Larsen had called to tell him to check in as soon as he got back. He left a message on Larsen’s answering machine. “Everything went great, I’ll have the report on your desk by noon tomorrow.”
Mom called to say that she wanted a full report on Betsy in D.C. He called and assured her that Betsy was okay, that he was okay, that D.C.was beautiful with all of the fireworks (none of which he had seen).
And then a vaguely familiar voice, clearly Midwest born and bred. “Howdy, Dr. Vandeventer, sorry to bother you again—this is Deputy Sheriff Clyde Banks. Came in to the jail this morning and found out that Sayed Ashrawi had been deported in the middle of the night. He’s back in Jordan now, I guess. Just wondered if you had any comments. Good-bye.”
There was something deeply troubling to Kevin about the whole Habibi murder, and especially about the doggedness of Clyde Banks in pursuing the issue. Hearing Banks’s voice coming out of his answering machine, he felt the pit of his stomach tighten up right away. He should have stayed in D.C., where all he had to do was ride around in taxis and have foreigners buy him drinks. He felt suddenly sweaty. He went to the fridge, pulled out a container of iced tea that had been sitting there for a week and a half, and poured some into a Flintstones jelly glass. Then he opened the high cabinet above the fridge, took out a bottle of Jim Beam, and dumped some in—he thought it looked like about one jigger, maybe a shade more. In his haste to get home he had forgotten to buy groceries or even to stop at a drive-through, so he grabbed a handful of saltines from a cupboard. His bowels went into action at the mere sight of food, so he strode to the bathroom, set the jelly jar and the crackers down on the counter, dropped his pants, and took a seat.
Banks had not divulged his theory of the Habibi case to Kevin, but Kevin could read between the lines easily enough: Banks believed that Marwan Habibi had been dead that night in Lab 304—that Kevin had seen not a drunk and unconscious colleague, but a warm corpse. It followed that all of the other men in Lab 304 that night had been not jovial party animals but cold-blooded plotters hatching a scheme to dump Habibi’s corpse in the way least damaging to them, their activities, and—by extension—Larsen’s rainmaking operation.
It was a preposterous theory. But the mere idea that Kevin might have been that close to a bunch of foreign agents coldly manhandling a dead man around the Sinzheimer gave him chills.
His cordless phone was sitting there on the counter in front of him. Kevin picked it up and dialed the direct-line number of one of his buddies in the Jordanian Embassy in Washington. There must be some simple explanation of the sudden deportation of Sayed Ashrawi. But the voice at the other end was that of a secretary. She politely but firmly rebuffed him. She must have been a new hire, because this was the first time Kevin had been treated so rudely.
The doorbell rang. Kevin didn’t move, hoping that whoever it was would go away. But he had left his garage door open, so everyone who came by knew perfectly well that he was at home.
He pulled his pants up and went to the door. The image in the peephole was that of the paperboy.
“Hello, Scott,” Kevin said, hauling the door open.
“It’s Craig,” the paperboy said. “Uh, you owe me for two months—fourteen fifty.”
Kevin had taken his wallet out of his pocket when he’d come in, so he went back into the kitchen to get it. It was still full of crisp twenties from a D.C. cash machine, so new, they stuck together treacherously. He walked back to the front door, trying to pick them apart, and when he looked up, he was startled to see that Craig had been joined by a large and sturdy man with a stubbly haircut, looking sweaty and awkward in neatly pressed jeans and a striped dress shirt.
“Deputy Banks!” Kevin said weakly. “Just got your message—I just got back a few minutes ago.” He thrust a twenty at the paperboy and hardly noticed when the change and receipt were handed back to him. “The business with Ashrawi—I don’t know what to tell you. I tried making a phone call—”
“This isn’t about that,” Banks said, blinking in surprise through his thick glasses. “As you may’ve heard, I’m running for sheriff, and I’m trying to knock on every door in Forks County. And now it’s your turn.”
The paperboy had moved on to the next duplex. Banks looked at Kevin appraisingly. “You okay?”
“Just got back from D.C. Bad airline food,” Kevin essayed.
“They tell me it’s pretty bad,” Banks said. “Speaking of which, mind if I use your bathroom? Too much iced tea.”
“Sure,” Kevin said.
“I already know the way. All these duplexes are the same,” Banks said. He entered the duplex, seeming to nearly fill the doorway, and found his way back. Kevin heard a clattering sound and a muffled curse. When the deputy came out a minute later, he looked sheepish. “Knocked your glass and your crackers into the sink,” he said. “I owe you.”
“Don’t worry about it.”