analysis on the semen, but it won't tell us much. You can't work backwards from it. We got no fingerprints on the first two, and we won't have any when they get through with this one either. Each woman was killed in her home. The first one, the hooker, in the Faneuil Projects over in Brighton, the second one on Ruggles Street near the hospitals.'
'Picked them up, went home with them, and did it,' I said.
'Or followed them home,' Quirk said, 'and pulled a gun and forced them inside, and did it.'
'You figure he didn't break in at random because the odds are too long that he'd randomly get three black women,' I said.
'Ruggles Street you expect to, but the odds aren't so good in Brighton, and they're less good here,' Quirk said.
'And he's probably white,' I said.
Quirk said, 'Yeah, we figured that. He wants black women but he doesn't go to black neighborhoods to find them. Even Ruggles Street at that end is on the white black fringe. Figure he's either scared to go into the black neighborhoods at night, or that he figures he's too noticeable.'
Belson turned onto Perkins Street.
'And the letter,' I said.
'The lab got shit from the letter,' Quirk said, 'unless the lab guy doing the testing is the killer.'
'You could run it through twice with different technicians,' I said.
'And if one of the lab reports turns out to be wrong, we've got a suspect,' Quirk said. 'I tried it. The tests were the same.'
'So the lab knows about the letter,' I said.
'Which means the whole department will know in a while. I know. I told them to keep it quiet. But they won't. It'll get out.'
'So in a while everyone will know it's a cop, or might be.'
'Doesn't do much for morale, but I had to check the letter,' Quirk said.
'Anything only you know?' I said.
Belson parked, as before, in front of the house on Sheridan Street.
'No,' Quirk said. 'The press doesn't know about the semen, but the department does, which means the press will.'
'Hard to keep a secret,' I said.
'Impossible. Cops go home and tell their wives. They drink beer after a softball game and tell their buddies. Hell, I tell my wife. You'll tell Susan.'
'But she won't pass it on,' I said.
'Course not,' Quirk said. 'Neither will my wife, or Belson's or anyone else's. But in a week or so it's in the Globe, and Channel 5 has a film crew out.'
'So young and yet so cynical,' I said.
Quirk was still staring out the window. 'I'm trying to keep hold of this thing,' he said. 'The guy isn't going to stop and the case will turn into Mardi Gras North. Talk shows, television, newspapers, Time and Newsweek, the mayor, the governor, the city council, the feminists, the racists, the blacks, the FBI, every victim's state rep, and every harebrain east of the Mississippi River will be fucking around with this thing and getting in the way and souping this asshole up to do it again.'
'The guy wants you to catch him,' I said.
'Maybe, and maybe he doesn't and maybe it's both,' Quirk said.
Belson turned in the front seat and leaned his arm across the top of the seat. The narrow cigar had burned halfway down and gone out, but Belson kept it clamped in his teeth.
'Either way we gotta have our own posse,' he said. His thin face was blue-tinged along the jaw with the shadow of a heavy beard.
I nodded. 'I may use Hawk,' I said.
Quirk nearly smiled for a moment. 'Think he can keep from blabbing to the press?' he said.
'As long as Barbara Walters doesn't show up,' I said. 'Hawk gets light-headed whenever he sees her.'
'I guess we'll have to chance it,' Quirk said. He got out of the car and Belson drove me home.
Susan was wearing black leather pants and low black cowboy boots with blue patterns worked into the leather. She had on a cobalt blouse and some gold chains and two large gold earrings and was sitting in my living room with her feet up on my coffee table, sipping very slowly at champagne with a splash of Midori liqueur. 'And what does Quirk want you to do?' she said. The Midori gave the champagne a delicate tint a little greener than chartreuse. Susan spoke with the under rim of the champagne flute resting on her lower lip. Her big dark eyes looked over the top rim.
'He wants me to be someone he can trust,' I said. I came around my counter and put a small silver tray on the coffee table in front of her.
There was beluga caviar on the tray and a small spoon and some Bremner wafers and six wedges of lemon.
