Robert B Parker
Paper Doll
chapter one
LOUDON TRIPP, WEARING a seersucker suit and a Harvard tie, sat in my office on a very nice day in September and told me he’d looked into my background and might hire me.
“Oh boy,” I said.
“You’ve had some college,” Tripp said. He was maybe fifty, a tall angular man with a red face. He held a typewritten sheet of paper in his hand, reading it through half glasses.
“No harm to it,” I said. “I thought I was going to do something else.”
“I went to Harvard. You played football in college.”
I nodded. He didn’t care if I nodded or not. But I liked to.
“You were a prizefighter.”
Nod.
“You fought in Korea. Were you an officer?”
“No.”
“Too bad. After that you were a policeman.” Nod.
“This presents a small problem; you were dismissed. Could you comment, please, on that.”
“I am trustworthy, loyal, and helpful. But I struggle with obedient.”
Tripp smiled faintly, “I’m not looking for a boy scout,” he said.
“Next best thing,” I said.
“Well,” Tripp said, “Lieutenant Quirk said you could be annoying, but you were not undependable.”
“He’s always admired me,” I said.
“Obviously you are independent,” Tripp said. “I understand that. I’ve had my moments. `He who would be a man must be a nonconformist.”‘
I nodded encouragingly.
“Do you know who said that?” Tripp asked. I nodded again.
Tripp waited a moment. Finally he said, “Well, who?”
“Emerson.”
“Very good,” Tripp said.
“Will this be on the final?” I said.
Tripp leaned his head toward me in a gesture of apology.
“Sorry, I guess that seemed pretentious. It’s just that I am trying to get a sense of you.”
I shrugged.
“They had no way of judging a man,” I said, “except as he handled an axe.”
Tripp frowned for a moment. And twitched his shoulders as if to get rid of a horsefly. “So,” he paused. “I guess you’ll do.”
I tried to look pleased.
He stared past me out the window for a moment, and took in a slow breath and let it out.
“Are you familiar,” he said, “with Olivia Nelson?”
“The woman who was murdered a couple of months back,” I said. “Right in Louisburg Square.”
He nodded.
“She used her birth name,” he said. “She was my wife.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Yes.”
We were quiet for a moment while we considered the sullen fact.
“The police have exhausted all of their options,” Tripp said. “They have concluded it was probably an act of random violence, and the killer, having left no clues, will very likely not be caught until, or if, he strikes again.”
