crime.
Nanci was out when Mike, Ducci, and April returned from the ME's office only a few blocks uptown. Mike picked up the skull on Ducci's guest chair and examined it briefly before setting it on the desk. The skull sitting there the last time Mike had visited Dust and Fiber had had a bullet hole in it and buck teeth with many cavities. This skull had no bullet hole and perfect teeth.
'What happened to Roberto?' Mike asked, meaning the old skull.
'Someone stole him. He was a gift, you know, from the Guatemalan police.' Ducci's slicked-back, shiny black hair did not move as he shook his head sadly at what the world had come to. Then he sank into his desk chair. In a dark suit, black-and-purple silk tie, blue shirt with white collar and cuffs, Ducci was an anomaly. His mouth was small and puckered with concern. His face was round and unlined. Except for the winged eyebrows flecked with gray, he still looked like the choirboy he'd been forty-five years ago. He opened the side drawer of his desk that was filled with Snickers bars and took three out.
'How about some lunch?' He offered the first to April. She shook her head, still very quiet.
'Queasy?'
She shook her head again. Just not hungry. Mike gestured to the chair. 'Sit down.'
'So who's this?' he asked about the new skull.
'I think she's Asian, look at that set of teeth. Now, there's a woman who didn't eat sugar. I think I'll call her Lola.' He peeled open the paper on one of the Snickers bars.
Mike's mustache twitched as the scent of chocolate suddenly mixed with the chemical and death smells that recently had lodged in his sinuses.
Ducci pushed a candy bar across the desk. 'Come on, I'm paying.'
'Uh, no thanks.'
'You two. Can't enjoy a party.' Ducci took a huge bite of his and chewed happily. 'Don't ever say I don't buy you lunch,' he said with his mouth full.
'If you bought us a
'Oh, come on, this is food. Take. It'll do you good.' Ducci finished the first bar, shrugged, started on the second.
Mike swallowed a rising tide of stomach acid. 'We've gotta go in a minute,' he muttered. 'Any thoughts before we leave?'
Ducci threw the candy wrappers in his wastebasket and brushed his hands together, cleaning up for business.
'Well, remember Rosa said the Liberty woman was struck just once. The site of the wound was barely above the clavicle. There were no hesitation marks on the neck or chest. Her injury was a direct hit to the carotid artery, and the victim bled to death. Probably fairly quickly.'
Ducci put his hand to his mouth and rubbed his pink lips with his fingers. 'We're still drying out her stuff. I haven't even got all his things. So it will be a while before I've done my analysis. The thing is, I can't picture what happened.' Absently he stroked Lola's uninjured skull.
Mike sucked on his mustache. 'No hesitation marks. So she wasn't threatened or tormented. No bruises, nothing under her fingernails or his. So neither fought back.'
'Maybe there wasn't time,' Ducci murmured.
'Maybe they weren't afraid,' Mike said. He glanced at April again. She wasn't talking.
'Someone they knew.'
'Yeah. Quite possibly it was someone they knew.' Mike tapped a pencil on the desk. 'April, are you all right?'
'Sure.'
'Mike, I get the feeling it was an accident,' Ducci said.
'Oh, yeah? How do you see that? You think a friend showed up, just happened to be carrying an ice pick. And this person who just happens to be carrying an ice pick meets his two pals coming out of the restaurant on a night when their driver was not waiting on the street. So what's the scenario, Duke? This friend greets them, then strikes the woman a lethal blow. And this blow occurs in a very special place—'
Ducci nodded, demonstrating the sites with his hands. 'Higher in the neck the thyroid and trachea cartilage is in front of the carotid artery. A person would have to slit the throat with a knife or a razor to get to it. Where this guy strikes is where the carotid artery has turned the corner and is in the very front, the most exposed place. No knife or razor was necessary.'
Mike scowled. 'Then how do you see accident here?' '
'It was too direct a hit, but not a professional hit. A professional wouldn't use an ice pick, too uncertain.
He'd have to get too close to the victim and would never go for one and not the other. Nah, this person struck once and took off, probably in terror. . . .'
'How about somebody saw him?'
'Well, that might be your man Patrice. But accident keeps coming to mind. You know what jealousy and rage is like. They lose their minds, keep stabbing away, killing the victim over and over. This just isn't that.'
'One homicide, one bum ticker. The DA's going to go crazy with this, huh, April?'
' Yes, he is,' she said, opening her mouth for the first time.
'You're looking for someone who knew them real well,' Ducci said.
'How about the wife?' April said.
'Why would she kill Merrill Liberty if her husband was already dead of a heart attack?' Mike said.
'Petersen didn't have the heart attack until the killer arrived. Maybe Daphne intended to kill him, but he died of shock before she got to it. Stranger things have happened.'
'Imagine the prosecution trying to prove that she scared him to death.'
'She'd scare me to death,' Mike muttered.
'Daphne Petersen still has the most to gain,' April pointed out.
'Ah, I don't know. What about Liberty? What's his profile? Is he a man of iron control—a person capable of studying medical books, planning a job like this, hitting her in just the right spot?' He shrugged again. 'He ever hurt people before, off the field, I mean? How cold a guy is he? Most of them kill the boyfriend first, and then the wife. They don't kill the wife and leave the boyfriend to die of a heart attack. A little too pat, somehow, isn't it?'
'I'm having someone do a profile on him.'
Mike turned to her in surprise. 'You didn't tell me that.'
'We haven't spoken recently.'
Ducci tapped his pencil. 'That's good. I'm wondering if maybe Liberty knew he didn't have to kill the boyfriend. Maybe Petersen was incapacitated already.'
'In the restaurant?'
'Yeah, in the restaurant. That would ring, wouldn't it?' Ducci said.
'That would ring.' Mike patted the skull.
'Doesn't ring to me,' April said.
'Why not?'
'You're talking about a big strong guy who could snap a neck like his wife's with two fingers. Why kill her with an ice pick? Well, I've got to go.' April grabbed her coat.
'I'll come with you. See you, Lola,' Mike murmured to the skull. '
18
O
n Monday Rick Liberty was taken to identify the body of his wife in the morgue but was not allowed in the room to touch her. The rest of that day and the next day he stayed at home, receiving his and Merrill's friends as was appropriate for one in deep mourning. He provided a splendid spread of food and drink, but did not dress up or make much of an effort to speak with his guests. No one but his partners seemed to expect it. On Tuesday evening he spent several hours reviewing his personal and family history with Jason Frank for the police. The interview required a great -.deal of reflection and forced him to think about things he had pushed out of his mind for a long
