I pushed the Diet Coke an inch closer to her. Her eyes slowly focused on it. She took it from the night table and drank and put it back. She was the only human I've ever seen who liked Diet Coke warm. She breathed deeply and let it out.
'What did you say about a sweater?' she said.
'I said it is wanton and shameless to make love while wearing a sweater.'
'Yes,' Susan said thoughtfully. 'It is, isn't it.' She smiled at me.
She said, 'It's probably fairly shameless to lay around and drink Diet Coke wearing only a sweater.'
'Yes,' I said, 'but a five-martini hangover thirst tends to humble even the best of us.'
'Five?'
'Five.'
'Good heavens,' Susan said. She pulled her bare legs up toward her chest. 'What time is it?'
'Four forty-five,' I said. 'The cocktail hour is at hand.'
Susan shivered. She had her arms around her knees. 'Maybe two aspirin,' she said.
I got her some and she washed them down with the warm Diet Coke.
'We missed lunch,' she said. 'It was worth it, I think.'
'Of course it was,' Susan said. 'But now I need food.'
'The chicken awaits,' I said.
'Well done?'
'I shut it off before I swept you away to sweatered passion,' I said.
She smiled at me. 'You would,' she said. . time to disappear. He had his bag, all his stuff, time to go underground. He had a black turtleneck, black jeans, black running shoes. He adjusted the navy watch cap on his head. People would notice if he blacked his face. Two white guys had joined the black guy. They'd walked around the building and looked at all the entrances. Then the black guy left. The two white guys stayed outside. Sitting in a station wagon across from his building where they could see the front door and the side fire escape.
Dumb bastards thought they had him. Nothing in this place that would help them find him. Nothing in this place anyway. Like living in a fucking toilet stall. He went out the door and down the hall and opened the back window and dropped through it maybe four feet to a roof. He ran along the roof pasta window where a fat guy and his wife were on the couch watching TV and climbed the fire escape that ran up the wall of the next building. The roof door on the next building was open. Works every time. Going down the stairs in the next building, he felt the feeling in his stomach and groin. Like electricity. He had had his stuff, he was dressed for the night. Anything comes my way I can handle.
On the first floor he went to the back and out the door and down an alley, feeling the electricity in his legs, feeling the air running free into his chest. Then he was out on the next street and away in the darkness, fully equipped.
Susan cancelled her appointments again and sat with me in my office with Quirk, Belson, and Hawk.
'Best I can figure,' Quirk said, 'he went out a back window. There's a one-story addition on the back there and he must have dropped onto it and walked to the fire escape of the building next door. Then he went up, in the roof door, and down. There's a back door that leads out onto Cordis Street.'
'Anything in the apartment?' I said.
'Would we search without a warrant?' Belson said.
'Yes,' I said.
'Not a thing,' Quirk said. 'There's nothing there. A few clothes, a TV set, couple cans of tomato soup. Like no one really lived there.'
'What will he do now?' I said to Susan.
'I don't know. Things will build in him. Pressure. There apy didn't stop him from murdering before, but .. She shook her head.
'Couldn't you have kept him in therapy until we nabbed him?' Quirk said.
'Been good if you hadn't lost him,' Hawk said. He was leaning against the wall by my window.
Quirk snapped a look at him and held it and then nodded.
He said, to Susan, 'Sorry, the question was out of line.' Belson said,
'Lieutenant feels like a horse's ass, losing Felton. Me too.'
Susan nodded.
'Might he go for you?' Quirk said.
'He might. I have mistreated him. He feels his mother mistreated him.
He would feel enormous rage. In the past when he felt it and couldn't express it directly, he would express it symbolically. How he would express his rage at me, I cannot say. Maybe he could do it directly, maybe he would have to deflect it onto something that symbolized me.
There's no way to know what the symbol would be.'
