The call to the squadroom came at twenty minutes to one. The call came from Monoghan, who was in a phone booth on the edge of the River Dix. He asked to talk to either Brown or Genero. Willis told him Brown and Genero were both out.
"So who's this?" Monoghan asked.
"Willis."
"What I got here," Monoghan said, "is a head and a pair of hands. These guys dragging the river turned up this aluminum case, like it's big enough to hold a man's head. And his hands. So that's what I got here. A head cut off at the neck, and a pair of hands cut off at the wrists."
"Uh-huh," Willis said.
"So earlier tonight I was with Brown and Genero back out behind this restaurant the Burgundy, and what we had there was the upper part of a torso in a garbage can, is what we had. And I got a head and a pair of hands, and it occurred to me this might be the same body here, this head and hands."
"Uh-huh," Willis said.
"So what I want to know, does Brown or Genero have a positive make on the stiff? 'Cause otherwise we now got a head to look at, and also some hands to print."
"Let me take a look at Brown's desk," Willis said. "I think he left some stuff here."
"Yeah, go take a look," Monoghan said.
"Hold on," Willis said.
"Yeah."
"Hold on, I'm putting you on hold."
"Yeah, fine," Monoghan said.
Willis pressed the hold button, and then went over to Brown's desk. He riffled through the papers there, and then stabbed at the lighted extension button, and picked up the receiver.
"Monoghan?"
"Yeah."
"From what I can gather, the body was identified as someone named Frank Sebastiani, male, white, thirty-four years old."
"That's what I got here, a white male around that age."
"I've got a picture here, too," Willis said.
"Whyn't you run on over with it?" Monoghan said. "We see we got the same stiff or not."
"Where are you?"
"Freezing my ass off on the drive here. Near the river."
"Which river?"
"The Dix."
"And where?"
"Hampton."
"Give me ten minutes," Willis said.
"Don't forget the picture," Monoghan said.
The apartment over the garage was perhaps twelve-feet wide by twenty-feet long. There was a neatly made double bed in the room, and a dresser with a mirror over it, and an upholstered chair with a lamp behind it. The wall surrounding the mirror was covered with pictures of naked women snipped from men's magazines banned in 7-Eleven stores. All of the women were blondes. Like Marie Sebastiani. In the bottom drawer of the dresser, under a stack of Brayne's shirts, the detectives found a pair of crotchless black panties. The panties were a size five.
"Think they're Brayne's?" Hawes asked drily.
"What size you think the lady wears?" Brown asked.
"Could be a five," Hawes said, and shrugged.
"I thought you were an expert."
"On
Men's socks, undershorts, sweaters, handkerchiefs in the other dresser drawers. Two sports jackets, several pairs of slacks, a suit, an overcoat, and three pairs of shoes in the single small closet. There was also a suitcase in the closet. Nothing in it. No indication anywhere in the apartment that Brayne had packed and taken off in a hurry. Even his razor and shaving cream were still on the sink in the tiny bathroom.
A tube of lipstick was in the cabinet over the sink.
Brown took off the top.
"Look like the lady's shade?" he asked Hawes. "Pretty careless if it's her, leavin' her o.c.p.'s in the dresser and her…"
"Her
"Her open-crotch panties."
"Oh."
"You think she was dumb enough to be makin' it with him right here in this room?"
"Let's see what else we find," Hawes said.
What else they found was a sheaf of letters rubber-banded together. They found the letters in a cardboard shoe box on the top shelf of the closet. The letters were inside lavender-colored envelopes, but none of the envelopes had been stamped or mailed. The name "Jimmy" was scrawled on the front of each envelope.
"Hand-delivered," Hawes said.
"Mmm," Brown said, and they began reading the letters. The letters were written in purple ink. The first letter read:
Jimmy,
Just say when.
It was dated July 18.
"When did he start working for them?" Brown asked.
"Fourth of July."
"Fast worker, this lady," Brown said.
The second letter was dated July 21. It described in excruciatingly passionate detail all the things Marie and Jimmy had done together the day before.
"This is dirty," Brown said, looking up.
"Yes," Hawes said. He was reading over Brown's shoulder.
There were twenty-seven letters in all. The letters chronicled a rather active sex life between the lady and the sorcerer's apprentice, Marie apparently having been compulsive about jotting down everything she had done to Jimmy in the recent past, and then outlining everything she hadn't yet done to him but which she planned to do to him in the foreseeable future, which—if the chronology was faithful—she did indeed get around to doing to him.
She did a lot of things to him.
