Aiden was sure that Louisa Cormier had simply cut the lock, wiped off her fingerprints, and thrown it on the firing range. Why hadn't she done the same thing with the bolt cutter or dropped it and the lock in the garbage?
They should have found it by now.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket and she answered it.
'Come into the lab,' Mac said. 'I found the bolt cutter.'
'Where?'
'Basement of Louisa Cormier's building,' he said. 'She had it lined up with other tools. Building maintenance man has a bolt cutter but he said this one isn't it.'
'She hid it in plain sight,' Aiden said.
'Right out of her fourth novel,' Mac said. 'Or should I say right out of Charles Lutnikov's first Louisa Cormier novel, only in that one it was a shovel.'
'Prints?'
'One,' said Mac. 'Partial. Good enough for a positive identification. It's Louisa Cormier's.'
'I'll be right there,' said Aiden, closing her cell phone and going in search of the two uniformed officers who were combing the area.
'I'm on my way to the hospital,' he said.
'Right,' said Aiden, who wasn't certain how she felt about confronting Louisa Cormier again. Aiden wasn't sure if the woman was cunning and manipulative or if she had simply been caught in a nightmare. Aiden Burn wasn't ready to bet on either.
16
A WHITE, SAND-PEBBLED BEACH hovered over Stella when she opened her eyes. She could even hear the rhythmic beating of something that may have been surf.
Stella hadn't had a vacation in, what was it, three years. She had never wanted one, had never wanted to get away. There was always a new case or one half finished.
The web of first waking passed in a second or two and she realized that the pebbled beach was the ceiling and the sound of the surf was a monitor whose thin tentacles adhered to her body.
Stella's mouth was dry.
She turned her head and saw Mac standing to her left.
'How…?' she started to say, but it came out as a painful incoherent crackle.
She coughed painfully and pointed at a white plastic pitcher and a glass on the table next to the bed. Mac nodded, poured water, removed the wrapping from a straw, and inserted it in the glass.
'Slow,' said Mac, holding the glass for her to drink.
The first sip burned. She had a slight retching sensation, but it passed and she drank some more.
'How bad is it?' she asked.
'You'll be fine,' Mac said. 'You blacked out. Danny and Hawkes brought you here. Hawkes's friend got you started on glucose and antibiotics. He found an expert on leptospirosis in Honolulu, called him and… here you are.'
'How long will I be here?'
'A few days. Then a few days at home,' said Mac. 'If you'd had a culture when you first started to get sick, you wouldn't have to be here.'
'I'm a workaholic,' she said with what she hoped was a smile.
Mac returned the smile. Stella looked around the hospital room. There wasn't much to see. A window to her left and one in a corner looked out at a red building across the street. On the wall was the reproduction of a painting she thought she recognized, three women in peasant dresses in a field, stacks of hay behind them. The women were leaning over to pick up something- beans, rice- and drop it in baskets on the ground.
Mac followed her eyes.
'Woman on the right,' said Stella. 'She's in pain. Look at the deformed C-shaped curve of her back from years of bending. When she stood up, she'd be in pain and bent over. She's not far from being unable to bend like that.'
'You want to run some tests on her?' asked Mac.
'Not unless someone kills her or she kills someone else,' said Stella, still looking at the painting. 'How old do you think the original painting is?'
'Jean Franзois Millet,' said Mac. 'The painting's called
Stella turned to look at him and said nothing.
'My wife had some prints of his work,' said Mac. 'One of the highlights of our trip to Europe was to see Millet's
Stella nodded. It was more information about Mac's dead wife than he had ever given up before.
Mac's smile was broader now.
'She saw beauty in that painting,' he said. 'And you see a woman with a medical condition.'
'I'm sorry,' said Stella.
'No,' said Mac. 'You're both right.'
'Mac,' she said. 'I know who killed Alberta Spanio, and it wasn't the Jockey.'
When Don Flack answered his cell phone, Mac told him what Stella had said.
'I'll go right there,' said Flack.
'You want backup?' asked Mac.
'I won't need it.'
'Anything new on Guista?'
'I'll find him,' said Flack, touching the tender area of his broken ribs.
Flack closed his cell phone and kept driving, but instead of heading for Marco's Bakery, he now headed for Flushing, Queens.
The temperature was up to fifteen degrees and the snow had stopped. Traffic moved slowly, and after almost four days of frigid snowstorm tempers were on edge. Road rage at a snail's pace was ever ready to break out.
Don checked his watch. The phone rang. It was Mac again.
'Where are you?' Mac asked.
Don told him.
'Pick up Danny at the lab. He has the crime-scene photographs and Stella just briefed him,' said Mac.
'Right,' said Flack. 'How is she doing?'
'Fine, doctors say she'll be back at work in a few days.'
'Tell her I asked,' said Don, signing off again.
Danny was waiting behind the glass doors wearing a thick knee-length down coat and a hat with flaps that covered his ears. He held a briefcase in one gloved hand and waved at Don with the other to let him know he was coming out.
As soon as he opened the door, his glasses clouded and he had to pause to wipe them with his scarf.
'Cold,' he said, getting into the heated car.
'Cold,' Flack agreed.
Danny Messer told Flack everything that Stella had told him on the phone as they drove to Flushing. Flack looked for holes, alternatives to Stella's conclusions, but he couldn't come up with any. He turned on the radio and listened to the news until they pulled up in front of Ed Taxx's house.
Taxx answered the door. He was wearing jeans and an open-collared white shirt with a brown wool sweater. He had a cup of coffee in his hand. The word DAD was in bright red with a blue border.
