“What was he saying?”

“Well, I’m not totally sure about this. But it sounded like—you’re gonna think this is crazy.”

Paris almost smiles. “Trust me on this one, Hank. Crazy is what I do for a living. What did Mr. Salters say?”

“Once again, I wouldn’t swear to this,” Hank says, looking around the underground lot, as if the very act of entering the Justice Center parking garage had automatically put him under oath. “It sounded like he was saying ‘secret garden.’”

36

Randi Burstein had never seen the man at the counter before, but she seemed to recall hearing the name somewhere. On the younger side of thirty-five, she thinks. Too well dressed to be a cop. Too handsome to be a civil servant.

Lawyer. Definitely.

Who else ever comes in here?

“I can get that file for you right away,” Randi says. “Going to need some ID of course. Social security number at the very least.”

“Of course,” he says, handing her a social security card. “May I ask you something . . .”

“Randi.”

“May I ask you something, Randi?”

“Sure,” she says, hopes awakening. In the fifteen years she had worked in the records office of the Veterans Administration, she had yet to meet a man she had seen, socially, more than twice. Now that she was over forty, and a few pounds south of svelte, the opportunities seem to be diminishing every day. But, still, hope springs and all. “What would you like to know?”

“Have there been other folks requesting these files lately?”

“Now, now,” she says, a little disappointed, but still happy to engage in banter with someone so handsome, someone so much younger than the usual fossils with whom she deals. “You know I am not permitted to tell you that.”

“Well, I believe that rule exists because no one ever asks as nicely as I just have.”

“That may be true,” she says, crossing the room, pulling out the file drawer marked Saar-Salz. She finds the file, then closes the drawer with a slightly exaggerated bump of her ample hip. She makes a quick photocopy of the requested file. “I am still not allowed to break it.” She lays the form on the counter, slashes an X with her pen. “Sign for me there, please.”

The man scribbles a signature with his own pen.

“Any special plans for New Year’s Eve?” she asks, retrieving an envelope from beneath the counter, hoping to keep the conversation going.

“Oh yes,” the man answers. “I’m going to have a party.”

“Well, that sounds like fun,” Randi says as she slips the photocopy into a manila envelope, seals it. “Big or small?”

“Huge,” he says. “In fact, I’m thinking of inviting the whole world.”

“That would include me, of course,” she replies, amazed at her boldness. Maybe it’s just the holidays, she thinks. Or maybe the two eggnogs at lunch. She lays her left hand atop the counter with great deliberateness. The hand that sports no wedding or engagement ring whatsoever. “What should I wear?”

The man pauses for a moment, dramatically lost in thought. “A black leather jacket,” he says with a smile. “I think you would look very sexy in a black leather jacket and a little white skirt.”

Two full minutes later, long after the man with the dark eyes and the darker lashes had left without a further word, Randi Burstein finds herself still standing at the counter, a little flushed, a lot intrigued, her mind giddily rummaging through her closets.

37

Detective John Salvatore Paris—whose brain had already formed an exasperating Möbius strip of the numbers 152835, all wrapped around the words secret garden—meets Sergeant Carla Davis in the parking lot at Macy’s in University Heights.

Greg Ebersole and a team of six officers from the University Heights PD stand by in two locations, less than a block from the Westwood address.

The swingers party is a long shot, there had been unanimous task force consent on that point, but, for the moment, it is all they have. The neighborhoods around the two murder scenes had been canvassed and recanvassed. Forensics had uncovered nothing useful so far.

Carla drives the rest of the way to the house on Westwood Road, where she finds a spot on the street that is ten houses east of their destination. The number of cars on the street indicate that this is a rather large gathering.

As they approach the house at the crest of the hill—a stately gray colonial—there is only a dim light on in the curtained picture window; there is no loud music. Nor is there a light on over the side door, where Carla was instructed to go.

From his vantage, at the foot of the drive, Paris stops for a moment, conducts a quick inventory of the house, the neighborhood. Sleepy, bucolic, suburban; mostly brick houses with occasional lavish Christmas displays, surgically plowed driveways. A place where dogs don’t bark after ten and nobody needs a new muffler.

Yet, Paris thinks as he makes his way up the drive, it is also a place that might be plugged directly into a pair of unspeakable crimes.

Carla rings the doorbell, steps between Paris and the door. She had said on the way over that getting in was still a fifty-fifty proposition, even though they had been invited to the party on a probationary basis. But Carla Davis knows what she has and figures, rightly, that if she is the first thing that whoever opens the door sees, they’ll get in. She is wearing a bulky wool coat; her long hair is down around her shoulders and her perfume is driving Paris around the bend. In contrast, Paris is wearing a black blazer, black T-shirt, black slacks, no overcoat. He looks like a gay Johnny Cash.

After a few moments, the door is answered by a short, heavyset white man in his early fifties. His hair, jet black and thinning, is swept into a dramatic comb-over, the individual strands making the top of his pasty head look like a UPC bar code label. He is wearing a green cardigan, the kind that were popular when Paris was in junior high school.

“Hi,” he says, very enthusiastically. “You must be Cleopatra.” He opens the storm door.

“Yes.” Carla extends her hand. The man takes it, kisses her on the fingers.

“Charmed, I’m sure,” he says.

They’re not even in the door and Paris is ready to puke.

“My name is Herb,” he says, finally releasing her hand. “But you can call me Dante, my dear. Please come in.” He steps to the side, letting Carla into the small vestibule, deliberately making her pass by him in the narrow doorway so he could achieve maximum friction.

“And let me guess,” he says, looking at Paris. “Marc Antony, right?” Herb laughs at this, as if it were the most extraordinarily clever thing ever thought of.

“You can call me John,” Paris says.

Paris extends his hand, but Herb looks away at the last second, into the kitchen, pretending he doesn’t see it. Clearly an attempt at belittling the new male arrival in front of the new female arrival. “Come on in,” he finally says to Paris, as if scolding him. “You’re letting all the heat out.”

“Whatever you say, Dante,” Paris replies, wanting to introduce Herb to the back of his hand before asking him about the heating bills here at the Inferno, but opting against it.

For the time being.

Perfectly ordinary kitchen, very tidy. White toaster, white can opener, something that looks like a bread machine, a small dinette table with a frosted glass top. The overhead lights are off, but there are a dozen candles distributed around the kitchen. Paris can hear electronic dance music coming from somewhere, but it is extremely faint.

Carla and Paris bunch together in the small kitchen and wait for Herb. He shuts the door, steps inside, climbs the three stairs to the kitchen, rubbing his hands together. “So, who was it that nominated you for memberships again?”

“Teddy and Sue,” Carla says.