The Prettiest Feathers (20 page)

“What else can you tell me about Paul Wolf?” I asked him.

“It’s been so long,” he said. “And no one was ever interested. I remember I wrote down things about him. I kept a notebook, but I haven’t seen that in years. I don’t even know if I still have it. I know he enjoyed inflicting pain. Oh, I provoked him. I stalked him—I guess that’s the word they use now. I asked for what he did to me. But I know he enjoyed
doing it. I felt like he wanted me to keep coming after him, so he’d have an excuse to do something else to me.”

“Do you remember where he was from?”

“I want to say up north somewhere, but I’m not sure. My girlfriend was from Vermont. That may be why I want to say that.”

“What about other people who knew him?”

“He was a loner. If he had friends, I never knew it. He was premed but, like I said, he wasn’t much of a student. I don’t remember who told me that. He played games of chess in his head. No board. No pieces. Complete games. He’d tell people he could do this and get them to bet that he couldn’t. Sixty or seventy moves sometimes.”

“Did he have a job?”

“Not that I know of. He had a scholarship to begin with, but lost it.”

Again I thanked Chadwick and told him to call if he thought of anything else. He said he would.

Lane showed up just as I got off the phone. “Feel briefed?” I asked her.

“They’re going to do some of their magic down in Virginia and report back later. There’s a chance of this and a chance of that, but we can’t be sure of anything.”

“Well, they’re real busy making movies,” I said. “Got to sell the product.”

“We’re supposed to maintain an upbeat posture with the press. Put pressure on the killer. Make him think we’re getting close to him.”

“Lane, he knows we haven’t got shit. This guy is surreal. How many fucking identities does he have?”

“Willoughby wants us to start rating our leads,” she said, “using some kind of numerical system that’ll go into the computer easy.”

“Well, this guy does gobble ’em up like Pac-Man. Besides, we need a good computer game around here to break the monotony.”

“What about the Harvard Chadwick? You said you had more.”

“Lane, I’m gonna tell you something. But I don’t want to hear one word about my paranoia.”

Before I had a chance to tell her about Paul Wolf, Hanson and Dexter Willoughby walked up.

Right away, Hanson began giving Lane the bad news. “Detective Frank,” he said, “since the Bureau will be working these cases, we won’t be using any outside consultation. I told the lieutenant to send a fax up to your father to let him know we appreciate his assistance and to explain the situation. The Bureau has a suspect in the Albany cases. We’ll be working that angle, too.”

While Hanson was running his mouth to Lane, I had a chance to size up Dexter W. The dude was wearing hotshot shoes—real leather, with all those little curlicues punched in it. And they were small because his feet were small. Actually,
everything
about him was—well, not small, really, but dainty. He was neat in an undersized sort of way, like a miniature. And he was perfect. There wasn’t a single wrinkle in his suit or on his little pink face.

But on closer examination, I saw that Dexter Willoughby did have a flaw after all. His briefcase was too big. It looked like what I’d use for a weekend trip to the NCAA basketball championship. I figured he lugged his procedure manuals around in it.

“You have a suspect in the Albany cases?” Lane asked, but the two men ignored her.

Hanson finished saying his piece, then Dexter spoke up. Even his voice was dainty. “This is a complicated matter,” he said, in what seemed to be a signal for Willoughby and the captain to walk away.

Once they were out of earshot, I said, “Fucking profound. Somebody write that down.”

“What
suspect?” Lane said, though not necessarily to me. “If we’re supposed to work this case, it’d be nice to know who he is.”

“It’s a complicated matter,” I reminded her.

“I have to fax Dad.”

I turned back to my desk and stared at it. A single sheet of yellow, lined paper contained all the sense I was able to make out of the case so far. The rest of it was a question mark, and I had just started to ponder that when my intercom buzzed.

“Sinclair.”

“The methane probes were positive,” Lane said. “Looks like he had his own graveyard.”

“But he didn’t bury them all there,” I said. “Why?”

“Sounds like a question for Special Agent Dexter Willoughby.”

“He’s got his own suspect,” I told her, and clicked off.

And that’s why cases don’t get made. Nobody tells anybody shit, especially not when the feds are flocking around like vultures at a leper colony. Investigations have lives of their own. They’re reactive. You do all the shit the manual says—check this, cross-check that. Then some dude calls in and says he saw the boyfriend carrying a gun, leaving the crime scene two minutes after the shooting. So you react. You put all your resources into that lead. Turns out it wasn’t the boyfriend; it was a plumber. He wasn’t carrying a gun; it was his pipe wrench. It wasn’t two minutes after the shooting; it was two weeks before. And you’ve pissed away all that time and effort, but you do it again, with the next call.

Kojak solved them all. Even though Joe Friday talked like a computerized voice mail, he cleared ’em in half an hour. Always by the fucking book. It was a joke. TV was killing us. At least on
Homicide
some of them get left hanging, and the assholes who don’t like the show complain because it’s too realistic.

I felt bad for Lane. It was her first case as lead and here I was doing as little communicating as anyone else around the shop. She’d set all the right stuff in motion—analysis of physical evidence, neighborhood door-to-door, background information, a list of the latest wackos released from mental
hospitals and the prisons upstate—but none of it would mean shit until something flew in from left field.

The feds just made matters worse. Their presence pisses off the drones, puffs up the brass with self-importance, and shuts mouths. Willoughby had his own suspect. I doubted if he or Hanson would ever get around to briefing any of us who were doing the legwork. But hey, who gives a shit? They’ve probably got the wrong sucker anyway.

A
s soon as I arrived at the precinct on Friday, Hanson motioned for me to come into his office, reminding me that he wanted us to have a talk.

“Let me grab a cup of coffee first,” I said—but he told me no, there wasn’t time. The feds were due any minute for a briefing on the Sinclair/Harris cases, et al., and I was to be the lead presenter.

“Have a seat,” Hanson said, closing the door behind me.

I settled onto the wooden chair farthest from his desk.

“There’s a delicate matter we need to clear up, Lane,” he began. “In a situation like this it’s standard practice. You know that. I have to ask you where you were from three o’clock Sunday afternoon until you reported to the murder scene Monday morning.”

“This is about Robert and me, isn’t it?”

“You and the deceased weren’t exactly friends.”

“You think I killed her. Is that it?”

“I just want to get your story on the record.”

“My
story?
Captain, you know where I was. I was on call from Friday night till Monday morning.”

“Dispatch doesn’t show you out on any calls all weekend, until the one Monday.”

I wanted to walk out, but I knew that Hanson would call it a female thing if I did. “There weren’t any calls,” I said.

“The problem is, Lane, the log doesn’t even show you dispatched to the Sinclair scene.”

“I called in when I got there.”

“But how did you get there? Who notified you?”

“You know who notified me. Robert did—when he found her.”

“We need to clear that up for the record. The polygraph will take care of it, and then we can put all this behind us.”

Hanson stood up, smiling—as if he thought we were the best of friends—and gestured toward the door. It was time for the meeting with the feds.

I walked out into the hall. I was a suspect. Someone was playing with my head. Robert was doing his own thing. And this case was going nowhere.

There was one bright spot in my morning. A fax from Pop was waiting in my in box. Once again he mentioned Robert. All I could do was hope that nobody else in the department had read it.