'Read it again.'
She did.
'Except there's a door there somewhere if I could just find the handle to it. It wasn't some nut that killed her. It was someone with a reason, someone she knew. Someone who purposely made it look like Pinell's handiwork. And the killer's still around. He didn't die or drop out of sight. He's still around. I don't have any grounds to believe that but it's a feeling I can't shake.'
'You think it's Doug?'
'If I don't, I'm the only one who doesn't. Even his wife thinks he did it. She may not know that's what she thinks, but why else is she scared of what I'll find?'
'But you think it's somebody else?'
'I think an awful lot of lives changed radically after her death.
Maybe her dying had something to do with those changes. With some of them, anyway.'
'Doug's obviously. Whether he killed her or not.'
'Maybe it affected other lives, too.'
'Like a stone in a pond? The ripple effect?'
'Maybe. I don't know just what happened or how. I told you, it's a matter of a hunch, a feeling.
Nothing concrete that I can point at.'
'Your cop instincts, is that it?'
I laughed. She asked what was funny. I said, 'It's not so funny. I've had all day to wonder about the validity of my cop instincts.'
'How do you mean?'
And so I wound up telling her more than I'd planned. About everything from Anita's phone call to a kid with a gravity knife. Two nights ago I'd found out what a good listener she was, and she was no worse at it this time around.
When I was done she said, 'I don't know why you're down on yourself. You could have been killed.'
'If it was really a mugging attempt.'
'What were you supposed to do, wait until he stuck a knife into you? And why was he carrying a knife in the first place? I don't know what a gravity knife is, but it doesn't sound like something you carry around in case you need to cut a piece of string.'
'He could have been carrying it for protection.'
'And the roll of money? It sounds to me as though he's one of those closet cases who pick up gay men and rob them, and sometimes beat them up or kill them while they're at it to prove how straight they are. And you're worrying because you gave a kid like that a bloody lip?'
I shook my head. 'I'm worrying because my judgment wasn't sound.'
'Because you were drunk.'
'And didn't even know it.'
'Was your judgment off the night you shot the two holdup men?
The night that Puerto Rican girl got killed?'
'You're a pretty sharp lady, aren't you?'
'A fucking genius.'
'That's the question, I guess. And the answer is no, it wasn't. I hadn't had much to drink and I wasn't feeling it. But-'
'But you got echoes just the same.'
'Right.'
'And didn't want to look straight at them, any more than Karen Ettinger wants to look straight at the fact that she thinks her husband might have murdered his first wife.'
'A very sharp lady.'
'They don't come any sharper. Feel better now?'
'Uh-huh.'
'Talking helps. But you kept it so far inside you didn't even know it was there.' She yawned. 'Being a sharp lady is tiring work.'
'I can believe it.'
'Want to go to bed?'
'Sure.'
BUT I didn't stay the night. I thought I might, but I was still awake when her breathing changed to indicate that she was sleeping. I lay first on one side and then on the other, and it was clear I wasn't ready to sleep. I got out of bed and padded quietly into the other room.
I dressed, then stood at the window and looked out at Lispenard Street. There was plenty of Scotch left but I
