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listened to their footsteps and
wondered how they'd turn out. You can tell a lot about a man by the way he
walks.
    "All
right. Next."
    "Next,
at approximately ten-fifteen, I heard footsteps coming down the walkway again,
in the same direction. I heard them stop at Aubrey's. I heard the door open.
Then, immediately after the door opened, or almost immediately, I heard a loud
thump, like something heavy hitting the floor. Then the door closed. Not a
slam, but... forcefully. Nothing for
a minute or two. Then, thumping on the floor again. It was like the first
thump, but continuous, like moving furniture or a fight or a struggle of some
kind. It lasted for maybe a minute. Then quiet again. Then footsteps going back
down the walkway toward the stairs."
    "Did
you look?" asked Merci.
    "No.
I was in the bath."
    "Did
you hear a gunshot, a car backfiring?"
    "Nothing
like that."
    "Did
you think of calling the police ?" asked Zamorra.
    Coates
looked at Zamorra with his wide gray eyes, then back into the fire. "No.
None of the noises I heard were alarming. None were loud or seemed to indicate
trouble. They were just noises. My policy, Detectives, my personal belief on
such matters is that privacy should be honored. Unless disaster is... well, you know, happening right in
front of you."
    "But
when you got out of the bath, you decided to go to her door?"
    "Correct.
When I got there—this would have been around ten forty-five, I saw her door was
open."
    Coates
sat forward, set his elbows on his knees, rested his head in his hands. "I
thought it was blood on the door. The door was open maybe ... six inches. I did not touch it or look past it. I
literally raced back to my home and dialed nine-one-one immediately. I didn't
know what to do with myself. I went back upstairs and looked at the door again.
I said her name, foolishly perhaps. I came back down here. I paced the floor
for what seemed like hours. The young officers arrived at exactly ten
fifty-six."
    Merci
watched Alexander Coates weep into his hands. Experience had taught her to keep
a witness talking and thinking instead of crying. Tears cleanse the memory as
well as the eyes.
    "You
did all right, Mr. Coates."
    "Did
I really?"
    "Absolutely.
Now, when you went up to number twenty-three the first time, was Aubrey
Whittaker's porch light on or off?"
    The
sniffling stopped. "On."
    "And
the second time?"
    "On
as well."
    "Did you hear
cars coming or going from the parking lot during this time?"
    "Yes. But
there's the Coast Highway traffic, so the sounds get mixed up. I can't really
help you there. You learn not to hear cars, after eighteen years on Coast
Highway."
    Half an hour later
they were almost finished with Alexander Coates. He said that Aubrey Whittaker
rarely had visitors that he noticed. He said that he and Aubrey sometimes
talked in the laundry room by the office, because neither worked days, so they
washed their clothes in the slow hours. She had gorgeous sad eyes and a sharp
sense of humor. She never mentioned irate boyfriends, stalking ex-husbands or
enemies of any kind. She was not, in his opinion, hard or mean-spirited.
However, in his opinion, she was alone and on a journey, searching for
something in her life she had not found yet. It was Coates's impression that
Aubrey was an escort of some kind. She drove a dark red, late-model Cadillac.
    Merci nodded at this
summation, again wondering her way into Alexander Coates. Years ago, a wise old
mentor had told her that putting herself in another's shoes would make her a
better detective and a better person. She had absolutely no knack for it, and
she didn't believe him then. She'd never seen a reason to try to understand
people she didn't like in the first place, which was almost everyone. But the
old guy, Hess, had been right: In the two years, three months and twenty-two
days he'd been dead, Merci had worked hard at this, and she'd learned a few
things she might not have learned otherwise.
    Such
as, if you spent eighteen