'But with respect, sir, this is pretty much a smoking gun.'
'Maybe that's what I'm having trouble seeing. You have statements from both Sephia and Rez that they hadn't been in the Terry/Wills apartment, but you don't have their fingerprints from that scene.'
'I didn't really expect there would be, sir. They went there to kill these guys and either wiped the place down or, more likely, wore gloves.
'But the fact remains, no prints where they said they'd never been. I fail to understand how this can be compelling to you.'
'What's compelling is that their prints were at Holiday's, where they also deny ever being. They didn't know I was going to ask that until the tape was already on, so they told a stupid lie.'
Gerson drew a large and histrionic breath. 'Sergeant, these men played poker together at least several times in the past year. They may have had some kind of falling out recently-I don't know about that-but they certainly shared each other's company, quite possibly at Mr. Holiday's house. So now they simply admit that they lied to you. They say they knew Holiday was a murder suspect and didn't want to be more closely associated with him.' Gerson already had the tape in its case under a paperweight on his computer table.
'But sir, the bare fact…' Thieu paused. 'You have to admit this looks a lot like something fishy, at the very least. Sephia and Rez should be thoroughly interrogated. In my opinion,' he added.
Finally the lieutenant seemed to break through some barrier. He leaned back, let out a long exhalation. 'You might be right,' he said. 'I don't know why I'm righting you so hard on this. Everything you're saying makes sense. It's just that this case has been nothing but a headache from day one.' Gerson's hand, in fact, went to his head. He sighed again. 'I've got to use the can a minute. Be right back.'
Thieu came forward, his elbows on his knees, his head tucked. He had of course considered the objections that Gerson had made. Nothing was simple. Okay, so what's new? The point was, Thieu thought, that any conscientious cop would see enough questions for Sephia and Rez to at the very least jump all over them and move them up to the realm of legitimate suspects in the multiple slayings. If only to avoid the embarrassment and hassle of falsely arresting John Holiday when there were obviously so many other possible interpretations of the evidence.
But until tonight, just now, Gerson had seemed congenitally blind to these subtleties. He had a suspect and evidence and an arrest warrant, and goddamnit, why should he keep looking at all?
Now the lieutenant returned, got back in his swivel chair, made some kind of conciliatory gesture. 'I apologize for being such a hard-ass about this, Paul. It's actually nice to have an inspector with this kind of initiative. It certainly wouldn't hurt to put these two guys in an interrogation room and sweat them on videotape, would it? If they broke…' Gerson brightened up, met Thieu's eyes. 'But I would be more comfortable either way if we got Dan and Lincoln on board. Does that sit all right with you?'
Thieu remembered Glitsky's admonition that he should go directly through Gerson, without involving the two inspectors of record. But the reaction here had rendered that suggestion moot. If there was going to be any resolution to this case, there was no avoiding Cuneo and Russell now. 'Sure. Your call, sir.'
Gerson turned and punched numbers into the phone. 'Hey, is Cuneo or Russell out there? Do you know when they…? Oh. Really? Okay, thanks.' He hung up.
'Evidently they're coming in by chopper right now. Five minutes.' The police helicopter, as well as others belonging to the Highway Patrol and even private companies such as Georgia AAA, often landed on the target painted on the roof of the Hall of Justice. 'I don't think I've been out of this room all day, Paul. You mind if we get some exercise and meet them up there? I could use the air.'
'Sure. Why not?'
Gerson grabbed his jacket from the peg by his door while Thieu went to get his off his chair. They passed out of the homicide detail and into the hallway, where Gerson turned right and Thieu followed. They went into the Inspectors Bureau, unoccupied at that time of the night, and pulled a key off a hook in a side room. This enabled the elevator to go all the way to the roof. They ascended in a companionable silence.
'Watch out,' Gerson said, as he stepped over a low sill and out, 'it's gotten a little dark.'
And indeed it had come to full night, with a chill and biting wind.
Thieu had his hands in his pockets and shuddered against the cold. With the stiff breeze, he wasn't surprised that he couldn't yet hear the thwack-thwack of the helicopter's approach, but he turned a half circle and looked for it anyway.
The city was all dressed up. Thanksgiving was still a couple of weeks off, but already the Christmas lights were burning in several locations, some of the hotels, uptown. Taking in the sight, Thieu wondered why he didn't come up here more often. There was a splendid isolation, especially at this time of night, when the traffic was heavy but mostly unhearable, the stars close enough to touch. He moved a couple of steps toward the low edge of the roof, then started to turn back to ask his lieutenant if he knew from which direction the chopper might be approaching.
But he hadn't really begun the turn when a pair of strong hands hit him low in the back. With his own hands stuck deeply in his pockets, he could offer no resistance. 'Wait!' was all he could think to say. 'Wait!' But his feet hit the bottom of the wall almost before he realized he was being pushed, and there was nothing to stop his body from pitching over into the air.
Thieu's last whole thought, in the instant before the falling wiped his consciousness clean of anything but terror, was that Gerson had made that call to the outer office to check on the whereabouts of Cuneo and Russell. He'd talked to someone out there, and then less than a minute later they'd left the office to come up here. But no one had been in the office when Thieu had gone to retrieve his jacket. He should have remembered that, grown suspicious. He should have…
28
Susan Weiss, McGuire's wife, was doing her best to cope with the unexpected crisis, but it had thrown her off balance. This-the sudden arrival of her sister-in-law's family at her three-bedroom apartment in the Haight-was not something she felt equipped for, or trained to handle. She listened to their talk about fleeing from their house after the darkness had become complete, all of them making certain no one was behind them, with an air of disbelief. Was this really happening?
No one was acting as though the threat to the Hardy kids extended to the McGuire family, to her own children, Brittany and Erica. But even though Susan doubted that Panos knew that Moses and Frannie were brother and sister, she couldn't get that thought out of her mind. A cellist by profession and a true pacifist, Susan went through the motions of dinner and sleeping bags for the cousins and the fold-out couch for Dismas and Frannie with a wary, sleepwalking quality.
Susan knew the degree of protectiveness that Moses felt for Frannie. Her husband might be a good man with a pure nature, but at heart-and it had always troubled her-he was also a fighter, the veteran of dozens of bar brawls, rugby skirmishes, shillelagh altercations. Moses, like her brother-in-law Dismas, had seen action in Vietnam. Both of them had actually killed people, although she preferred to forget that most of the time.
Here, though, tonight, that was not possible.
Rebecca and Vincent wouldn't be going to their school for at least the next day and perhaps several more. Frannie wasn't going to her classes, either. After he talked to Glitsky tonight, Dismas would decide if the family needed to go into true hiding. They could get on a plane for somewhere, or at least check into a hotel out of town.
Now it was way past bedtime and still her girls sat spellbound on the floor, caught up in their cousins' fear and excitement. Suddenly, through no fault of Susan's, here was her whole family involved in a world of threats and violence, of intrigue and terror. She couldn't help herself, couldn't stop a great wave of resentment from washing over her. At her husband for insisting that they all come here, at Dismas and Frannie for agreeing. And now Dismas had gone off to discuss the situation with Glitsky, and Moses was back at the Shamrock.
Susan went to the kitchen, where poor Frannie was rinsing dishes and piling them in the dishwasher. Busing a few more dinner items from the table over to the sink, Susan fell in next to her, and shortly found she couldn't sustain any resentment toward her sister-in-law. Frannie, too, moved in a slightly robotic fashion, as though the
