“You disagree?” I said.
“I want him hunted down,” Tripp said stiffly, “and punished.”
“And you want me to do that?”
“Yes… Lieutenant Quirk suggested you, when I expressed concern about the official lack of progress.”
“So you and I are clear,” I said, “I will hunt him down for you. But punishment is not what I do.”
“I believe in the system,” Tripp said. “If you can find him, I am sure the courts will punish him.”
I said, “Un huh.”
“You are skeptical of the courts?” Tripp said.
“I’m skeptical of most things,” I said. “Is there anyone assigned to the case, now?”
“Yes, a young detective.”
“What’s his name?”
“Farrell. Detective Farrell. I can’t say I’m entirely happy with him.”
“Why.”
“Well, he’s young. I was hoping for a more senior man.”
I nodded. There was more, I could tell.
“And there’s something, a little, I don’t know. He doesn’t seem like a typical police detective.”
I waited. Tripp didn’t elaborate. Since I figured I’d meet Farrell anyway, I didn’t press. I could decide for myself how typical he was.
“Do you have any theories on the murder?” I said.
“None. I can’t imagine who would wish to kill Olivia. Perhaps it is a madman.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll talk to the cops, first. So at least I’ll know what they know.”
“You’ll take the case, then?”
“Sure,” I said.
We talked a little about my fee, and the prospects of a retainer. He had no objections to a retainer. Me either.
“The only thing you need to understand,” I said, “is that once I start I go where it takes me. Which may mean I ask you lots of questions. And your friends and relatives lots of questions. People sometimes get restive about me invading their privacy. You have to understand at the start that invading your privacy, and the privacy of people you know, is what you’re hiring me to do.”
“I understand,” Tripp said. “If you go too far, I’ll let you know.”
“You can let me know,” I said. “But it won’t change anything. I do what I do. And I keep doing it until I’m finished.”
“You will be working for me, Mr. Spenser.”
“Yes, and you can pay me, and you can expect that I’ll work on your problem and that I won’t cheat you and that I won’t lie to you. But you can’t tell me what to do, and if you’re not willing to accept that, we can’t do business.”
Tripp didn’t like it. But he got out his checkbook and put it on the edge of my desk and dug a real fountain pen out of his inside coat pocket.
“When I need surgery,” he said, “I don’t, I guess, tell the surgeon how to operate.”
“Nice analogy,” I said.
He nodded, and wrote me out a check in a stately, flowing Palmer-method hand. It was a fine big check. A check you could deposit proudly, which, after Tripp left, I did.
chapter two
“HE HIT HER with a framing hammer,” Quirk said. “The kind with the long wooden handle that gives you leverage so you can drive a sixteen-penny nail with two strokes. Hit her at least five times.”
Quirk was wearing a gray silk tweed jacket with a faint lavender chalk line, a blue Oxford button-down shirt, and a lavender knit tie. There was a dark blue display handkerchief in his jacket pocket. As he talked, he straightened the stuff on his desk, making sure everything was square and properly spaced. There wasn’t much: a phone, a legal-sized lined yellow pad, a translucent Bic pen with a black top, and a big plastic cube with pictures of his wife, his children, and a golden retriever. He was careful to have the cube exactly centered along the back rim of his desk. He wasn’t thinking about what he was doing. It was what he did while he thought about something else. “He left it at the crime scene.”
“Or she,” I said.
Quirk realigned his pictures an eighth of an inch. His hands were big and thick, the nails manicured. They looked like the hands of a tough surgeon.
“Ah, yes,” Quirk said. “Liberation. It could have been a woman. But if it was, it was a strong one. He, or she, must have held the hammer down at the end and taken a full swing, like you would drive a nail. Most of the bones in her head were broken.”
“Only the head?”
