'So somebody knew about him right after she died,' Hawk said.
'But either Stapleton's lying, or nobody talked to him.'
'You talk to the cop?'
'Yeah. He wasn't friendly either. And he never mentioned Stapleton.'
'Might want to talk to him again,' Hawk said. 'Sound like somebody lying.'
'Almost certainly,' I said. 'Cops always talk to the husband or the boyfriend in a case like this.'
'So why he lying?'
'Be good to know,' I said.
'And how come the cop… whatsis name?'
'Miller.'
'How come Miller don't mention Stapleton,' Hawk said, 'and Stapleton's name never come up in the transcript?'
I didn't even know Hawk had a copy of the transcript.
But I was used to that. Even I never really knew Hawk.
'That'd be good to know, too,' I said.
'And who looking to get you run off the case?'
'That'd be dandy to know.'
I swiveled my chair a little and looked out my window and sipped my wine. It had rained hard last night and cleared before dawn. The morning sun was bright, and outside my window everything in the Back Bay looked clean and morally alert.
'Another thing that bothers me,' I said, 'is that Stapleton went to Andover three years behind Hunt McMartin and coincident with McMartin's wife.'
'They the people ID'd Ellis?'
'Yeah.'
'So Stapleton's girlfriend get killed, and by coincidence people he went to prep school with ID the killer and nobody mention that?'
'Not to me,' I said. 'And it's not in the trial transcripts.'
''Course not everybody go to Andover know each other,' Hawk said.
'True,' I said.
'Still a coincidence,' Hawk said.
'Un huh.'
'You like coincidences?'
'I hate them,' I said. 'How about you.'
'Got no feeling on it,' Hawk said. 'You the detective. I just a thug.'
'You're too modest,' I said.
Hawk grinned.
'Didn't mean to say I wasn't a great thug,' he said.
'Another thing that's bothersome,' I said, 'is even though, according to the ME, there's no proof of rape they found no semen, for instance-everybody automatically refers to the fatal event as a rape and murder.'
'That 'cause the alleged perp is a brother,' Hawk said.
'And all you guys think about is ravaging our women.'
'Not all,' Hawk said. 'Sometimes we think 'bout eating fried chicken.'
'While ravaging our women?' I said.
'When possible,' Hawk said. 'What did she die of?'
'Strangulation.'
'Manual?'
'No, some kind of ligature.'
'Ligature,' Hawk said. 'Easy to see how you got to be a detective. I assume they never found this here ligature.'
'Nope.'
'And they didn't find her clothes?'
'Nope.'
'They ever establish a, ah, prior connection between Ellis and the deceased?'
