Chapter 6 chapter Five

Graham was at Leeds' house again in the late afternoon.He went in by the front door, trying to avoid looking at the mess the killer had left.So far he's only seen documents, a bloody floor and some dead bodies - all after the tragedy.He already knew quite a lot about how they died, how they lived was his subject today. Then do a survey.I have a decent pair of skis in the garage that have been used a lot but are in good condition.There are golf clubs, and a mountain bike.Power tools are barely used.And adult toys. Graham pulled a wedge iron out of his golf bag and coughed as he struggled to pull the long shaft.The bag smelled of leather as he leaned it against the wall again.It was Charles Leeds's.

Graham "followed" Charles Leeds all the way into the house.Charles' hunting gear hung in the study.His collection of deluxe editions is neatly placed, the Swanniswani Anniversary Edition.Ellen's novels are on the shelf.Veronica's travel diary was open on the table. In the den closet was a good long grenade, a Nikon camera, a Burrex video camera and a projector. Graham, a poor detective who owned little but the most basic fishing gear, an old Volkswagen, and two bottles of Montrachet, felt a faint, inexplicable hostility toward these possessions. What kind of person is Mr. Leeds?A successful tax lawyer, a West Wolverhampton football club fan, with gangly limbs and a big smile, a husband with a slit throat who stood up and fought.

Graham followed Charles' shadow into the room with a strange sense of purpose.The interviews began with him "with his consent" to investigate his wife.Graham felt that Mrs. Leeds had attracted the murderer, and he was as sure of that as a chirping cricket would attract the fatal bite of the red-eyed poison fly. Then start investigating Mrs. Charlize. She has a small dressing room upstairs.Graham didn't look around as he made his way through the bloody bedroom.The room was yellow, and nothing seemed damaged except for the broken mirror in front of the dressing table.A pair of soft slippers lay on the floor in front of the closet, as if Mrs. Leeds had just taken them off.Her pajamas seemed to have been thrown carelessly on the shelf, and the closet was a bit of a mess, as if the mistress had many closets and didn't tidy them often.

Mrs. Leeds's diary was in a small dark purple velvet case on the table, the key was glued to the lid, and there was a list of records from the Police Material Section. Graham sat on a slender white chair and opened the diary casually: Mom's house on Tuesday 23rd December.The children are still asleep.Mom had glassed the outside porch, which I didn't like.Because it completely changes the look of the house.But sitting on the porch is still very comfortable, warm, watching the snow outside.How much more Christmas can Mom survive, juggling a house full of kids?I hope there are many more.

We had a hard drive all the way from Alexandria, and when we got to Raleigh it started snowing.We had to "crawl".I am exhausted from planning an itinerary for the whole family.On the outskirts of Chapel Hill, Charlie parked the car and walked out.He plucked several icicles off a branch and made me a martini.He walked back to the car in the deep snow with snowflakes on his hair and eyelashes. I love him so much.At that time, the feeling of love came spontaneously, as if something had been punctured, and there was some pain and tenderness. I hope the parka I bought him will fit him.If he gave me that ugly party ring, I'd be out of luck.Then I kick Madeleine's ass from behind.Someone told her to show off her rings to others, and it went on and on, and got four extraordinarily large diamond rings, the color of dirty ice lumps-but the ice on the ice hanging is so crystal clear.Sunlight poured into the car through the car window, and the ice melted in the wine glass, but it was still higher than the wine glass. Its cross-section formed a small spectrum under the sunlight, and my hand holding the glass had red and green colors. Halo, I can feel the warmth of light waves on my hand.

He asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I put my hands together and whispered in his ear, "I want to make love, little fool, as long as we can." The hairless part of the back of his head flushed instantly.He was always worried that the children would hear.Men do not believe that whispering can have privacy. The page is dotted with the ashes of the detectives' cigars. It was getting dark, but Graham was still looking at his diary, and he read about the Leeds daughter, Taos Lactene, and a false alarm caused by a lump in Mrs Leeds' breast in June.God, the kids are so young...

Three more pages later, the lump was found to be a benign tumor, which was easily removed. Dr. Janovy acquitted me this afternoon.We left the hospital and drove to the pond.Haven't been there for a long time.It seems that there is always no time to ask.Charlie chilled two bottles of champagne and we fed the ducks in the sunset.He stood by the water with his back to me for a while.I guess he was in tears. Susan said she was worried that we would bring her another penis when we got back from the hospital.Oh, it's finally time to go home. Graham heard the phone ring in the bedroom.The answering machine was activated. "Hi. I'm Volari Leeds, sorry I can't take your call right now. If you leave your name and phone number after the beep, we'll get in touch with you as soon as possible. Thank you."

Graham half expected to hear Crawford's voice after the beep, but there was only a dial tone.The other party hung up. He had heard her voice, now it was time to see her face.He went down the stairs to the study. In his pocket was a roll of Charles Leeds' "Super 8" photographic film.Leeds gave it to a small shop owner to have it developed three weeks before he was killed.He never got it back.Police retrieved the film after finding a receipt for the film in Leeds' wallet.Detectives looked at the footage along with family photos that were developed together, but found nothing.

Graham wanted to see scenes from the life of the Leeds family.The detectives showed Graham their projector at the police station, and Graham wanted to watch the film at their home.The police reluctantly let him take the film out of the police department's supplies department. Graham found the projector and screen in the study closet, put the film up, and sat in Charles Leeds' large leather chair to watch it.He felt something sticky on the armrest—the print of a child's hand, with a soft strip of wound dressing stuck to it.Graham's hands smelled of candy. It's a fun silent home movie with more imagination than most homemade movies.It begins with a dog, a gray Scotch terrier, asleep on the rug in the study.It is sometimes woken up by the movement of the filming, looks up at the camera lens from time to time, and then falls back to sleep.A shaky cut cuts to the dog still sound asleep.Then its ears suddenly stood up, got up and screamed, and the camera followed it to the door of the kitchen, where it stood expectantly at the door, with its short and thick tail dangling.

Graham bit his lower lip, waiting, too.The door of the room opened on the screen, and Mrs. Leeds walked in, carrying the non-staple food she bought in her hand.She looked at the camera and blinked and smiled, obviously surprised.With her free hand, she straightened her frizzy hair.She says something as she leaves the camera, and the kids follow behind with smaller bags.The girl is six and the boys are eight and ten. The younger boy is clearly a photogenic veteran, pinching and tugging on his ear.The camera is positioned high.According to the coroner's report, Mr. Leeds was seventy-five inches tall.

Graham is sure the clip was shot in early spring, because the children were wearing windbreakers and Mrs Leeds looked pale.In the mortuary Mrs. Leeds was healthy and dark, with the marks of her bathing suit. The next few scenes show two boys playing ping pong in the basement, and then young daughter Susan opening a gift package in her room, her tongue sticking out to lick her upper lip, opening the box intently, a lock of hair hanging down. Come down and hang over your forehead.She smoothed her hair with fat little hands, just as her mother had done in the kitchen. Behind it is Susan taking a bubble bath, curled up in the bathtub like a little frog.She brought a little shower cap.The camera pans down slowly, and the focus begins to blur, and it's clear that it's her younger brother.At the end of the sequence, the little girl screams silently at the camera, covering her tiny six-year-old breasts with her hands.Her shower cap was slanted over her eyes. Mr. Leeds' candid shots are simply unrivaled.He startled Mrs. Leeds, who was in the shower.The shower curtain bulged and twisted like an amateur theatrical stage curtain.Mrs. Leeds put her arm over the shower curtain and held a large bath sponge.The final shot of the frame is covered in soap scum. The short ends with Norman speaking on television, followed by a wide shot of Charles asleep, snoring in the chair Graham now sits in. Graham stared at the blank cursor in the rectangle above the screen.He likes the Leeds family.Looking at their figures in life, he felt sad for what he saw in the mortuary.He felt that the murderer who visited their home might have liked them too, but he liked them better the way they were now. Graham's hair was up and his mind was dull.He swam in the hotel pool until his legs went numb.Coming out of the water he had only two thoughts on his mind: a Tandoori Martini and Molly's kisses. He made himself a plastic martini and called Molly. "Hello, leader." "Hey honey. Where are you?" "In a nasty hotel in Atlanta." "Has it improved?" "Not much progress yet. I'm lonely." "me too." "I'm horny." "me too." "Tell me what are you doing?" "I had an argument with Mrs. Hoppler today. She has a big whiskey spot on her dress and wants to change it. She must be wearing a dress to JCI or something." "Then what did you say?" "I told her it wasn't like that when I sold her the dress." "What did she say?" "She said she's never had trouble returning items at my store, which is probably one of the reasons why she doesn't buy from other stores but from me." "Then what did you say?" "Oh, I said I was upset because Will was like a big chump talking on the phone." "Oh, is it?" "Willie is alright, he reburied the turtle eggs that the dogs dug out. Tell me what you're doing." "Read reports and eat junk food." "There are still a lot of brains to think about, I guess." "Yes." "May I help you?" "I'm not sure about anything, Molly. I can't find enough information. No, there's too much information, and I haven't analyzed it enough." "Are you going to be in Atlanta any longer? I'm not rushing you home, I just want to know." "I don't know yet. I'm afraid I'll be here for at least a few more days. I miss you." "Do you want to talk about sex?" "I don't think I'll be able to take it. I think we'd better not do it." "What are you doing?" "Talk about sex." "Okay, but you don't mind if I think about it?" "not at all." "We've got a new dog." "Oh no." "Looks like a cross between a Basset Hound and a Pekingese." "very nice." "Its testicles are huge." "Never mind its testicles." "But they hang almost to the ground. He has to draw them back when he runs." "It shrinks back." "It can retract, you don't know." "I know." "Can you shrink yours?" "I think we're not far off that topic." "so what?" "Well, if you want to know that much, I shrank once." "when?" "When I was little. I had to cut through a length of barbed wire in a panic escape." "why?" "At that time, I was holding a watermelon that I didn't grow." "Are you running? Who's chasing you?" "A swineherd I knew. His dog barked first, and he sprang out from where he lived, brandishing a fowling gun. Luckily he had to go through a square hedge of jalapenos, so he just ran and frightened me." "Did he shoot you?" "At the time I thought he fired the gun, but the pop I heard was probably from my crotch. I never quite figured out what was going on." "Have you cleared the guardrail and opened up the escape route in advance?" "Of course, and it's pretty good." "Criminal thinking. You have it at such a young age." "I don't have criminal thoughts." "Of course you didn't. I was thinking about painting the kitchen, what color would you like? Will? What color would you like? Are you listening?" "Listen, oh, yellow. Let's paint yellow." "Yellow doesn't suit me. I'll look green at breakfast." "Then blue." "Blue is too cold." "You've got a lot of shit going on, I don't even care if I get brown... oh no honey, I think I might be home soon and we'll go to the paint store and get some flakes or something, shall we? Maybe again Buy some handles or something?" "Okay, let's get some new handles. I don't know why I'm telling you this. Will, I love you, I miss you, and you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. I know it's not easy for you. I'm here, I will always be at home waiting for you, no matter when you come back. Or, I can find you, anywhere, anytime." "Dear Molly, my dear Molly. Go to bed now." "Ok." "Good night." Lying on the bed with his head in his hands, Graham imagined having dinner with Molly.What I ate was Longbei crab and dry white wine, with the salty sea breeze and the smell of wine.But he found fault in the chat again, it was terrible.Just now, because of a serious "criminal thinking", he and Molly were in a hurry.How stupid. Graham found Molly's interest in him difficult to explain most of the time. He called police headquarters and left a message for Inspector Springfield to say he would be on the field duty each morning.There was really nothing else he could do. He fell asleep on the strength of the gin.