at his face, Ness trying to bat the hands away, trying to get his own balance so he could use Lloyd's weight against him.
Then they were toppling behind the desk, onto the floor, and Lloyd sent a massive fist crashing toward Ness's face, but Ness slipped to one side and Lloyd's fist smashed into carpet; with an animal cry Lloyd lifted Ness by the lapels and hurled him against the window and glass crashed and the air of the outside was on him and even without looking Ness knew the street was fourteen stories below him.
Then Lloyd suddenly wasn't on him anymore, and Ness almost toppled out the window from lack of being held, and braced his hands on the sides of the window, cutting his right palm on the broken glass.
He dropped back into the room and saw that Dr. Watterson had pulled Lloyd away, was pulling him from behind, by both arms. Lloyd, his face red and distorted, was squirming under his father's grasp, but the father was strong and Ness took advantage of it and swung a hard right hand that seemed to take half of Lloyds face off.
Lloyd crumpled, the fight gone out of him, and began to weep; he tried to talk, but couldn't.
His father, holding on to him, but more gently now, more holding him up than holding him, said, 'I'm afraid you've broken his jaw.'
Angry, Ness ran to the adjoining door and flung it open.
The connecting room was empty. No Curry. No Chamberlin. What the hell…?
He went back and picked up the steak knife Lloyd had dropped, put it back on one of the trays. He found a clean napkin and wrapped his bleeding palm with it. Lloyd was sitting on the floor now, weeping, and his father was crouched beside him, examining the son's jaw clinically.
'What do you think now, Dr. Watterson?' Ness said.
'We'll handle this,' he said. Very softly. 'We'll handle this.'
Lloyd was trying to say something, but Ness couldn't understand what it was.
'Eliot! What in the hell happened in here?'
Ness turned and Chamberlin, followed by Curry, both of them stunned by the disheveled area by the window, entered quickly from the connecting room.
'Where the hell were you two?' Ness demanded.
Chamberlin shrugged. 'We heard you say you were going out for lunch. We figured we better get down to the dining room before you did.'
'We went down there,' Curry said, 'but you never showed.'
'No kidding. Well, I hope you boys had a nice lunch. Mine was medium rare.' Ness nodded to them to go back in the adjoining room, which they did, closing the door behind them.
Ness walked over to Dr. Watterson, but it was obviously not a time for further discussion. The father was cradling the son in his lap, stroking his head, trying to comfort him. Lloyd was still trying to speak, without any success; between the broken jaw, and crying like a baby, Lloyd just couldn't manage it.
Then suddenly Ness got it: he figured out what word it was that Lloyd was trying to form.
'Father.'
And Dr. Watterson must've understood it at the same time, because he began to cry, but not like a baby.
Like a father.
CHAPTER 19
The following Monday, midafternoon, Sam Wild strolled into a dimly lit, hole-in-the-wall bar called Mickey's, on Short Vincent Avenue, not far from City Hall. He had been told by Wanda, the safety director's secretary that her boss might be there.
And indeed he was, in a back booth, sitting quietly cradling a Scotch in two hands, with a slightly droopy-eyed look that told Wild his friend was half in the bag. Sitting across from Ness was Sergeant Martin Merlo, drinking nothing, speaking rather animatedly (for Merlo, especially), gesturing as if to make the quiet, quietly drinking man opposite pay him some heed.
Wild stood by them and said, 'If I'm interrupting something, fellas…'
Ness smiled faintly and said, 'Not at all,' and Wild slid in on the same side of the booth as the safety director. Merlo, whose solemn face seemed even more tortured than usual, clearly did not relish the reporter joining them, but was, after all, outranked.
Then Merlo, with a barely discernible sigh of disgust, leaned forward and continued to plead his case. 'This is no time to pull back on the investigation,' he said. 'We have the best clue we've had in four years.'
'Which clue is that?' Ness said.
'The quilt!'
Merlo was referring, Wild knew, to the many-colored, gingham-patched quilt in which had been wrapped the torso of the girl found in the lakefront dump.
'We picked up Elmer Cummings today,' Merlo was saying, 'a fifty-six-year-old junk man. We located him through a tip from a barber who saw the newspaper photo of the quilt and identified it as one he gave Cummings when the junk man came around his house, looking for rags.'
Ness said nothing.
Merlo, obviously exasperated by the lack of response, pressed on. 'Cummings says he sold the quilt to the Scoville Rag and Paper Company. We interviewed the owner, a William Blusinsky, and his six employees, today.'
'And?'
'Well, they say the quilt may have been stolen from a large quantity of material delivered to the warehouse last week.'
'Do Blusinky and any of his employees have criminal records?'
Merlo's confidence faded. 'No. They seem to be respectable workingmen.'
Ness sipped his Scotch. 'Sounds like another blind alley to me. Any luck tracing the girls gold filigree ring?'
Merlo stared bleakly at the tabletop before him. 'No,' he said. He looked up. 'But it's early yet.'
'And you've established that One-Armed Willie is not a viable suspect.'
Merlo nodded. 'He was in various jails at various of the key times. He's clean.'
'What about those two shantytown suspects? 'Ben,' and the guy with the jackknife who tried to jackroll Curry?'
'We haven't ascertained the identities of either- although Coroner Gerber feels the man whose remains were found in the dump fits Ben's description. Blond, five six, broad-chested, and so on.'
'More blind alleys.'
Merlo's expression was pained. 'I know, Mr. Ness, but that's no reason to pull the plug on the investigation.'
'I'm not pulling the plug on the investigation.' Ness swirled Scotch in its glass, studied the dark liquid. 'I'm just returning it to the homicide department. You're still assigned to the case, I understand.'
'Yes, but we had greater resources with your office behind the investigation. Detective Curry and I were developing into a good team. Now, damnit…'
'What?'
'He seems almost… evasive. Doesn't even want to talk about the case.'
Ness finished his Scotch. He waved for a barmaid to come over and ordered another, a double.
Then he said to Merlo, 'It's my feeling that the case is closed.'
'Not officially…'
'No. But after examining the evidence carefully, I feel the Butcher is, in all likelihood, out of commission.'
Merlo's frustration was palpable. 'You're not serious in saying that you think Dolezal was the Butcher…'
'It's the consensus of opinion,' Ness said with an easy shrug. 'The coroner has confirmed that all of the victims whose remains were discovered after Dolezal's death were very likely murdered before his death.'
'That's an iffy assumption,' Merlo said, 'and anyway, those bodies were dumped after his death.' Merlo
