As sometimes happened, a man was waiting just outside and pushed open the door while Holiday went around the bar. The man, a wiry Asian of some kind, was seated by the time the two men were face to face, a cocktail napkin down on the bar between them. 'Morning,' Holiday said. 'What can I get you?'
'How about a beer?'
'Bottled? Draft? We got Sam Adams and Anchor Steam.'
'Which one's colder?'
'Anchor,' Holiday said, naming the city's own brew. 'It's lived here longer so it's had more time to chill. But you sure you want cold today? There's plenty of that outside.'
But the play had run out. 'Anchor's good,' the customer said.
Holiday turned and grabbed a glass from the refrigerator, tipped it up against the Anchor spigot and drew off the pint. Coming back to the bar, he noticed a twenty dollar bill in the gutter, the man's wallet out on the pitted wood. the change.
He put the beer down carefully. 'I told the guys who came by yesterday that I wasn't talking to you without my lawyer here. I'm still not. You want me to call him?'
'I'm off duty and I've got the world's simplest question, I promise. Whatever answer you give me, I drink my beer and go home and get some sleep.'
For some reason-Clint's absence, or this man's easy manner, or even his own fatigue at having his guard up all the time-Holiday called him on it. 'Okay. What the hell? One,' he said.
'Where were you last night at midnight?'
Holiday actually laughed out loud. 'That's it? That's the one question? We could play this all day. I was here, and by here I mean right here'-he tapped the bar twice- 'tending this twenty-two feet of antiquated glulam with dedication and some might even say panache.'
'So you had customers? People you knew?'
'Six or eight at least. But I just gave you another question.'
'Two actually,' Thieu said. He lifted his glass and, closing his eyes, drained half of it. 'Great beer,' he said. Then, 'Thank you.'
He picked up his wallet, got off his stool, and walked to the door, where he stopped and turned again. 'Keep the change.'
The evidence bonanza that was the Terry/Wills apartment was almost enough to overcome the revulsion felt by both Cuneo and Russell when they had first arrived and taken in the appalling scene. Thieu had still been there with them, of course. They didn't know it, but Gerson had overruled his request, based on Faro's theory of the case, that on reflection he should remain the inspector of record. Thieu didn't argue with the lieutenant, but simply hung around until all three inspectors signed off on the release of the bodies to the medical examiner's with a great sense of relief.
Once the overwhelming presence of the corpses was removed, and Thieu had gone, Faro and the other members of the CSI unit began walking the two new inspectors through the masses of evidence they'd acquired and bagged in plastic. Cuneo and Russell were both tightly focused and slightly flushed with the successful results of the ballistics test they had finally shepherded through the crime lab. That test, performed on two remarkably undamaged slugs, had conclusively shown that Sam Silverman and Matt Creed had been shot with the same. 38 caliber weapon.
And now, among other items, they were looking at just such a gun, a Smith amp; Wesson revolver with its serial number filed off, found under a pile of socks in the bureau drawer in the bedroom. Two empty bullet casings remained in the cylinder with four live rounds. Additionally, the same drawer yielded a box of. 38 ammunition minus eight shells, a stack of bills of various denominations-$2440 in all- each one marked with a small red dot in the upper right-hand corner. Wade Panos and Sadie Silverman, both and separately in their respective interviews, had mentioned this habit of Silverman's, red-dotting the bills he'd be depositing.
When they had nearly finished-Faro had already gone home for the day without burdening the new inspectors with his theory of the case-Cuneo had an idea and went to the bedroom closet. The CSI team had already looked inside it and found nothing, then had reclosed the door. Of course, the clothes the two victims had been wearing were already bagged and tagged, but Cuneo had read Thieu's report on the Creed crime scene and had something specific in mind. He wasn't a minute looking before he stopped humming 'Bolero' and turned back to the room. 'Lincoln, get me another bag, would you? Good-sized.'
He came out holding a pair of large shoes. They were nicely made, expensive-looking loafers of light brown braided leather with a tassle. The soles were worn smooth, but there was some gunk-still tacky-stuck where the heel started, a little more around the edge, on the right one. 'If this is what I think it is,' Cuneo said, 'we got this thing wrapped up.'
As it turned out, they didn't need the analysis of the garbage effluent. This time the two inspectors of record didn't email the lab and request that someone drive up to the Hall and pick up their new evidence. They had the gun- the probable murder weapon-and, since they hadn't been back to the Hall to return the earlier slugs to the evidence locker, they had possession of them, too. So they had another hamburger lunch at Dago Mary's while the lab fired the gun and compared this new bullet to the earlier rounds.
By one o'clock, they were back uptown talking to Gerson in his office. Ten minutes after that, they appeared in the chambers of Judge Oscar Thomasino, a venerable presence on the bench, who was on his lunch break from the trial over which he was presiding. This was his week as duty judge, which meant he was the person responsible for approving search warrants, and he was already well disposed to both Cuneo and Russell. The DNA evidence that had led to the arrest of the alleged rapist and murderer Shawon Ellerson last week had come from a search conducted by these two inspectors at the suspect's apartment, and Thomasino had signed off on the warrant for that search.
He got up from his desk and the paperwork on it and ushered the two men over to a small seating area by the room's one window. 'You boys are having yourselves quite a week,' he said.
Russell nodded soberly. It never did to gloat. 'We're getting a few breaks, your honor. That's true.'
'It's funny how breaks come to the good cops. I've noticed a definite correlation.'
'Thank you, your honor.'
'This one looks pretty solid,' Cuneo added. He handed the warrant across to the judge.
Thomasino looked it over carefully. These may have been good cops, but the decision to violate a citizen's residence by allowing a legal search was never a casual one, and Thomasino took it very seriously indeed. When he'd finished reading, he looked up. 'So this man, Holiday, how does he fit exactly? I'm not sure I see it.'
Cuneo took point. 'We believe he was with the other two men-the victims this morning in the apartment where we found the gun-during the Silverman robbery and murder. Plus, we've confirmed that the same gun was used to kill a security guard two days ago, Matt Creed.'
'But these men were not shot? This morning?'
'No, sir. Somebody had cut their throats,' Russell said.
'And you think it was this Holiday?'
'Yes, your honor.' Cuneo, exuding urgency, came forward in a kind of a crouch. 'We didn't get a positive match on the slugs for Silverman and Creed until this morning and based on them, we were planning to arrest Terry and Wills, except they went dead on us.'
'But not Holiday? Why not?'
Russell shifted in his seat. 'He's a bartender. He was working when Creed got shot, so we think that Creed was just the two of them, Terry and Wills.'
'Maybe Holiday didn't even know they were planning on killing him,' Cuneo added. 'He might have felt they were getting too trigger-happy and were a risk. Which is why Holiday decided he had to kill them.'
'But,' Russell said, 'it's probable he did know about Creed. That they all decided.'
'And why would they do that?' Thomasino asked.
Cuneo straightened up, the tag team continuing. 'Because Creed had identified all of them as the guys who'd killed Silverman. So they figure he can't testify if he's dead.'
