It had cleared up outside. A warm summer wind had blown away the storm, leaving behind a
beautiful starry night. Dutch, Stick, and I drove back to the park in silence, each of us in his
own way trying to make sense out of what appeared to be a senseless holocaust plaguing
Doomstown.
There was still a light fog hanging over the Quadrangle, like a wisp of cloud, but I could see
across it to Warehouse Three, on the opposite side. Cobblestone walkways crisscrossed the
park like an asterisk, intersecting at its centre. One of them dissected the park and ran straight
to the river?s edge; another ran between the bank and Warehouse Three.
Plainclothesmen and uniformed cops were still examining the scene and had extended their
yellow control ribbons around the entire park.
Raines had met his assailant about halfway between the back of the park, where Dutch?s ear
witnesses were searching for the lost necklace, and the river. I stood next to the chalked form
on the walk and looked back and forth. Chip and his fiancee had been less than thirty yards
away when Raines was shot.
“I wonder what direction Raines was walking in and where he was going,” I mused aloud.
“His Mercedes is parked down behind the bank,” Stick offered.
I walked the fifty yards or so down to the river?s edge. What had once been a dock had been
converted into a small fishing pier. The dark river swirled past its pillars, gurgling up small
black whirlpools. The river walk ran from River Road, where it turned and coursed up an
embankment to the highway above, along the river bank, and behind three warehouses that
had been converted into office buildings.
“Findley Enterprises is in Warehouse Three, next to the park, and Costello and Cohen have
their offices in One. That?s three buildings down on the end,” Dutch offered.
I looked tip and down the river, then back toward the museum and the spot where Raines was
shot.
“Any ideas?” said Dutch.
I had a lot of ideas, all of them pure guesswork, none of them provable, and none I cared to
share at that moment.
“Not really,” I said. “How about you two?”
“Let?s say Raines parked his car over at the bank and started across the pork toward the
Findley office,” Stick said. “That young couple was twenty, thirty yards away, talking. The
killer must have heard them. Seems to me whoever did the trick had to know the park pretty
well.”
