Silent Victim - C. E. Lawrence [128]
He looked at the phone machine on the desk, which was blinking, its amber light winking at him like an evil red eye. He peeled off his Windbreaker; crossing the room in four steps, he pressed the button.
The flat, dry voice sent a chill through the entire room.
“I was wondering when you would start tapping this phone line. Fat lot of good it will do you. So let’s keep it short: What about the red dress?”
Lee stood staring at the machine as it whirred into rewind, completely unaware of the steady dripping of his wet clothing onto the expensive Persian carpet his mother had given him.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
When he reported the call into the wiretapping switchboard, the answer was predictable: It came from a pay phone somewhere deep in Queens.
“You want us to send a car over?” the bored-sounding woman at the switchboard asked. There was a faint scratching sound in the background, as if she were filing her nails.
“No, thanks—he’ll be long gone,” Lee answered, and hung up.
He threw himself on the couch without removing his sopping clothes and stared at the ceiling, running possibilities through his mind. Finally, disgusted with the whole situation, he got up and took a shower. Afterward, he felt clean but not cleansed; the sound of that voice on his answering machine made him feel soiled. He wandered into the bathroom, broke a Xanax in two, and swallowed half. Then, just to be sure, he gulped down the other half as well.
He lay back down on the couch, a pillow over his head, as a welcome drowsiness settled over his limbs. He surrendered gladly, sinking into a deep slumber. He slipped through a series of dreams, shifting imagery of places and people he knew, until he found himself in a deep pool of water. He was in the middle of a mountain lake, treading water, the bottom far beneath him, the water itself crystalline and clear, the sun sparkling off its surface. He didn’t know how he had gotten there, but decided to swim back to the shore. As he got closer, he saw a woman lying facedown, half in and half out of the water. He swam faster, and when he reached her, he turned her over, and saw that it was Ana Watkins. She was warm, but she didn’t appear to be breathing, so he began giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. As he did, her body began to dissolve in his arms, and he was holding a rotting corpse.
He awoke with a start to the sound of loud knocking. Leaping from the couch, he made his way to the front door, but before he got there, he heard a deep voice.
“It’s me—Diesel!”
He opened the door to find Diesel standing in the hallway, draped in a dark oilcloth poncho, like a great black bird. Next to him stood Detective Butts, looking like a drowned walrus. His wet hair was plastered to his head so that his large ears protruded even more alarmingly; his bulbous nose dripped onto the straw doormat.
Lee stared at the unlikely pair. “What you doing here?”
“You gonna let us in or what?” Butts demanded.
He let them in and gave them towels to dry off. Outside, he could tell it was morning, which meant he had slept through the night, though the day was so dark he had no idea what time it was.
“What time is it?” he asked Butts.
“It’s after ten,” Butts replied, briskly toweling off what was left of his hair.
“So what’s going on?”
In response, Butts handed him his cell phone. The text message read pls help, and the call was from Lee’s cell number.
“I called back, but it bounced straight to voice mail,” Butts said. “Then I called your number here and got a busy signal, so I called Diesel. He couldn’t reach you either, so I got in the car and drove over.”
“And picked