Whiteside had claimed.
Where had Peter come upon such a tale? Who had fabricated it for him?
Laura returned the passport to its drawer. She piled the other papers and documents upon it so it looked undisturbed. She turned off the light in his study. She climbed the stairs and walked through the dark hall to the bedroom.
In her mind, Peter Whiteside was still talking to her: 'Facts, Laura, facts! My office deals in facts!'
In her mind, she answered him.
Facts: the man who had entered and left St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Liberty Circle several minutes earlier was tall, angular, had a hint of a foreigner about him, and moved in and out of shadows with considerable ease. Like Marley's ghost, she reckoned, he was not an undigested clot of mustard. He had been there.
More facts, as she entered her bedroom: she loved her husband. She had personally inspected his passport. He had never been to the Soviet Union and it was preposterous that he was a Communist agent.
Laura walked quietly back to the bay window. It was 2:35 A.M. She sat down for a moment and loosened the cotton robe. She looked out the window and all was still.
Sleepily, Stephen spoke. 'What are you watching?' he asked.
She looked back to him. 'I thought you were asleep,' she answered.
'Half asleep. I heard you coming up the stairs. Are you all right?'
She rose and returned to the bed. She untied her sash and slipped out of the robe.
Naked, she stood near the light from the window intentionally so that he could see and admire her. She took care of her body and kept her figure. She wanted Stephen to know it was for him.
She saw his eyes open appreciatively. 'What were you watching?' he asked again.
'Someone went into your church,' she said. 'To say a prayer, I imagine.'
There was a slight pause, then he answered, 'Happens all the time,' he said. 'Funny little town. People can't sleep. Get up, take a walk. Church is the only thing open.'
Sleep hung heavily in his voice. 'They say a prayer, go home, go to bed. St. Paul's is a public service.' Another slight pause and: 'I love to look at you without your clothes.'
He reached to her and slipped his hand between her legs, cupping it behind one trim thigh. He gently pulled her back to him, caressing her from the top of her leg to the buttock.
'As long as we're both awake,' he said, 'and as long as we're together again..'
She sat on his side of the bed and then was beside him, her flesh to his, as he kissed her.
'You don't have to talk me into anything,' she giggled. “I’m your wife, remember? Saying 'no' isn't allowed.'
TWENTY-TWO
Cochrane turned predatory upon tiny Mr. Adam Hay, the archivist in the Bureau's musty attic. It began on Wednesday, shortly after nine when Mr. Hay found Cochrane lounging in the small chair near the east file cabinets. Mr. Hay froze when he saw Cochrane, then turned a sour expression upon him and closed the door.
'Morning, Adam.' Cochrane had a knee up, folded into his hands, and was rocking slightly in the only chair in the room.
'What do you want?' Mr. Hay answered.
Cochrane motioned to two cups of hot coffee and a tray of fresh doughnuts. 'I thought we'd review old times.'
The dwarf looked at the food as if it were poison.
'What do you want?' he asked again.
Cochrane got to his feet and ambled through the room, glancing at a file here, a file there, picking up a document, looking at it and discarding it. Mr. Hay eyed the doughnuts. 'I grew nostalgic for the time I spent up here, Adam,' Cochrane said. 'You know they reassigned me to Baltimore. Banking fraud. Then they brought me back. I have an office downstairs.'
'Bully for you.'
Cochrane took a doughnut and held the tray out to Mr. Hay. The dwarf selected a doughnut. The dwarf munched.
'I remember certain things from when I worked up here,' Cochrane said. 'The lively conversation, the way the days passed so quickly, the sheer, unbridled inspiration of dealing with… all this.' Cochrane motioned toward the files.
'Cochrane, get to the point.'
'I remember in particular,' Cochrane recalled carefully, 'a funny little-you'll excuse the terminology- mannerism of yours. Two, in fact. You used to study the racing form at noon. Hoover goes to the races, too, you know. Were you aware of that?'
'I've seen him at Pimlico. On weekends.'
'Then there was that second mannerism of yours,' Cochrane said, moving closer. The dwarf slipped into the chair. Cochrane stalked him like a panther. 'And this one was the truly endearing one, Adam. When requests came up here for specific files, even those to be redtagged and sealed, you used to open them up, sit there at your desk,' Cochrane motioned with his head, 'and read them. Start to finish.'
Mr. Hay was getting the point. 'I don't know what you're talking about,' he countered.
'I think you do,' Cochrane said. 'Further, you have a photographic memory.'
'You're wacko, Cochrane. You got your balls slammed in the bank vault once too often.'
Cochrane leaned forward onto the arm of Mr. Hay's chair. He menaced the little man. 'Otto Mauer,' said Cochrane. 'The file was requested from this office last week. It got redtagged. I'm betting you looked at it.'
'Maybe,' fretted the dwarf. 'Maybe not.'
'Now, you need recall only two things. I want Mauer's new name. And I want his location.”
The dwarf looked petulantly at Cochrane. 'Get the file from Lerrick. Or Wheeler. Or ask Hoover, himself,' he retorted.
'I want the answers from you. You may whisper them in my ear. Or inscribe them on a piece of paper.'
Cochrane leaned over the smaller man. Mr. Hay's eyes raged. 'Go piss up a rope, Cochrane,' Mr. Hay snapped. Then he stamped with all his eighty pounds on Cochrane's left foot, catching the instep cleanly with the heel of his shoe.
A searing pain shot through Cochrane, exploding upward from the foot. The archivist burst from the chair and took up a defensive position on the other side of a table, a letter opener clenched in his paw.
'Don't come near me, Cochrane,' Mr. Hay instructed. 'Pull my whiskers again and there'll be bloodshed, I swear it to you.'
Cochrane held his temper and looked at his adversary. 'Obviously,' Cochrane concluded, 'you need more time to think.'
At lunch that same day Mr. Hay fled to a park bench across the street from the White House. The archivist sat undisturbed, opening a liverwurst sandwich and a thermos of iced tea, for a full and glorious minute and a half before Cochrane appeared from nowhere and sat down next to him.
'Mauer's new name, Adam. Plus town and state,' Cochrane said simply. 'That's all. Then we'll be friends again.'
Mr. Hay choked down his sandwich and could barely concentrate on his racing form. He gulped his tea and fled into the noontime crowds on Connecticut Avenue, then was horrified to see, upon his return to his seventh-floor archives, Cochrane lounging again in the small chair.
'The name. The town. The state,' Cochrane repeated as if it were a catechism.
The dwarf was rattled, but compensated. 'Blow it out your ass, Cochrane!' he yelped.
Cochrane sighed. 'If the Chief could hear your language, Adam.. .' Cochrane shook his head in disappointment.
Cochrane brought an hour's worth of work with him, reports from urban police chiefs in the East. He tried, as he ferreted through several dozen homicide cases, to link something with the Billy Pritchard slaying. He found
