“You liked what the old broad had?” Mike asked.
“Jane Eliot?” I said. “Absolutely.”
“But the guy who broke in to her place didn’t bother with a mask. So why would he bother with the fireman outfit the first time he hit Tina Barr’s place?”
I leaned back and put my feet up on the sofa. “Maybe he thought she’d make him, recognize him.”
Mercer nodded. “Possible. Didn’t mean to kill her if he could find what he was looking for in the apartment.”
“Jane Eliot can’t see well enough to describe her assailant,” I said. “If he knew her vision was impaired and was confident she had no reason to identify him from any previous encounter, he didn’t have to go to the trouble of hiding his face. Besides that, he’d lost the gas mask.”
“Alex has a point,” Mercer said. “The delivery uniform he wore to break in to Eliot’s was a disguise of sorts.”
Mike had found a deck of cards in the drawer of the coffee table and was playing solitaire while we talked.
“Did you ever follow up with the lab on that DNA profile in the mask?” I asked Mike.
“I’m on it. Partial match to Billy Schultz, but it’s a combo, so they can compare it to other samples we submit.”
“So how you doing on profiles?” Mercer asked. “Whose DNA have we got?”
“Schultz’s, obviously. But his alibi works for Tina’s murder,” Mike said. “And I gave the lab the Hunts.”
“Which Hunts?” I asked.
“Let’s see,” he said, folding his losing hand and shuffling again. “Minerva’s first.”
“I know they’re only amendments,” I said, too tired to go at Mike full force. “But they are still part of the Constitution. Hope the seizures were lawful, but then if they were, I probably would have known about them.”
“That cigarette butt she crushed to death in the squad room the other night? Abandoned property,” Mike said.
“I’ll give you that,” I said with a smile. “Nice work.”
“Think of it, a woman inside a fireman’s uniform and mask. Who’d guess that? You automatically assume it’s a guy.”
Bea Dutton looked over at us every now and then as we tried to put the clues together.
“You’re right, Mike. It would never occur to me, hearing that description, to think of a Minerva Hunt-or a Jill Gibson.”
“What are you saying about Jill?” Mike asked.
“Forget I mentioned it. It’s just a personal thing.”
“I’m gonna talk to you about that, Bea,” Mike said. “You can’t hold back if you think there’s something that might be useful to us.”
“Sorry. I just think she plays both sides of the street. She means well, but she’s in a difficult position, as an administrator, between sucking up to the board and keeping her staff squared away.”
I made a note on the top of my pad to get back to Bea Dutton.
“So what did you get from Talbot Hunt?” I asked.
“Swiped a cocktail napkin that the butler missed in the living room yesterday. Figured the one with lipstick was Minerva’s and the one without was her brother’s.”
“Swiped doesn’t work for me.”
“Don’t get in a swivet about it, Coop. I didn’t take it from
“I’ll remember to argue that when I’m taking heat in the hearing.”
“Who else should we look at for DNA?” Mercer asked. “I’d like to go back into Forbes’s apartment. See what he’s got going on.”
“Ask Shalik to scoop up some Band-Aids for you while Travis is picking himself clean on the stoop,” Mike said. “I want Alger Herrick. The man with the golden arm.”
“Because you think he’s dirty?” Mercer asked.
“’Cause he likes maps so much.”
“We have Herrick’s DNA,” I said.
Mike’s head snapped in my direction. “Promise me you went back to his house and got your sample the old- fashioned way. None of this swabbing and drooling stuff.”
“Not my type, Mikey.”
“So what’d I miss?”
“Herrick told us he’d been stopped for drunk driving back in England,” I said.
“And the Brits do DNA on every infraction, no matter how minor,” Mike said. “So Scotland Yard has Herrick’s DNA profile in the hopper.”
“Frankly, I don’t see him playing dress-up,” I said. “And he certainly didn’t do Jane Eliot. She described a young man.”
Mercer stood by the window and dialed his phone. “Hey, Loo. Get on the horn with that deputy inspector in London who owes you. Alger Herrick-he’s got a genetic fingerprint on file there. Ask them to transmit it to the lab, stat, will you?”
Peterson must have assured him he would before Mercer thanked him and hung up.
“Jonah Krauss is another story,” Mike said. “Walked out of his office gym all pumped and ready to fly out of town. No question he’s strong enough to heave that garden ornament.”
“Kinky enough for the first night attack on Tina?” Mercer asked.
“Hey, his favorite display item is a book made out of human skin,” Mike said. “Plus he has access to all those subterranean spaces in the library.”
“Don’t forget his connection to Minerva Hunt,” I said.
“That’s a pretty slimy trio-Krauss, Minerva, and Forbes the map thief, all trying to figure out how to find the panels of the great treasure.”
Bea Dutton had been assembling the pieces of the photocopied map. It covered almost the entire top of the dining table. “Want to see what I’ve been up to?”
“Sure,” Mike said, throwing down the cards and walking toward her.
I stood and stretched, and we all took up positions on one side of the table, our backs to the window with the high, sweeping view over the city.
Bea stood in the center, flattening the enormous map with her small hands. “Okay. So we’ve talked about the twelve panels, right?”
She reached to a chair beside her and raised the image we had found earlier in the day. “You asked if this fake could fool anyone, Alex, and I’d have to say the answer is not anyone knowledgeable, and not for very long. The paper isn’t a fit, it’s probably been stained by tea-yes, just an ordinary tea bag-to discolor it a bit, age it some. The drawing itself is rather crude.”
Bea juxtaposed the parchment next to its copy on the map. It formed part of the border on the right, in the midsection.
Mike looked at the pieces side by side. “I kept thinking of Karla Vastasi when we found this thing in the apartment today,” he said, referring to Minerva Hunt’s housekeeper.
“Why Karla?” I asked.
“’Cause she was set up, Coop. No doubt in my mind that Minerva sent her in, dressed in the madam’s clothes, to meet someone who wouldn’t have a clue if she was Minerva Hunt or not.”
“Rules out Alger Herrick,” Mercer said. “And Jonah Krauss.”
“But rules in the possibility that she had brought that tote bag to carry something out-something just about the size of one of these panels,” Mike said, pointing to the map. “And she wouldn’t be expected to know if it was genuine or not.”
“She had the psalm book, too,” I said.
“Maybe she-or the killer-found it there. If Tina Barr is the one who stole it from Talbot Hunt’s apartment, she might have been hiding it on her own.”
“Waiting for the best offer,” Mercer said.
