was an emergency. I said yes, but not a medical emergency. That confused her so deeply that I was transferred to the doctor's nurse. After a lot more give-and-go with the nurse, I got an agreement that he would see me after hospital rounds and before his first patient. But only for a moment. The doctor was very busy. She recommended I get there by ten.
I did. At eleven-fifteen Klein came out of his office and grinned at me, and jerked his thumb to come in.
'So, you got by the guardians,' he said.
'Barely.'
'They're very zealous.'
'Me too,' I said.
'What can I do for you?'
'Tell me when the results of Walter Clive's DNA tests came back,' I said.
'That's all you want?'
'Yep.'
'I could have told you that on the phone.'
'And when would you have called me?'
'Certainly before the end of the month,' Klein said.
He pushed a button on his phone.
'Margie? Bring me Walter Clive's file, please,' Klein said into the speakerphone. Then he looked at me and said, 'I've been keeping it handy until I figured out how to resolve the questions about his DNA results.'
'I'm going to help you with that,' I said.
Margie came in with the folder. She looked at me with the same deep confusion she'd displayed on the phone and then went back to her post. Klein thumbed through the folder and stopped and looked at one of the papers in it.
'I got the test results on May twentieth,' he said.
'How soon did you notify Clive?'
'Same day.'
'Are you sure you're a real doctor?' I said.
'I called him at once,' Klein said. 'I remember it because it was so unusual.'
'So he knew the results on the twentieth.'
'Yes.'
'He's the only one you told?'
'Yes.'
'Could anyone else have known?'
'He could have told someone.'
'But nobody at the lab or in your office?'
'No. He used a pseudonym. I've told you all this before.'
'If the pseudonymous report was in his file, how hard would it be to figure out whose it was?'
'It wasn't in his file,' Klein said. 'I kept it, along with Dolly's results and Jason's, in a sealed envelope in my locked desk until long after he was dead.'
'Do you remember when he died?'
'Couple months ago.'
'He was killed on May twenty-second,' I said.
Klein sat back in his chair. On the wall behind him was a framed color photo of three small boys grouped around a pretty woman in a big hat. Next to it was his medical degree.
'Jesus Christ!' Klein said.
FORTY-ONE
WHEN I PULLED back into the parking lot behind my motel, a smallish black man in a baseball cap got out of a smallish Toyota pickup truck and walked toward me.
'Mr. Spenser,' he said. 'Billy Rice, Hugger Mugger's groom.'
'I remember,' I said. 'How is the old Hug?'
'Doing good,' Billy said. He looked a little covert. 'Can we talk in your room?'
'Sure,' I said.
We went up the stairs and along the balcony to my room. Billy stayed inside me near the wall. The room was made up. The air-conditioning was on high, and it was cool. Billy looked somewhat less unhappy when we had the
