'Maybe it is a pattern kill. Maybe… they're all from the same neighbourhood, work in the same building, eat at the same restaurant…' Vail shrugged. He turned to the editorial pages.
'My intuition tells me this is not a pattern kill.'
'A hunch, huh?'
'A hunch is a wild guess. Intuition comes from experience.'
'Oh.'
Stenner stared at Vail for a moment, took a sip of coffee, and went on: 'They usually don't hide bodies. They leave them out where they can be found. Part of the thing.'
Vail ignored him.
'So what are the options?' Stenner went on. 'Three people in the landfill. Can we assume they're not there by accident?'
Vail did not look up from the paper. 'I'll give you that.'
'A burial ground?'
'For whom?'
'People who have been disposed of.'
'Murder for pay?'
'In the Thirties, Murder Incorporated buried their leftovers in a swamp in New Jersey. Dozens of them.'
Breakfast came and the conversation ended abruptly for fifteen minutes. Stenner carefully crunched up his bacon and sprinkled it into the eggs and stirred them together, then spooned the mixture onto his toast before attacking the meal with knife and fork. When he was finished, he wiped his lips with a paper napkin and finished his coffee.
'Eckling will screw it up as usual. He's looking for a quick break.'
Vail laughed. 'Sure he is. The heat's on him. This thing is going to make the national news. It's too bizarre not to.'
He finished and leaned back in his chair. 'Maybe it's a disposal service,' he ventured. 'You know? You kill your mother-in-law, make a phone call, they come pick up the baggage and dump it for you.'
'You seem to be taking this very lightly,' said Stenner. 'Maybe these are people caught up in some kind of gang war - maybe upscale gangs - the ones who go to church, wear ties.' He paused for a moment and added. 'Contribute to politicians.'
'Now there's a discomforting thought,' Vail said.
'It's a discomforting thing.'
'Abel, we have a lot on our plate. Eckling has a week before we get involved. Let's give him the week.'
'I just want to be ready.'
'I'm sure you will be,' Vail said.
Stenner thought a moment more, then said, 'Wonder what the Judge would've thought?'
For a few moments, Vail was lost in time, waiting for the Judge to stroll jauntily through the door with the
The Judge had had four loves: his wife, Jenny, Martin Vail, the law, and horse racing. But he had nearly been destroyed by two tragedies. His beloved Jenny, a demure Southern lady to whom he had been married for thirty-seven years, had been terminally injured in a car accident, lingering in a coma for a month before dying. The second tragedy was of his own design. To allay his grief, he had turned to a lifelong love of the ponies and had lost thirty thousand dollars to the bookies in a single month. His reputation on the bench literally lay in the palms of bookmakers. He had been saved by the devotion and respect of defence counsels, prosecutors, cops, newspaper reporters, law clerks, librarians, and politicians, all of whom respected his fairness and wisdom on the bench. They had contributed everything from dollar bills to four-figure donations and settled his debts. The Judge had quit cold turkey.
When he retired, he spent his days either as Vail's devil's advocate on cases or in the back of Wall Eye McGinty's horse parlour, which looked like the office of an uptown brokerage with a travelling neon board quoting changing odds, scratches, and those other bits of information that would be a foreign language to most humans. He always sat at the back of the room in the easy chair he himself had provided, legs crossed, his legendary black book in his lap, twirling his Montblanc pen in his fingers and studying McGinty's electronic tote board as he considered his next play.
