'You said you trusted each other. Did she trust you?'
'What are you driving at?'
'Did she ever accuse you of having affairs with other women?'
'Jesus, who've you been talking to? Oh, I bet I know where this is coming from. Sure. We had a couple of arguments that somebody must have heard.'
'Oh?'
'I told you women get odd ideas when they're pregnant. Like food cravings. Barbie got it into her head that I was making it with some of my cases. I was dragging my ass through tenements in Harlem and the South Bronx, filling out forms and trying not to gag on the smell and dodging the crap they throw off the roof at you, and she was accusing me of getting it on with all of those damsels in distress. I came to think of it as a pregnancy neurosis. I'm not Mr. Irresistible in the first place, and I was so turned off by what I saw in those hovels that I had trouble performing at home some of the time, let alone being turned on while I was on the job. The hell, you were a cop, I don't have to tell you the kind of thing I saw every day.'
'So you weren't having an affair?'
'Didn't I just tell you that?'
'And you weren't romancing anybody else? A woman in the neighborhood, for example?'
'Certainly not. Did somebody say I was?'
I ignored the question. 'You remarried about three years after your wife died, Mr. Ettinger. Is that right?'
'A little less than three years.'
'When did you meet your present wife?'
'About a year before I married her. Maybe more than that, maybe fourteen months. It was in the spring, and we had a June wedding.'
'How did you meet?'
'Mutual friends. We were at a party, although we didn't pay any attention to each other at the time, and then a friend of mine had both of us over for dinner, and-' He broke off abruptly. 'She wasn't one of my ADC cases in the South Bronx, if that's what you're getting at. And she never lived in Brooklyn, either. Jesus, I'm stupid!'
'Mr. Ettinger-'
'I'm a suspect, aren't I? Jesus, how could I sit here and not have it occur to me? I'm a suspect, for Christ's sake.'
'There's a routine I have to follow in order to pursue an investigation, Mr. Ettinger.'
'Does he think I did it? London? Is that what this whole thing is about?'
'Mr. London hasn't told me who he does or doesn't suspect. If he's got any specific suspicions, he's keeping them to himself.'
'Well, isn't that decent of him.' He ran a hand over his forehead.
'Are we about through now, Scudder? I told you we're busy on Saturdays. We get a lot of people who work hard all week and Saturday's when they want to think about sports. So if I've answered all your questions-'
'You arrived home about six thirty the day your wife was murdered.'
'That sounds about right. I'm sure it's in a police report somewhere.'
'Can you account for your time that afternoon?'
He stared at me. 'We're talking about something that happened nine years ago,' he said. 'I can't distinguish one day of knocking on doors from another. Do you remember what you did that afternoon?'
'No, but it was a less significant day in my life. You'd remember if you took any time away from your work.'
'I didn't. I spent the whole day working on my cases. And it was whatever time I said it was when I got back to Brooklyn. Six thirty sounds about right.' He wiped his forehead again. 'But you can't ask me to prove any of this, can you? I probably filed a report but they only keep those things for a few years.
I forget whether it's three years or five years, but it's certainly not nine years. Those files get cleaned out on a regular basis.'
'I'm not asking for proof.'
'I didn't kill her, for God's sake. Look at me. Do I look like a killer?'
'I don't know what killers look like. I was just reading the other day about a thirteen-year-old boy who shot two women behind the ear. I don't know what he looks like, and I don't imagine he looks like a killer.' I took a blank memo slip from his desk, wrote a number on it.
'This is my hotel,' I said. 'You might think of something. You never know what you might remember.'
'I don't want to remember anything.'
I got to my feet. So did he.
'That's not my life anymore,' he said. 'I live in the suburbs and I sell skis and sweatsuits. I went to Helen's funeral because I couldn't think of a decent way to skip it. I should have skipped it. I-'
I said, 'Take it easy, Ettinger. You're angry and you're scared but you don't have to be either one. Of course you're a suspect. Who would investigate a woman's murder without checking out the husband?
