“How about Harry Raines for starters?”
“Oh my God!” she said, and the “God” stretched out for several seconds.
I walked into her office and dropped the Baggie-cased .38 on her desk.
“I?d feel better giving this to you than the Keystone Kops down in homicide. It?s the gun Donleavy
used to do the trick. We dug it out of the river about half an hour ago.”
“Harry Raines,” she said with awe, staring at the .38.
“Donleavy has an alibi but it won?t hold water,” I continued. She hadn?t caught up with me yet.
“Harry Raines?” she repeated, still staring at the gun, as though she expected it to say something back.
“You may have a little trouble proving premeditation,” I went on. “I don?t think the idea occurred to
him until about thirty minutes before he did it.
This time she heard me and cut me off in midsentence. “That?s plenty of time,” she said quickly.
“Hell, if he gave it five minutes? thought, that?s premeditation enough for me.”
“If you can make it work in court, that?s okay by me.”
“Why did he do it?”
I gave her the basic details as quickly as I could, including background on the pyramid accounts, the
Hollywood boxes, and Seaborn?s questionably benign role in the matter.
“So the motive was fear of exposure by Raines,” she said. “Seems to me he was on borrowed time,
anyway. Tagliani would have surfaced sooner or later.”
“By that time Donleavy hoped to have established such a strong power base of his own that he could
override his „error in judgment.? That?s what he likes to call it.”
“What do you call it?” she asked.
“Craft,” I said. “Besides, as I told Donleavy, murder leads to murder.”
“You mean he killed somebody else?” she asked, her eyebrows flirting with the ceiling.
“Accessory,” I said.
“Before or after the fact?”
“Both.”
“Who was it?”
“Ike Leadbetter.”
“Ike Leadbetter! Ike Leadbetter!”
“Yeah, you remember him, don?t you? He used to be chief of police.”
“Leadbetter?s death was an accident,” she said.
“Only because you couldn?t prove otherwise,” I told her.
She closed one eye and gave me her sternest look. “Don?t get uppity with me,” she said.
