have a key. The key John gave me. I didn't break in here. He's a friend of mine. I watch his stuff.'
'Clothes,' Thieu said, pointing again.
Thinking fast, she offered a hopeful face. 'I wash them. He leaves them in the hamper. I was bringing them back.'
'In the dark? At one o'clock in the morning? You're one heck of a friend. Do you expect us to believe any of this?'
'Well, he pays me, of course. Not much, but…'
'Do you know there's a warrant out for Mr. Holiday's arrest? For murder?'
'I… I know. I heard that. But that must be a mistake. John wouldn't hurt anybody.'
'Do you know where he is?'
'No. You mean now?'
Thieu turned to the other man. 'Do you think I meant now, Len? Did you get that impression?'
The other man nodded, shot her the straight line. 'He means now.'
'No. I don't have any idea where he is. I mean, that's why I came here. I haven't heard from John in a few days, almost a week now.' Suddenly, her eyes lit up. 'Look, I came by here on Friday, too,' she blurted. 'When the other officers were here.'
'What other officers?'
'The men with the search warrant. They had identification. A black guy and a white guy.'
'Cuneo and Russell,' the other man said.
'All right, and these inspectors talked to you?'
'Same as you. Checked my ID. Everything.'
'And you were here, again, why?'
'That day, the same as now, then picking up John's newspapers.'
'They're still down there, I notice.'
She shook her head. 'Just the last three days. I was going to get them on the way out and throw them away.'
'And you told all this to Inspectors Cuneo and Russell?'
'If those were their names.'
'And they just let you go back home?'
Thieu was in a pickle.
Earlier tonight, at the house of Glitsky's lawyer friend Hardy, Thieu had told the lieutenant that he'd come here with Faro. It seemed a reasonable risk. But it was turning out to be true what everybody said-that no good deed ever went unpunished.
And that's what, in theory, this trip to Holiday's was intended to be, a good deed, albeit with elements of self-interest. Glitsky, Hardy and their wives had been truly distraught over this problem with Panos. Thieu hadn't seen Abe so angry in years and Treya-in Thieu's opinion a rock of sanity, patience and good humor-was if possible even madder.
Thieu had come to Glitsky this morning with his problem. And this was, he supposed, why Abe was such a valuable friend and mentor. Coming here could be the solution for both of them, and for Hardy as well. Thieu got the feeling that Glitsky and Hardy had come to their decision after quite a lot of internal debate between them, and that neither was thrilled with deciding that their only viable option was to find evidence linking Sephia, Roy Panos and Rez to these murders. Clearly, they would both have preferred some kind of confrontation with these men, but in the end they were lawmen, and they'd do it according to the law.
Finally, Hardy suggested that Thieu come here with Len Faro and dust the place for fingerprints. The CSI team had already done the places where they'd discovered the incriminating evidence from Silverman's. Photographed the stuff in place, dusted the actual articles for prints where possible. But they hadn't done a general sweep of the entire duplex unit-dishes in the sink, doorknobs, bathroom fixtures.
The other three suspects had never been at Holiday's house and Glitsky thought that Thieu ought to be able to get some kind of statement to that effect. Even a verbal admission might do the trick, though written or taped would be better. Once they had that, if they found fingerprints of any of the suspects at Holiday's home, the question of where the planted evidence had come from was going to drive the investigation either to one of the true conspirators' doors, or to Wade Panos.
The only wrinkle from Thieu's perspective was the imperative to keep himself out of it. The problem as well as the source of his pique was that he wasn't assigned to any of the murders that came in the wake of Sam Silverman. So what excuse could Thieu plausibly invent for why he had to go to Holiday's duplex in the dead of night and dust for fingerprints?
He had to give it to these defense lawyers. They were a devious group and Hardy clearly belonged among them. Thieu simply wouldn't mention it until he had the results. As far as Lennard Faro was concerned, Thieu was doing a routine favor for his two homicide colleagues Cuneo and Russell, just being thorough with housekeeping at the home of a murder suspect. The print lifts would go to the lab- Faro would neither know nor care what they were about, and would never ask. After the results came in, if the fingerprints of Sephia and/or Panos and/or Rez came in, then having at least established the Panos connection to the case, Thieu could come to Gerson and, man to man, admit to his earlier reservations about the evidence and the interpretations of Cuneo and Russell.
Perfect.
Until this woman.
He believed no part of her story. In his heart, he was even insulted that she could think any part of it was plausible. He ached to put handcuffs on her, take her downtown and do a serious interrogation. But that would leave him with the really insoluble problem of explaining to Gerson why he'd been here in the first place. The entire house of cards would come down if he didn't have a positive match on some Panos-connected prints to fall back on. He could certainly find himself out of homicide, possibly cut in rank.
And then there was the even bigger problem. Thieu was morally certain not only that this Michelle Maier knew where the fugitive John Holiday was at this moment, but that he was at her own home. She had come over here to get him some changes of clothes, obviously. Access to his money. He and Len could drive her back to her place, put the cuffs on Holiday and be heroes tomorrow.
Except Glitsky didn't think Holiday did it. From Thieu's perspective, the evidence didn't say he did, either. It was simply good police work to verify whether an alternative set of suspects had a substantial evidentiary problem. And the woman, Ms. Maier, had given him a rationalization- she'd actually been here with Cuneo and Russell just three days ago, and they hadn't seen fit to follow up. It blew Thieu's mind. It wasn't what they were looking for, and so they hadn't seen what it so obviously was. No doubt her explanations had been as lame then as now.
By her own admission, they'd checked her identification. So in theory, Cuneo and Russell knew as much about her as Thieu did, though he'd be surprised if either one of them had thought to write down her last name or address. Or remembered them, as he did.
John Holiday was their suspect. It was their case, not his.
Let them work it.
All this passed through Thieu's agile mind during his brief questioning of Michelle Maier. She had just begun blowing more smoke about the newspapers, how she was planning on picking them up on her way out tonight.
'And they just let you go back home?'
'Yes, sir.'
He turned to Faro, shrugged extravagantly. 'Well, Ms. Maier, it appears to be your lucky night. Inspector Faro and I have a lot of technical ground to cover here and if you gave your name and address to the other inspectors, I'm going to assume they followed up as they should. That okay with you, Len?'
Faro tugged at his bug. He held the rank of inspector but wasn't an investigator. He did forensics and crime scene analysis. As far as he was concerned, the woman's presence was only significant to the extent that it sullied the scene. The sooner she was gone, the better. 'As long as she doesn't touch anything else going out. Leave the mail,' he told her.
Michelle knew what she was hearing, but wasn't sure she believed it. Thieu lifted his hand and waved as he would to a child. 'Drive safely,' he said.
'Really? I can go?'
