'A man thing.'
'Yeah. A man thing.'
'How about after he beats the crap out of him? Do you think he'll call us then?' Morelli shook his head. 'You don't know much, do you?'
'I know a lot.'
This brought a smile to Morelli's lips.
'Now what?' I asked.
'Julia Cenetta.'
Julia Cenetta worked in the bookstore at Trenton State College. We checked her house first. When no one answered we headed off for the college. Traffic was steady, with everyone around us rigidly obeying the speed limit. Nothing like an unmarked cop car to slow things down to a crawl.
Morelli entered through the main gate and looped around toward the single-level brickand-cement bookstore complex. We passed by a duck pond and a few trees and expanses of lawn that hadn't yet succumbed to winter blight. The rain had picked up again and was coming down with the boring relentlessness of an all-day soaker. Students walked head down, with the hoods pulled up on raincoats and sweatshirts. Morelli took a look at the bookstore lot, filled to capacity with the exception of a few slots on the outermost rim, and without hesitation parked in a no-parking zone at the curb.
'Police emergency?' I asked.
'You bet your sweet ass,' Morelli said.
Julia was working the register, but no one was buying, so she was standing hip against the cash drawer, picking at her fingernail polish. Little frown lines appeared between her eyebrows when she saw us.
'Looks like a slow day,' Morelli said to her.
Julia nodded. 'It's the rain.'
'Hear anything from Kenny?'
Color crept into Julia's cheeks. 'Actually, I sort of saw him last night. He called right after you left, and then he came over. I told him you wanted to talk to him. I told him he should call you. I gave him your card with your beeper numbers and everything.'
'Do you think he'll come back tonight?'
'No.' She shook her head for emphasis. 'He said he wasn't coming back. He said he had to keep a real low profile because there were people after him.'
'The police?'
'I think he meant someone else, but I don't know who.'
Morelli gave her another card with instructions to call him anytime, day or night, if she heard from Kenny.
She looked noncommittal, and I didn't think we should count on much help from Julia. We went back out into the rain and hustled to the car. Aside from Morelli, the only piece of cop equipment in the Fairlane was a recycled two-way radio. It was tuned to the police tactical channel and the dispatcher relayed calls between bursts of static. I had a similar radio in my Jeep, and I was struggling to learn the police codes. Like all other cops I knew, Morelli listened unconsciously, miraculously processing the garbled information. He turned out of the campus, and I asked the inevitable question. 'Now what?'
'You're the one with the instincts. You tell me.'
'My instincts aren't doing a lot for me this morning.'
'Okay, then let's run down what we have. What do we know about Kenny?' After last night we knew he was a premature ejaculator, but that probably wasn't what Morelli wanted to hear. 'Local boy, high school graduate, enlisted in the army, got out four months ago. Still unemployed, but obviously not hurting for money. For unknown reasons he decided to shoot his friend Moogey Bues in the knee. He got caught in the process by an off-duty cop. He had no priors and was released on bond. He violated his bond contract and stole a car.'
'Wrong. He borrowed a car. He just hasn't gotten around to returning it yet.'
