The Empress File

I tell her it’s important, she’ll do it.”
    “With no questions?”
    “Nothing I’ll answer. She’s not too bright.… I can handle it.”
    “OK. I just thought I’d mention it.”
    “Good thought,” she said.
    “And listen… take care of John.”
    “Better’n he could possibly believe,” she said.
    L U E LLEN AND I went to bed, LuEllen speculating about John and Marvel. Would they get married? Would it be a church wedding? Would Marvel wear a formal white wedding gown, and would that be right at her age? Would we be invited, and if we were, could we come?
    She went on for a while, while I listened distractedly. Finally I got out of bed, picked up the phone, and called Bobby on a voice line. I outlined what we were doing and asked if he could monitor Dessusdelit’s phones in the morning.
    “We’re putting a lot of pressure on her,” I said. “If something goes wrong, or if she decides to run for it or figures out some kind of double cross…”
    “I’ll monitor it,” he said. “If anything happens, I’ll get back to you.”
    “Why do you want him to do that?” LuEllen asked when I hung up.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “It seems like a good idea.”
    I WAS SOUND ASLEEP when the phone rang the next morning. I groaned, sat up, looked at the clock. Ten-thirty. I got to the phone on the fifth ring.
    “This Kidd?” Bobby, his voice urgent, harsh, not waiting even for my “hello?”
    “Yeah, Bobby? What’s going on?”
    “Get over to Dessusdelit’s house,” he snapped. “Something bad’s happening.”
    “What?” I asked. LuEllen sat up, watching, roused by the tone of my voice.
    “I was monitoring her line. About two, three minutes ago, the dogcatcher—”
    “Duane Hill—”
    “Yeah. He made a call. He was at her house. He called this St. Thomas guy, told him to get his ass over there, they had an emergency and he had to drive a car. That sounds like trouble to me. Hill wasn’t even supposed to be there, was he?”
    “No…”
    “Anyway, St. Thomas said he’d be right there.”
    “All right, we’re on the way. Call John, try his motel and Marvel’s place… tell him…”
    “OK.”
    E VEN WHEN you’re in a hurry, it takes a long time to get going. We dressed, rushing, but it still took six or seven minutes to get to the car. Add that to the two or three between the time Hill hung up and Bobby got to us.… And I got us lost, trying to improvise a shortcut. We got tangled in a series of cul-de-sacs on the wrong side of the municipal golf course, and we had to go back out to my first wrong turn.
    “What’re we going to do when we get there?”LuEllen said. “We just can’t come busting up to the door.”
    “We could do that,” I said. “Tell her we were in the neighborhood and just thought we’d stop by.…”
    “She’s too smart,” LuEllen argued. “She’d make a connection. We’re still strangers, too friendly too fast. Then Harold comes out of the blue.…”
    “Maybe Marvel will think of something. When Bobby explains, all she’ll have to do is call Dessusdelit, and say, ‘Listen, we know you got him.’”
    “Hope she does,” LuEllen said. “Hope she does…”
    S HE DIDN ’ T . And we were late. A white Ford turned out of the lane from the country club as we were approaching.
    “That’s the car Harold drove to Greenville,” I said. We’d stood next to it for a few minutes, talking, before I left.
    “Well, shit, maybe he’s out,” she said.
    I accelerated, went on past the country club road, and closed on the Ford. There was a man inside, in the driver’s seat. I couldn’t see him that clearly, and closed further.
    “No, no,” LuEllen said. “Back off, back off. Take that turn.”
    “What, what?” I braked and swerved down a turnoff.
    “That was St. Thomas, the guy who was killing the cats.”
    “Sure?” But I had no real doubt.
    “Yeah, didn’t you see the red hair?”
    I hadn’t, but I believed her and turned the car around, stopping at the highway, uncertain which way to go. “So where’s Harold? In the trunk?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “What?”
    I put the car on the highway, headed back toward the country club. I’d answered my own question. “If Harold drove that car to Dessusdelit’s, he’d park either in her driveway or in front of the place,” I explained. “If they whacked him, they wouldn’t be carrying his body across the lawn to put it in the trunk.”
    “So…”
    “So look for Hill’s