He kept seeing the slender figure of that boy lying in the hospital bed, seeing the fear in his eyes, in the way he spoke without really answering questions. It wasn't right. He would have surmised through visual evidence that Boyd was hiding something, covering up for a gang that had almost torn the retired sergeant to shreds-and he had, until the first results came in and he saw he was wrong, another theory shot to hell like hundreds before it and the ancestor of hundreds more.
One kid. One victim.
Footsteps in the hall and he looked up in time to see a white-jacketed man stride past his open doorway.
'Hey, Ice!'
The footsteps hesitated and returned. A short man with wispy hair atop a constantly wistful face leaned against the doorframe and grinned. 'Such devotion, I can't stand it,' he said.
Verona lifted his middle finger, smiled over it, then used it to stab at a sheet of green paper. 'This thing here.'
Ice Ronson stretched without leaving his place. 'Right, Tom. It's a piece of paper.'
'The Boyd thing.'
'Okay. It's a piece of paper about the Boyd thing.' He snatched a stick of gum from his breast pocket and folded it into his mouth. Blew a bubble he sucked back before it broke. 'So?'
'So who did most of the work? I don't recognize the signature here.' He turned the sheet around and waited until Ronson crossed the room to stare. 'Christ, you guys can't even write your own names except on checks.'
'Hey, man, it's tough down there in the trenches,' Ronson said, taking a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from the same pocket as his gum. 'We deal in volatile chemicals, delicate measurements, knowing all the time a man's life may hang in the-shit, this is impossible! Why the hell don't you get a decent lamp, huh? A man could go blind.' He held the paper up toward the fluorescent light in the ceiling. 'Oh, yeah, it's Adam. He did this stuff.'
'Adam?'
Ronson sighed for the ignorance of the people he had to work with. 'Adam Hedley, don't you know him? Incredibly brilliant chemist wasting his time teaching high school. He likes police work, does this part-time when he ain't babysitting the brats. Y'know, he could get three, four times what he's making now and he doesn't? Stupid, if you ask me. The guy's a genius.'
Verona nodded. 'Nice for him. But even Einstein was wrong once in a while.'
'Name three.'
'Ice, look, this isn't right, okay?'
Ronson spread his hands. 'Tom, I said Adam did it.'
'Then he did it wrong.'
Ronson perched on the edge of the desk and shook his head. 'I may do it wrong, boss, but not Adam. He's a maniac. Every test gets done a zillion times, and he still wants us to send samples to the FBI, just in case he's goofed.'
Verona leaned back. 'Well, he's goofed this time.'
Ronson shook his head; Verona was declaring the impossible.
The detective sighed, took out a handkerchief and mopped his face. 'Ice, read it.'
Ronson shook his head; Verona was declaring the impossible, when he was done, he closed the folder. 'Interesting.'
'Interesting, shit!'
The lab man shook his head and took off his glasses, added another stick of gum to the first, and blew another bubble as he moved out into the hallway. Then he locked an arm around the frame and leaned back to peer in. 'I think,' he said, 'if Adam's right, and he probably is, you've got a problem, Dick Tracy.'
'The same to you, fella,' Verona said without smiling, and swiveled his chair back to the window, three fingers to his cheek, trying to imagine Susan listening to the music, hoping she was missing him as much as he missed her.
Then he glowered at the dim reflection in the pane and stood, took his coat down from the rack and walked out. He would take a car, ride around with the window down to clear his head, and maybe he would come up with a reason why there were no particles of wood found on Falwick's corpse.
And why there were no chips or gouges or strips missing from the club the Boyd kid had used.
Just before he reached the entrance he stopped, considered, and took the stairs down into the basement, to the room at the back, where the evidence was kept.
He unlocked the heavy iron door, locked it behind him, and moved through the stacks like library shelves. When he found the Boyd case he took down the cardboard carton and sat on the floor with the box between his legs. There wasn't much-shards of clothing in plastic bags, bits of grass and dirt, the branch with bags tied at both ends. The light was dim, only a single bulb overhead, but he held the branch close to his eyes and stared, shaking his head at the streaks of dark on the grey bark, at the heft of it, swinging it once and knowing that two or three collisions with a man's skull or shoulder would have shattered it.
But the Howler was dead, case closed, decreed by a relieved and gleeful chief who reported to a mayor whose first reaction was to wonder if he could declare a national holiday.
He stood, swung the club like a bat once more, and replaced it, replaced the box, and unlocked the door before switching off the light.
The kid didn't do it.
Goddamnit, that kid didn't do it.
Then he heard it-footsteps in the hall that curved away from him to the right. To his left it curved again, a circular corridor in whose center core was the boiler room. He waited, listening to the steam heat gurgling and hissing through the pipes bracketed to the low ceiling.
'Ice?'
The footsteps moved closer, slow, steady, and Verona felt his hand moving toward the gun holstered under his arm. He chided himself for the reflex, but didn't stop it when he saw the shadow growing on the wall.
It was indistinct and dark, and spread to the ceiling, bled onto the floor.
'Ronson, goddamnit, stop playing games!'
The footsteps halted, the shadow remained.
Verona felt behind him with his free hand and turned the heavy knob on the evidence room door. Forty-three is too old to be having hallucinations in the stationhouse, but he knew damned well that what he saw wasn't a man.
The footsteps began again, hollow and soft.
The shadow darkened, spread farther, form hidden in the dust that floated in the cold air.
The gun was out, the door was open, and any thought he had of running for the stairwell was erased when the shadow made a sound like an animal snorting, the footsteps grew louder, and the lights went out.
Verona whirled into the room, slammed the door and locked it; the gun was still in his hand when he pressed an ear to the iron, knowing he wouldn't hear anything, hoping he would be able to feel the vibrations should the intruder attempt to break in.
He backed away when he sensed something stopped on the other side, jumping when his shoulder struck a shelf, swearing when something pounded softly on the door.
There was no other exit, no windows, no air or heating ducts; no place else to go but stand against the back wall and listen to the pounding, listen to his heart, and feel the gun in his hand become slippery and warm.
Norman was talking with a reporter, Joyce was conferring with the mayor, and Don sat rigid in his seat, wishing they would all go away.
It seemed that no one could wait until the last note of the last piece had drifted into the sky before they were on him, wanting to shake his hand, kid him, or just stand by him so they could be in one of the pictures. He had squirmed around the first chance he got, but the Quinteros were already gone, and when he asked his father about Beacher's, he was told that it would be a better idea to get a good night's sleep. Don't try too much, Joyce had cautioned, not so soon after.
Don had agreed without more than token argument; a cloud had enveloped him, soporific, making it difficult for him to keep his eyes open, to keep his lips in a smile. At one point, just when he thought he was going to bolt through the crowd and head for home on his own, he caught Chris's eye as she walked by with a portly florid-faced
