“I remember they were both shot to death. At different times. Both ruled accidental.”
“There’s a difference between a ruling and the truth.”
“Not to me,” I said.
“There is to me. If you killed them.”
I didn’t see much point in responding to that. Even without the advice of counsel.
“Should I be seeing if Jackie’s free for the morning?” I asked.
“Not as long as we’re just talking here.”
“If that’s what we’re still doing.”
Ross lit another cigarette off the stub of the one he’d half-smoked. Then he nodded.
“That’s all we’re doing,” said Ross. “Shouldn’t make you nervous. An innocent man has nothing to be nervous about.”
“Lots of things make me nervous. Loud noises, lousy drivers, good intentions. The world’s loaded with hazards, even when you have nerves of steel.”
“Did you know I did ten years in Homicide in the City?” he asked me, genuinely curious.
“I didn’t. I thought you put in your whole time in Southampton.”
“While you were living large in Connecticut, rollin’ in corporate perks, I was swimming in a proverbial sewer of depravity and despair.”
“I’m glad I missed that proverb,” I told him.
“Didn’t like it. Not one little bit. Scared all the time. Every day dead bodies and nasty killers. They’re a type, you know. A sub species.”
“Really.”
“Yeah. That’s what I decided. Wired different.”
“Head full of twisted pairs,” I said.
He liked that.
“See, that’s the kind of joke I like. I wish I could do that.”
“So you did some genetic research. Identified this subspecies.”
“Nothing clinical,” said Ross. “Just observation. And a little reading.” He poked his cigarette at my face. “They tell you it’s in the eyes. And the attitude. Confident. But a little paranoid. And a hair-trigger temper that goes off over nothing. All calm and normal and then, bam, in your face.”
“Maybe you should’ve taken abnormal psych. Probably had that at Cornell, too.”
“Or maybe mechanical engineering. Like you had at MIT. Pretty fancy training for a carpenter.”
“Lot of the same principles. Not as much of a paycheck.”
He seemed to like that, too. It began to feel like I was only there to provide entertainment. Some diversion from his daily routine. It occurred to me that he was bored. That his brain was itching for a little engagement, something to put a load on the circuitry.
“Look, Ross,” I said, “you’re the only one here making any money with all this talk. I can only make it on the job. So you need to either tell me what sort of dance we’re dancing, or let me get back to work.”
He sat way back and gripped the arms of his chair as if to stop them from wrapping around his chest.
“Sure, Sam. Go,” he said, magnanimously. “Sorry to take you away from the job. Which I’m assuming you’ll be on for another few weeks.”
“Something like that.”
“No vacations planned?” he asked.
“No. I never go anywhere. No reason to.”
That pleased him.
“Good,” he said. “That’ll help.”
“Help what?”
“To know where you are.”
I left him sitting at his desk, watching me leave, his eyeballs fixed on the back of my skull. I’d only made it halfway through the open squad room when Sullivan came in from the other side. He had his sunglasses on, but you could still see the frown underneath. He had a Southampton Town Police baseball cap on his head and his shield hanging around his neck. Under his arm was a plastic bag, stapled shut with an official-looking tag covered in numbers and text scribbled with a magic marker.
“What the hell, Sam,” he said to me by way of greeting.
“Ask your boss. He’s the one who dragged me in here.”
“You give a statement?”
“Why would I have to do that?” I asked him. “You gonna tell me what’s going on?”
The men and women distributed around the squad room looked up from their computer screens and over the tops of their cubicles—unabashed curiosity a foible of the professionally vigilant.
Sullivan switched the plastic bag from one armpit to the other. When he did I could see what he was carrying—a heavy construction stapler, the kind you swung into the work like a hammer. It had an orange handle.
“Look familiar?” he asked me.
“I got one. Used it to install the fiberglass in my addition.”
“Somebody used this one to staple Robbie Milhouser’s scalp to his brain.”
“Not in the design specs, but adaptable to the purpose,” I said.
“We found it in the dune grass lining the Peconic. Easy tossing distance from Robbie’s body. Lousy with forensics. Hair stuck in the mechanism. Smooth handle. Still has a plastic UPC sticker. Very traceable. We’ll know who bought it, where and when. Big Brother, he’s watchin’, man.”
“Then have Big Brother tell Ross to get off my ass.”
“Can’t do that,” he said. “I’m recused.”
“You can’t be recused if you’re investigating the scene, Joe.”
“Okay, not fully. I mean from talking about you. Or talking to you, for that matter. I’m only dealing with the facts.”
“You’re talking to me now.”
“Not for long. Veckstrom’s the lead guy. Lionel Veckstrom. Ten years in plainclothes. I got, what, ten months? Even if I didn’t know you, Veckstrom’s the lead guy.”
“Give him my congratulations.”
“Not one to fuck with, Sam. I’m not joking with you.”
“That’s good. I never joke.”
He held up the plastic bag.
“I’m not gonna find anything to not like on this, am I?”
“Maybe a little rust,” I said, trying to see the tool through the plastic bag.
“Right. Laugh all the way to life without parole,” he said, then brushed past me, which was good because I really wanted to get out of there and back to the job site to retrieve what was left of the workday. I patted his bulky shoulder as he slid by and headed for the door. Officer Orlovsky watched grimly as she buzzed me back into the outside world.
On the way back to the Edelstein job I stopped for coffee at the corner place and used the pay phone. Jackie Swaitkowski didn’t answer, but I left her a message. I was getting used to talking to machines. I didn’t have one myself, but I sympathized with the principle. I never liked the imperative of a ringing phone.
On the way back to the car, I saw a heavy-lidded guy with a two-day beard and a young woman park their black Range Rover dangerously close to the Grand Prix. I waited for the woman to get out, which she was only able to do by wedging her door hard against the side panel of my car and squeezing herself through the narrow space. She was wearing a purple leather jacket, skintight blue jeans and spiked heels. She didn’t notice me watching until she was at the sidewalk.
“Can you ba-leeve the soize of that stupid thing?” she asked me, looking back at the Grand Prix.
I had noticed that before, but the sheer inertial force of the ten-ton door was brought home to me as I slammed it into the Range Rover a dozen times to make a big enough indentation to allow me to slide onto the driver’s seat entirely unimpeded. I don’t know why Detroit thought they needed such heavy-gauge sheet metal in those days, but it did come in handy sometimes.
