Janek wanted to show Stiegel sympathy, but he found it difficult. 'Go home,' he said. 'Like you said-the girl wouldn't talk.'
Stiegel nodded, stumbled onto the sidewalk. He mumbled: 'Still think it was the same guy… When Janek had trudged his way back up the five flights, he found Sue in the stairwell, head and hands pressed against the wall. She was shaking, crying softly to herself. Janek didn't say anything, just took her in his arms.
'You'll be okay.'
'Oh, shit,' she moaned. 'I meant to come see her this morning. Then I got busy and couldn't get to it.' She pointed at the floor. 'See, I brought her my old air conditioner. Got two uniforms to carry it up.
They set it down there, I rang the buzzer and the door popped open.
There she was, lying by the couch.'
He knew there wasn't anything he could say that would make her feel better, so he fell back upon a standard consolation: 'It's not your fault. Don't think it is, even for a second.'
When she was calmer, he entered the apartment to check in with Lois Rappaport. As usual, her face was sour, her smile crooked and her report toneless.
' Shot in the head at close range. Like Dietz down at the Savoy.
Wounds indicate It twenty-two. Still looking for the bullet.'
Rappaport beckoned Janek to join her beside the body. He complied although he didn't want to-to him Kirstin wasn't an ordinary victim.
He'd spoken to her, seen her pain, had felt connected to her. Looking at her now-her pale broken face, her large, ghostly Nordic eyes-he thought he saw a less troubled person than he had interviewed three days before.
Then, as Lois Rappaport traced the old scars on Kirstin's cheeks, he felt weighed down by grief.
'The way these cuts are drawn-you can see they were made carefully. Sue told me this girl was deliberately disfigured. But these new incisions … ' Rappaport pointed. 'These weren't done to mar her beauty. These are torture cuts, Frank. Looks to me like someone was trying to make her talk.' As Janek considered what Rappaport had said, he was struck by a thought: What if someone had tried to make Kirstin tell what she had refused to reveal to him and Diana's full name and address? If that's what this is about, he thought, it's very likely she did talk. How could she resist with a knife held to her face? And the fact that she'd been shot through the head suggested her torturer had gotten what he'd wanted.
He was angry. He had lost his only lead in the Dietz case. He was not waiting until the morning to go on. He phoned Aaron and Ray at home, told them to meet him at Special Squad. At eleven-thirty, when he and Sue arrived, the two men were waiting.
'Here's my theory,' he said. 'Someone was tracking us, hoping we'd lead him to the Omega. He followed us to Kirstin's, then came back later and finished up our interview. Now he's a step ahead.'
'Who're we talking about?' Aaron asked.
Janek turned to Sue. 'You were with Kane when he went through Deitz's effects?' Sue nodded. 'What'd you think of him?'
'Cold. Arrogant. He tried to get me to talk about the case.' Sue paused.
'Do you think he killed Kirstin?'
'Maybe. Kane wanted to work with us. Deforest and I said no. Later that day, he met you. Suppose he started stalking you hoping you'd lead him to someone helpful. Suppose he saw you meet me and then the two of us go into Kirstin's building. It wouldn't have been hard to figure out who we were seeing.'
Aaron shook his head. 'But not Sonoron-?'
Janek agreed. 'As much as they want their Omega, they probably wouldn't be party to a thing like this. But suppose Kane's gone into business for himself? In the L.A. sheriff's office he was suspected of being a double agent. The Omega's out there. If he finds it, it can make him rich.
Sue shook her head. 'If that bastard-'
'It's just a theory,' Janek said. 'Now let's go to work and see if we can prove it.'
He quickly gave orders. Ray was to search for Kane.
'Start at the Savoy. If I'm right, he's checked out, but the hotel will have a record of his calls. Maybe you'll get lucky-maybe he did something stupid like use his room phone to make a reservation at another hotel.'
Aaron was assigned to dig deeper on Kane.
'If he killed Dietz and Kirstin, he's probably been violent before. Find out.'
Sue was to keep looking for Diana.
'Kirstin gave us two important leads. She said Diana used a doctor named Feldstein and a lawyer named Thatcher. We gotta talk to them. To do that we need their full names. Check out all the Feldsteins who are MDs. If he's '' the way Kirstin said, he probably works out of the upper East Side. Then check out all the Thatchers who do criminal defense.'
'What about you, Frank?' Aaron asked.
'I'm going to have a little talk with that Sonoron chairman, Cavanaugh.'
It was midnight New York time, nine P.m. in San Jose. Sonoron was closed for the day, but a night operator at the company's answering service gave Janek an emergency number. When he called it, he was connected to a Ms. Isabelle Brooks, who identified herself as Eliot Cavanaugh's executive assistant. Ms. Brooks said that she was speaking to him from her home and that she was hesitant to bother Mr. Cavanaugh after business hours.
'He's in San Francisco this evening. He and his wife went there for dinner and the opera,' she explained.
'Has he got a beeper?' Ms. Brooks acknowledged that the chairman did.
'Beep him,' Janek told her. 'Tell him to call me. This is an emergency.'
He gave her the Squad Room number, then settled back to wait.
Twenty minutes later, Cavanaugh called. 'This better be good,' he said.
'When did you send Kane to New York?'
'You paged me out of the opera to ask me that?'
Janek imagined him standing in his tuxedo at a pay phone outside the men's room at the San Francisco Opera House.
'Yeah, that's why I paged you,' Janek said. 'Answer the question, please.'
'I don't remember exactly when we sent him. What difference does it make?'
'Here's the difference,' Janek said. 'A few days ago a detective named Sue Burke from my office called to tell you Dietz had been shot in the head. You told her you were sending your security man, Kane, to New York to try and retrieve your stolen chip. Wanna know what I think, Mr.
Cavanaugh? I think that wasn't true. I think you sent Kane here to look for Dietz before we told you he was shot.'
A pause on the other end. Janek imagined Cavanaugh's forehead popping sweat as he tried to dream up a decent response.
'And why would you think that, Lieutenant Janek?'
'Because I think Kane killed Dietz. Now I think he's killed someone else.'
'That's wild!'
'Maybe. But if it turns out you lied about when you sent him, you could be implicated, too.'
Janek heard a quick intake of breath. 'This is really absurd.'
'Then clear yourself by answering the question. Or would you rather consult counsel first?'
'You must be out of your mind!'
'It's a simple question-did you lie or didn't you?'
Cavanaugh went silent. When he spoke again his voice was calm. 'As soon as Dietz's wife told us he'd gone to New York, we sent Kane there to look for him.' 'That was before Detective Burke told you Dietz was dead?'
'I don't recall. Events were occurring fairly fast.'
Slick bastard!
'Okay, Mr. Cavanaugh, we'll leave it like that for now. As for your Omega-wanna know what I think?'
'Tell me.'
'Kane's gone rogue. If he finds it first, he's going to shop it around for his own account.'
