here to do a surgical residency under Fletcher. He’s one of the best, you know. Was one of the best, I mean. I’d heard he was a tough guy, real hard to get along with.”
Zitin leaned over behind him, picked up the coffee cup. “That’s not news to you, though, is it? I just figured if you can survive med school, you can survive anything.”
“I always heard that was true.”
“Usually it is. But not in surgery. Surgeons are weird. They’re gearheads, really. Highly specialized, technically oriented, with a surprisingly limited knowledge of general medicine and no insight into what it means to be human. They’re not very pleasant to be around.”
“And you want to be one.”
He thought for a moment. “Yeah, I do. With all the drawbacks, there’s nothing like it. You cut into a human body, use your skill and your knowledge, and sometimes your balls, to make a human body determined to malfunction work properly again. My father was a surgeon. He was a lousy father, probably a lousy person. But he was a great surgeon, a real miracle worker. I’ve wanted it ever since I was a child.”
“Means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”
“Everything, almost.”
“What was it like for you when Conrad Fletcher threatened to take it all away?”
Albert Zitin reddened just a bit, the color rising quickly and then fading just as fast. “What are you asking me, Mr. Denton? Did I kill him, or did I want to kill him?”
“Maybe both.”
He looked down at his coffee cup, stirred the sludge with a bent spoon. “I’m in business to put people back together, not take them apart. I didn’t kill Fletcher. Then again, I might have one of these days, if someone hadn’t beaten me to it.”
“Where were you the night he was killed?”
“Right where you found me this afternoon. I’d come in off a seventy-two hour shift at six P.M. that evening. I ate dinner, went through some correspondence, and started watching a movie on television. Which I promptly fell asleep right in the middle of.”
“Were you alone?”
“Absolutely. And unfortunately.”
“No phone calls? Visitors?”
“Nothing. There wasn’t even anything on the answering machine. I woke up in bed about four A.M. with the television still going and turned it off. It was midmorning before I woke up again.”
I stared at him, figuring that he must know how weak an alibi that was. “What did the police say when you told them this?”
“They gave me the same look you just did. Then they went next door and talked to the couple who rent the other side of the duplex. They confirmed that my car was parked in the driveway exactly when I said I was home.”
“But they didn’t see you.”
“I don’t make much noise. Neither do they. We’ve met, pass pleasantries coming and going. That’s all.”
“What about Jane?”
“What about her?” he said, just a trace of defensiveness in his voice.
“Tell me how you feel about her.”
He laughed. “What are you, a therapist?”
“Hey, confession’s good for the soul.”
“It may be good for the soul, but it’s hell on your options.”
“If what you say is true, that you and Jane didn’t have anything to do with Fletcher’s murder, then what have you got to lose?”
He leaned back wearily in the chair. So fer, what I’d learned most about doctors in training is that they’re always exhausted. Zitin seemed to be thinking, perhaps choosing his words, maybe trying to figure out how he really felt.
“Jane Collingswood is an unusual woman,” he said. “I know that no other woman’s ever had the effect on me that she has. Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Denton. I’m no virgin. On the other hand, my priorities have always been elsewhere. I always figured that sooner or later, I’d find somebody, but after the internship and residency were over.”
“Then you met her.”
“Yeah, then I met her. I can’t keep my mind on anything anymore. All I think about is her. I think this is what teenage boys feel when they get a first big crush on somebody. Only back when I was supposed to be taking care of all that, I was buried in a biology book.”
“Hormones have a way of catching up with us all,” I said.
“This is more than hormones. One of the few benefits of age is that you gain perspective on life, even if your experience in life’s a little limited. I’m very much in love with Jane Collingswood, and I haven’t the slightest idea why I’m telling you that. Maybe it’s because I know that nothing will ever come of it.”
“Don’t be too sure. Fortunately, women gain perspective as well. Part of that perspective is realizing that the true value of something often exceeds surface appearances.”
“Thanks a bunch, pal. What you mean is that I’m still worthwhile even if I’m no Mel Gibson.”
“So what’s wrong with that? I ain’t exactly going to win
“Well, all I know is she hasn’t given me a hell of a lot of encouragement.”
I stood up. My guts were starting to tell me that I was wasting my time with him. “Don’t give up, fella. People sometimes wait a long time to get what they want. Only makes it better when they do get it.”
“That’s what they told us in pre-med,” he said. “Yeah, I’ll wait for Jane. But I won’t kill for her. And I didn’t.”
I started toward the front door. “Yeah, Albert, I know you didn’t.”
Damn.
25
I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say that I truly wanted Albert to be the murderer. That would have made matters so much easier. I just couldn’t accept that Jane Collingswood was a killer; pretty girls don’t go around committing such nasty acts.
Right, and Tricky Dick was basically a good guy who got some bad advice.
I didn’t want to think LeAnn Gwynn had done it; I was too sorry for her. James Hughes couldn’t have done it, either; his father and my father were best friends.
As if that meant anything.
And Bubba Hayes was out, unless he killed Mr. Kennedy to throw me and everybody else off the track. Hey, now there’s a novel theory. Come to think of it, Bubba struck me as a guy who could do something sleazy like that.
Only he hadn’t, and I knew it. Five suspects: five people who couldn’t possibly have killed Conrad Fletcher. Only thing was, he was still dead. If everybody was innocent, then how’d he get dead? Maybe I did it in my sleep. Yeah, that’s it. They sneaked some drug into me in the emergency room that made me go flappers, drove me to kill on sight anyone who’d just had sex with a nurse.
Talk about desperate. I was so deep in reverie that I didn’t even swear or lay on my horn when the snooty blue-haired Belle Meade society matron in a maroon Cadillac Fleetwood pulled out in front of me onto West End and nearly drove me up on the sidewalk. I slammed on the brakes, scraped my tires against the curb for half a block, then went on without even giving the old bitch the Universal Sign Language Gesture of Disdain.
Maybe there was somebody I hadn’t found yet-some person in the hospital who had some yet undiscovered grudge, some private hatred, some unknown motivation for icing Conrad. Or maybe I was letting my instincts cloud
