Page 154 of Hang on St. Christopher

I walked to Wilson’s house and slipped around the back.

I zipped my leather jacket and quickly scaled his back fence. Up the garden path, on the alert for dogs. No dogs. I took out my big lock pick kit and I was through the back door in under a minute. I now had eight hours or so until he’d be back, which would give me all the time I needed to figure out exactly who Mr. Wilson was, who he worked for, and what he was doing in Northern Ireland.

CHAPTER26

CHEZ MR. WILSON

The back door opened into a little room full of boots, outdoor clothes, a fly rod, and a landing net. I looked for a burglar alarm box, but there was no alarm. We were safe out here in the boonies—why would you need such a thing?

I took from my pocket the pair of latex gloves I’d bought at a local drugstore, and carefully put them on. I removed my shoes and left them in the mudroom. I walked into a back kitchen that had recently been remodeled. There were a dozen different boxes of pasta on the shelves, and homemade spaghetti sauce in the fridge. There was also what appeared to be a homemade cheesecake. Wilson was something of a gourmand.

From the kitchen, I walked into a formal dining room that had a large polished black ash table and chairs arranged beneath an ancient-looking silver candelabra. The silver had recently been polished, and there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere in the dining room. The dining room walls were painted sky blue, and hung on them were framed French railway posters of the 1920s. It was an attractive room but strangely characterless.

The adjoining living room also had several French railway posters, and a large television set with a video recorder underneath. Of more interest was a CD player with a large selection of CDs in a stack next to it. Wilson’s musical tastes perhaps left something to be desired: Phil Collins, the Eagles, Van Halen, Journey, ABBA, Air Supply—fairly mainstream stuff that did not really tax the musical imagination. Although after my experience in O’Roarke’s house, I found that I had become a little less tolerant of music snobs.

There was a bookcase in the living room, filled mostly with cookbooks, histories, and a few self-help texts about managing your time better. I flicked through a few of them, but no hidden letters or anything else of interest came out.

The next room was a sort of study, or perhaps a place for contemplation. A desk, a chair, a rug. On the wall was a large crucifix, and in a corner alcove there was a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Interesting.

Up a floor.

A bathroom at the top of the stairs, which revealed not much. Mr. Wilson used an electric razor and preferred brushing his teeth with Colgate. In a little stand next to the toilet were the current issues of theNew YorkerandGuns and Ammo—not a natural combination. This eclecticism intrigued me.

Five bedrooms upstairs, not the three I’d expected. Tardis-like, the house was bigger than you expected from the outside. Only one bedroom in use, though. No sign of wife, kids—anything like that.

The bedroom at the back of the house had been converted into an office. There was a balcony in this room, with a view across the Chesapeake to Kent Island. The office had a desktop computer and a black metal filing cabinet. The cabinet was secured with an ineffective little lock.

When I opened it, there was nothing inside.

When I turned on the PC, it was password protected. I tried to guess at passwords for a few minutes but had no luck. This was not my forte.

I checked in the office drawers and in other rooms in the house, but it slowly dawned on me that there was going to be nothing particularly personal at all in this house. Just as it was for Mr. Townes back in Carrickfergus.

I looked under the bed for a shotgun, but there was no shotgun, just a pair of slippers.

On the office desk there was another stack of books. A few recently published novels and one massive book on art criticism.

Jesus, had I gotten this case wrong after all? Had he killed Quentin Townes because he didn’t like the poor man’s paintings?

No.

The art book was coincidence or research or something. My theory of the case was correct.

I sat at the desk and opened the art book at random and read: “All the world has drained out of Rothko’s paintings leaving only a void. Whether it is the void as glimpsed by mystics or merely an impressively theatrical emptiness depends on one’s expectations. In effect, the Rothko chapel is the last silence of Romanticism.”

Huh.

Well I guess I learnedsomethingfrom this case.

Rothko. I’d have to look into him.

Behind me, a voice said, “Howdy.”

I turned around fast, and there was Wilson, pointing a suppressed Heckler and Koch MP5 at me.

“Okay, motherfucker, lie down on the floor and put your hands behind your back. I’ve just had a new carpet fitted in here and I don’t want to shoot you, but I will.”

I did as I was told. He handcuffed me behind my back, frisked me, removed my wallet, and tugged me to my feet.