'You're right,' he said immediately and dropped back into his chair. 'I just feel so damned useless.'
She looked at him sympathetically, knowing what this case had come to mean to him: that his expertise was valued, that his age was no drawback, that he was needed and wanted.
There he sat, a stern, rumpled mountain of a man. Gray hair bristled from his big head. His features were heavy, brooding. With his thick, rounded shoulders, he was almost brutish in appearance.
But she knew that behind the harsh facade, a more delicate man was hidden. He was at home in art museums, enjoyed good food and drink, and found pleasure in reading poetry-although it had to rhyme.
More important, he was a virile, tender, and considerate lover. He adored the children. He did not find tears or embraces unmanly. And, unknown to all but the women in his life, there was a core of humility in him.
He had been born and raised a Catholic, although he had long since ceased attending church. But she wondered if he had ever lost his faith. There was steel there that transcended personal pride in his profession and trust in his own rightness.
He had once confessed to her that Barbara, his first wife, had accused him of believing himself God's surrogate on earth. She thought Barbara had been close to the truth; there were times when he acted like a weapon of judgment and saw his life as one long tour of duty.
Musing on the contradictions of the man she loved, she gathered up the cards and put them away.
'Coffee?' she asked idly. 'Pecan ring?'
'Coffee would be nice,' he said, 'but I'll skip the cake. You go ahead.'
She was heating the water when the phone shrilled. She picked up the kitchen extension.
'Abner Boone, Mrs. Delaney,' the sergeant said, his voice at once hard and hollow. 'Could I speak to the Chief, please?'
She didn't ask him the reason for his call. She went back into the living room. Her husband was already on his feet, tugging down vest and jacket. They stared at each other.
'Sergeant Boone,' she said.
He nodded, face expressionless. 'I'll take it in the study.'
She went back into the kitchen and waited for the water to boil, her arms folded, hands clutching her elbows tightly. She heard him come out of the study, go to the hallway closet. He came into the kitchen carrying the straw skimmer he donned every June 1st, regardless of the weather.
'The Hotel Adler,' he told her. 'About a half-hour ago. They've got the hotel cordoned, but she's probably long gone. I'll be an hour or two. Don't wait up for me.'
She nodded and he bent to kiss her cheek.
'Take care,' she said as lightly as she could.
He smiled and was gone.
When he arrived at Seventh Avenue and 50th Street, the Hotel Adler was still cordoned, sawhorses holding back a gathering crowd. Two uniformed officers stood in front of the closed glass doors listening to the loud arguments of three men who were apparently reporters demanding entrance.
'No one gets in,' one of the cops said in a remarkably placid voice. 'But no one. That's orders.'
'The public has a right to know,' one of the men yelled.
The officer looked at him pityingly. 'Hah-hah,' he said.
The Chief plucked at the patrolman's sleeve. 'I am Edward X. Delaney,' he said. 'Sergeant Boone is expecting me.'
The cop took a quick glance at a piece of scrap paper crumpled in his hand.
'Right,' he said. 'You're cleared.'
He held the door open for Delaney. The Chief strode into the lobby, hearing the howls of rage and frustration from the newsmen on the sidewalk.
There was a throng in the lobby being herded by plainclothesmen into a single file. The line was moving toward a cardtable that had been set up in one corner. There, identification was requested, names and addresses written down.
This operation was being supervised by Sergeant Broderick. When Delaney caught his eye, the sergeant waved and made his way through the mob to the Chief's side. He leaned close.
'Fifth floor,' he said in a low voice. 'A butcher shop. An old couple next door heard sounds of a fight. The old lady wanted to call the desk and complain; the old geezer didn't want to make trouble. By the time they ended the argument and decided to call, it was too late; a security man found the stiff. I swear we got here no more than a half-hour after it happened.'
'Decoys?' Delaney asked.
'Two,' Broderick said. 'A hotel man in the pub, one of our guys in the cocktail lounge. Both of them claim they saw no one who looked like the perp.'
The Chief grunted. 'I better go up.'
'Hang on to your cookies,' Broderick said, grinning.
The fifth floor corridor was crowded with uniformed cops, ambulance men, detectives, the DA's man, and precinct officers. Delaney made his way through the crush. Sergeant Boone and Ivar Thorsen were standing in the hallway, just outside an open door.
The three men shook hands ceremoniously, solemn mourners at a funeral. Delaney took a quick look through the door.
'Jesus Christ,' he said softly.
'Yeah,' Boone said, 'a helluva fight. And then the cutting. The ME says not much more than an hour ago. Two, tops.'
'I'm getting too old for this kind of thing,' Thorsen said, his face ashen. 'The guy's in ribbons.'
'Any doubt that it was the Ripper?'
'No,' Boone said. 'Throat slashed and nuts stabbed. But the doc says he might have been dead when that happened.'
'Any ID?'
Sergeant Boone flipped the pages of his notebook, found what he was seeking.
'Get a load of this,' he said. 'His paper says he was Nicholas Telemachus Pappatizos. How do you like that? Home address was Las Vegas.'
'The hotel security chief made him,' Thorsen said. 'Known as Nick Pappy and Poppa Nick. Also called The Magician. A smalltime hood. Mostly cons and extortion. We're running him through Records right now.'
Delaney looked through the doorway again. The small room was an abattoir. Walls splattered with gobbets of dripping blood. Rug soaked. Furniture upended, clothing scattered. A lamp smashed. The drained corpse was a jigsaw of red and white.
'Naked,' Delaney said. 'But he did put up a fight.'
The three men watched the Crime Scene Unit move about the room, dusting for prints, vacuuming the clear patches of carpet, picking up hairs and shards of glass with tweezers and dropping them into plastic bags.
The two technicians were Lou Gorki and Tommy Callahan, the men Delaney had met in Jerome Ashley's room at the Hotel Coolidge. Now Gorki came to the door. He was carrying a big plastic syringe that looked like the kind used to baste roasts. But this one was half-filled with blood. Gorki was grinning.
'I think we got lucky,' he announced. He held up the syringe. 'From the bathroom floor. It's tile, and the blood didn't soak in. And we got here before it had a chance to dry. I got enough here for a transfusion. I figure it's the killer's blood. Got to be. The clunk was sliced to hash. No way was he going to make it to the bathroom and bleed on the tile. Also, we got bloody towels and stains in the sink where the perp washed. It looks good.'
'Tell the lab I want a report on that blood immediately,' Thorsen said. 'That means before morning.'
'I'll tell them,' Gorki said doubtfully.
'Prints?' Boone asked.
'Doesn't look good. The usual partials and smears. The faucet handles in the bathroom were wiped clean.'
'So if she was hurt,' Delaney said, 'it wasn't so bad that she didn't remember to get rid of her prints.'
'Right,' Gorki said. 'That's the way it looks. Give us another fifteen minutes and then the meat's all yours.'
But it was almost a half-hour before the CSU men packed up their heavy kits and departed. Deputy
