He was now looking less angry than ill.
“Or …” I said as if the idea had just occurred, “FCLE can handle both investigations. If you’re looking for efficiency, Major Rayles, I think that may be the best solution.”
I watched Rayles mentally juggle his options for several seconds. Though his chin was on full and clenching jut, his words came out in an even tone. “Given that the investigation was initiated by FCLE and the bulk of the investigative material has been generated by FCLE, the appropriate response is that jurisdiction reverts to FCLE. For the time being, at least.”
Rayles’s assistant, Robert Pinker, eyeballed his boss. If anything, he looked more pissed off than Rayles.
“That’s it, Major?” Pinker snapped. “The guy wins? You’re gonna hand it back just like that?”
“It’s a criminal investigation, Mr Pinker,” I corrected. “Not a competition.”
Pinker moved close and looked ready to swing on me. A surprised Rayles stepped between us, eyeballing Pinker. “Detective Ryder is correct, Robert. We’ll leave the investigation to the capable hands of the FCLE.”
The capable was nice, though a political frippery, like congressfolks addressing each other as honorable colleague when all they wanted was to gut one another. Rayles turned to leave, but paused to turn back, needing to end with a note of command.
“I expect to be copied on every aspect of the case, Ryder,” he instructed. “Do you read me?”
“In triplicate,” I said, holding up my fingers in the Boy Scout salute.
We were back on the case.
31
Minard Chalk is sleeping in his expansive home in Key West, sweat beading on his brow, the red silk sheets jumbled from his tossing and turning. The white suit worn at Orchids restaurant is hanging in the closet and freshly laundered. Every day Chalk leaves the house at one-fifteen p.m. for lunch at one of the nearby restaurants. The staff arrives at one-twenty to gather laundry for dry cleaning, drop off fresh laundry, and to pick up, dust and vacuum. A prepared dinner is left behind, as well as a snack for later in the evening. The dinner and snack combined must not tally beyond eight hundred and sixty-five calories.
The staff must be gone by two-thirty. Chalk never returns before three-fifteen. When Chalk is at one of the other residences – Seattle, San Clemente, Minneapolis – the house receives a total cleaning.
Chalk is dreaming of a girl. He does not want this dream, but his moaning, rolling body cannot fight it off. He always loses to the dream.
The girl’s name is Xaviera Teresa Santinell and her sixteen-year-old skin seems to glow with its perfection. Her hair is as black as polished coal and her eyes as gentle as the eyes of a faun. She is dressed in a simple pink dress that ends well above her knees. Her legs are long and slender and when she stands with one small foot on the ground and the other cocked in the air behind her, she reminds the young Minard Chalk of a beautiful flamingo. Xaviera moves through the Chalks’ sprawling San Clemente household like a vision, an ethereal presence in the eyes of Chalk, eleven years old.
Minard Chalk is in love. He’s been in love for four months, since his eyes first fell across Xaviera, entering the Chalk household beside her mother, the Chalks’ newest housekeeper. The previous housekeeper, Maria, had disappeared after a shouting match with Mrs Chalk, a door slamming as she ran crying from the home. Mrs Chalk is a demanding woman who goes through several house staffers annually.
They are alone, Minard and Xaviera. Her mother is visiting relatives in Los Angeles and Chalk’s parents are in Spain or Italy or wherever the jets fly, though Minard has never been further than a private academy in New Mexico. The Chalks do not vacation with Minard because it makes them look old enough to have a child of that age.
Sometimes when all the parents are gone Xaviera has her friends over, other teenage girls who swim in the pools – one inside and one outside – and giggle into one another’s ears. They wear tiny swimming suits and move like cats. When they use dirty words it makes the eavesdropping Minard feel sweetly crawly inside, though he doesn’t know why.
Later, in his room, he repeats their words and feels sweetly crawly yet again.
“Fucking. Boobies. Pussy. Dick. Rubbers.”
Minard has been watching Xaviera from the furthest shadows of a darkened room across the hall from the room Xaviera had been dusting. She has just done something truly amazing: plucked a feather from the duster and lay down on the wide bed in the guest room, dusting herself where Minard could not see, below her belly button, her pink dress hiked high on long legs ending at pink tennis shoes. Her hair is tied in a red silk bow and splays across the bed, dark locks cascading over the side. Her pink tongue pokes from lips like a fresh rose. The sun blazes through the window across the room and the space seems filled with golden light.