smooth, too clean for local talent. No word on the street. They’re probably out of town already. Two people saw the truck. One woman saw two guys walking to the door. She figured it was a flower delivery, and besides she was across the street half a block away. No description, nothing. She doesn’t even remember what color they were.’
Ryan and Douglas were listening on the same line, and their eyes met every few seconds. They knew it all from the tone of the man’s voice. The sort of case that policemen hate and fear. No immediately apparent motive, no witnesses, no usable evidence. Nowhere to start and nowhere to go. The routine was as predictable as it was futile. They’d pump the neighbors for information, but it was a working-class neighborhood, and few had been at home at the time. People noticed mainly the unusual, and a flower truck wasn’t unusual enough to attract the inquiring look that developed into a physical description. Committing the perfect murder wasn’t really all that demanding, a secret known within the fraternity of detectives and belied by a whole body of literature that made them into superhuman beings they never claimed to be, even among themselves in a cop bar. Someday the case might be broken. One of the killers might be caught for something else and cop to this one in order to get a deal. Less likely, someone would talk about it, bragging in front of an informant who’d pass it along to someone else, but in either case it would take time and the trail, cold as it already was, would grow colder still. It was the most frustrating part of the business of police work. Truly innocent people had died, and there was no one to speak for them, to avenge their deaths, and other cases would come up, and the cops would set this one aside for something fresher, and from time to time someone would reopen the file and look things over, then put it back in the Unsolved drawer, where it would grow thicker only because of the forms that announced that there was still nothing new on the case.
It was even worse for Ryan and Douglas. Yet again there had been a possible link that might open up two of their Unsolved files. Everyone would care about Raymond and Doris Brown. They’d had friends and neighbors, evidently a good minister. They’d be missed, and people would think what a shame it was… But the files on Ryan’s desk were for people about whom no one but police officers cared, and somehow that only made it worse because someone should mourn for the dead, not just cops who were paid to do so. Worse still, it was yet another ?? in a string of homicides that were somehow linked, but not in a way that made any sense. This was not their Invisible Man. Yes, the weapon had been a .22, but he’d had a chance to kill the innocent twice. He’d spared Virginia Charles, and he had somehow gone dangerously far out of his way to spare Doris Brown. He had saved her from Farmer and Grayson, probably, and someone else -…
‘Detective,’ Ryan asked, ‘what was the condition of Doris’s body?’
‘What do you mean?’
It seemed an absurd question even as his mind formed it, but the man on the other end of the line would understand. ‘What was her physical condition?’
‘The autopsy is tomorrow, Lieutenant. She was neatly dressed, all cleaned up, hair was nice, she looked pretty decent.’ Except for the two holes in the back of her head, the man didn’t have to add.