Prodigal Son

Old Race. Erika wondered why, and she wondered if Victor himself knew why.
        She had read enough literature to be sure that Old Race authors would have called him a cruel man. But Victor's art collection gave Erika hope that in him existed a core of pity and tenderness that might with patience be tapped.
        Still in the main drawing room, she came to a large painting by Jan van Huysum, signed and dated 1732. For this still life, Victor had paid more millions.
        In the painting, white and purple grapes appeared ready to burst with juice at the slightest touch. Succulent peaches and plums spilled across a table, caressed by sunshine in such a way that they seemed to glow from within.
        The artist realistically portrayed this ripe bounty yet managed, subtly and without sentimentality, to suggest the ephemeral quality of even nature's sweetest gifts.
        Mesmerized by van Huysum's genius, Erika was subconsciously aware of a furtive scrabbling. The noise grew louder, until at last it distracted her from the painting.
        When she turned to survey the drawing room, she at once saw the source of the sound. Like a five-legged crab on some strange blind mission, a severed hand crawled across the antique Persian carpet.

CHAPTER 63
        
        DETECTIVE DWIGHT FRYE lived in a bungalow so overgrown with Miss Manila bougainvillea that the main roof and the porch roof were entirely concealed. Floral bracts-bright pink in daylight but more subdued now-dripped from every eave, and the entire north wall was covered with a web of vine trunks that had woven random-pattern bars across the windows.
        The front lawn had not been mowed in weeks. The porch steps had sagged for years. The house might not have been painted for a decade.
        If Frye rented, his landlord was a tightwad. If he owned this place, he was white trash.
        The front door stood open.
        Through the screen door, Carson could see a muddy yellow light back toward the kitchen. When she couldn't find a bell push, she knocked, then knocked louder, and called out, "Detective Frye? Hey, Dwight, it's O'Connor and Maddison."
        Frye hove into sight, backlit by the glow in the kitchen. He wove along the hall like a seaman tacking along a ship's passageway in a troublesome swell.
        When he reached the front door, he switched on the porch light and blinked at them through the screen. "What do you assholes want?"
        "A little Southern hospitality for starters," Michael said.
        "I was born in Illinois," Frye said. "Never shoulda left."
        He wore baggy pants with suspenders. His tank-style, sweat-soaked undershirt revealed his unfortunate breasts so completely that Carson knew she'd have a few nightmares featuring them.
        "The Surgeon case is breaking," she said. "There's something we need to know."
        "Told you in the library-I got no interest in that anymore."
        Frye's hair and face glistened as if he had been bobbing for olives in a bowl of oil.
        Getting a whiff of him, Carson took a step back from the door and said, "What I need to know is when you and Harker went to Bobby Allwine's apartment."
        Frye said, "Older I get, the less I like the sloppy red cases. Nobody strangles anymore. They all chop and slice. It's the damn sick Hollywood influence."
        "Allwine's apartment?" she reminded him. "When were you there?"
        "You listening to me at all?" Frye asked. "I was never there. Maybe you get off on torn-out hearts and dripping guts, but I'm getting queasy in my midlife. It's your case, and welcome to it."
        Michael said, "Never there? So how did Harker know about the black walls, the razor blades?"
        Frye screwed up his face as if to spit but then said, "What razor blades? What's got you girls in such a pissy mood?"
        To Michael, Carson said, "You smell truth here?"
        "He reeks with it," Michael said.
        "Reeks-is that some kind of wisecrack?" Frye demanded.
        "I've got to admit it is," Michael said.
        "I wasn't half drunk and feelin' charitable," Frye said, "I'd open this here screen door and kick your giblets clean off."
        "I'm grateful for your restraint," Michael said.
        "Is that some kind of sarcasm?"
        "I've got to admit it is," Michael said.
        Turning from the door, heading for the porch steps, Carson said, "Let's go, let's move."
        "But me and