Shame

of a truck Shame drove off in?”
    She looked up and for a moment saw Holt’s mask slip, saw his anger and disdain. It was deserved, she thought. She couldn’t explain to him, let alone herself, why she had lied to him earlier in the evening.
    “I feel embarrassed at my lapse,” she said.
    She didn’t specify whether her lapse was of memory or judgment, but her apology was enough for Holt to nod.
    “Did you talk with him after his interrogation?” he asked.
    Elizabeth nodded. “But just for a minute.”
    “What did he say?”
    “He thought I’d betrayed him. He thought I should have warned him about the Lita Jennings murder. But mostly he was worried about his family. That’s why I came here. He asked me to look out for his wife and children.”
    “You agreed to do that?”
    “I did.”
    “That didn’t make you suspicious that he was about to run?”
    “That wasn’t my impression. I just assumed he was afraid of being arrested.”
    Alvarez entered the room but stayed on the periphery, waiting for Holt to finish. The two men made eye contact, and Alvarez said, “Got something I think you’d like to see.”
    Holt stood up and walked over to him. Alvarez handed him some photographs. “I asked Mrs. Parker if she wouldn’t mind getting me some recent pics of her husband and told her to make sure they were all taken within the last year or so. I got ’em in order from most recent to least recent.”
    Holt flipped through the photos, then whistled a little. “Pictures are worth a thousand words,” he said.
    “What words?” Elizabeth asked.
    The two detectives looked at each other. Alvarez shrugged. Holt walked back to the table and tossed the pictures down in front of her. She thumbed through them. There were six photos. In most of the shots Caleb was posed with his children, pictures snapped during holidays and birthdays. That helped to determine the chronology, as did Caleb’s appearance.
    Some people don’t change as much in a decade as Caleb had in an apparently very short time.
    “The wife said he had a beard, and wore his hair long, from the time she went out with him,” said Alvarez, “but six weeks ago he took everything off.”
    His beard had been full and long, Elizabeth observed, as if designed to hide his face. In the older photos Caleb’s hair had been longer and styled differently. If he had answered the door with his old look, she wouldn’t have immediately thought he was the image of his father.
    “Clear as a picture,” Alvarez said. “He decided if he was going to kill like his father, he might as well look like his father.”

16

    E LIZABETH WAS CHECKING into the hotel very late. Or very early. The night auditor at the Amity Inn, a young man whose name tag read Henry, wasn’t used to six a.m. arrivals. Henry could have played a vampire without any makeup. His skin was preternaturally pale, and the ingrained dark circles were dark enough to be mistaken for shiners.
    “I’m really not sure whether I should charge you for last night’s lodging,” Henry said, “or just start with tonight’s.”
    “I’m sure you’ll decide on whatever’s fair,” said Elizabeth, “but right now I’d just like to get my family into its suite.”
    “I guess I’ll ask the manager when he comes in. It’s possible we’ll only charge you a half-day rate for last night.”
    “Fine.” She knew the clerk was just trying to be nice, but her body language said,
Give me a key.
    “You’re planning on staying a week?” asked Henry.
    Give or take seven days, she thought. “That’s right.”
    “I’ll just need...”
    Elizabeth extended a credit card to him. She knew the routine.
    “Thank you, Mrs. Macauley.”
    That was the name she had checked in under, and the name on her credit card. If Elizabeth’s purse was ever snatched, thethief would wonder at his take. She always carried half a dozen different driver’s licenses, with matching credit cards. Only one of those IDs had her real name on it, a name she rarely used when traveling.
    “Will that be smoking or nonsmoking?”
    “Non.”
    Her credit card, or at least Vera Macauley’s, was processed. The banks had never questioned her fictitious names. They had only been zealous about raising the credit limit on her cards and encouraging her to spend more.
    Henry handed back her credit card. “Will you be needing any help with luggage?”
    “No, thank you.”
    “One key or two?”
    “Two, please.”
    Elizabeth had a room at