“Five-foot-seven or seven and a half, one hundred and sixty or sixty-five pounds, blue suit with a dark stain that looked like the State of Tennessee on the left lapel. Light skin with a little blue mole on his neck, right side. Green eyes. Good teeth except for a lower one on the right. Chipped. Looks a little like a volcano with the top missing. Good wristwatch. Rolex, about five years old. On his right wrist. Means he’s left-handed, which was the hand he had the gun in. Ring, real gold on his wedding finger, initials J.G. etched on it. Little scar, hardly see it, just under his right nostril, right here.”
He pointed under his nose.
“Shoes?”
“Armani, black,” he said.
“You tell this to the police?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “They asked me what I saw of the shooter and I said I just saw him for a part of a second maybe. Than they got all interested in my hearing his name.”
Viviase was coming back now. He handed the statement and a pen to me and looked at Moncreiff while I signed.
“Come up with a name yet?” he asked.
“Might have been Kooperman,” the man in the overcoat tried. “Or Salter.”
I handed the statement back to Viviase and said, “You might want to ask Mr. Moncreiff what the killer looked like,” I said.
“I didn’t get a very good look,” Moncreiff said.
I got up.
“Ask him,” I repeated, and started toward the stairway.
Behind me I could hear Viviase ask patiently, “What did the killer look like?”
I started down the stairs and heard Moncreiff begin with, “Five-foot-seven or seven and a half…”
I went back to my office. There was a call waiting from Harvey the Hacker. One of the things he told me almost certainly ended Viviase’s plan to get Trasker legally out of Hoffmann’s house. The other thing he told me confirmed what I had pretty much figured out about who had been taking shots at me.
I called Ames at the Texas Bar and Grill and told him about the Laundromat.
“Can you ride shotgun for me for a few days?” I asked.
“No problem,” he said. “Be right over.”
“I’ll pick you up.”
Ames was waiting outside when I got there. The sky was still overcast, but it wasn’t raining and he didn’t need his slicker for anything other than covering his shotgun.
He climbed in and sat back. I had brushed off the front seat as much as I could, but I’d still have to answer to Fred and Alan. Ames didn’t ask where we were going, which was just as well because it was probable we were headed for the two places Detective Etienne Viviase most wanted me to stay away from.
Stop number one was less than five minutes away, the office of Dr. Obermeyer. This time there were two patients waiting in the reception room, an ancient, little, bent-over woman who tilted her head upward and glared at an equally old man directly across from her, who met her glare for glare.
Neither of them looked up at us when we entered.
Carla the receptionist, hair eater, however, did. Her glare was even better than the old couple.
“I’m calling the police,” she said.
“First give Dr. Obermeyer a name,” I said. “I don’t think he’ll want the police coming to talk about it and I don’t think he’ll be happy with you if you call the police before you give him the name.”
She hesitated.
“I’m sorry if I got you in trouble the last time I was here,” I said. “You’ve got your job and you were just trying your best to do it.”
She picked up the phone and pushed a button.
“That man with the baseball hat is back,” she said. “With another man. He says I should give you a name.”
She looked up at me.
“Dutcher,” I said.
“Dutcher,” she said into the telephone. “Yes.”
She hung up.
“He’ll be with you in a minute,” she said.
I sat. Ames stood. It was less awkward to stand when you had a shotgun in your jacket. We watched the old couple glare at each other across the room for just about a minute. Then the door to Obermeyer’s office opened and a well-dressed, slender woman came out. She was probably in her late forties. She was certainly not happy.
“The tests results will be back in three days,” Obermeyer said, gently touching the woman’s shoulder. “I’ll call you immediately. I don’t think there’s anything to be concerned about. We just want to be careful.”
The woman glanced at Ames and me as she went out the door, and Obermeyer said, “Mr. and Mrs. Spoznik, I’ll be with you in just a moment.”
The glaring couple gave him no sign that he had penetrated their concentration.
Obermeyer nodded at Ames and me and we followed him into his office. He moved behind his desk, a barrier from patients and intruders like me. Ames sat in one chair, right leg not quite bent, and I sat in the other.
“You mentioned a name,” Obermeyer said.
“Dutcher,” I said. “You know it, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure,” he said.
“Kevin Hoffmann’s real name is Dutcher, Alvin York Dutcher,” I said.
“So?” he asked.
“He had a sister, Claire Dutcher,” I said.
“Interesting,” he said. “But-”
“Fraud, murder,” I said. “And you’re a party to it.”
“Wait,” Obermeyer said, quickly standing. “I had nothing to do with any fraud, any murder.”
“William Trasker’s not too sick to me moved, is he?” I asked.
“In my opinion…” Obermeyer began, reverting to his role as confident physician.
“It’s all going to come apart in the next few days,” I said. “You’ll go down with it.”
Obermeyer sat down again.
“William Trasker is a very sick man,” he said. “I’ve kept him comfortable and sedated. He is dying.”
“But if he wasn’t sedated,” I said, “could he get up, walk, talk?”
“How long has he got, Doc?” Ames asked.
Obermeyer looked at Ames with surprise.
“That’s difficult to determine,” the doctor said. “As I told Mr. Fonesca, probably a few days.”
“If a group of cancer experts looked at him,” I said, “what would they say?”
Obermeyer sunk back.
“I don’t know,” he said with a sigh.
“He can function, move, make decisions?” I asked.
Obermeyer nodded and said, “I told you, he is heavily sedated.”
“And you’ll tell that to the police?”
“No,” he said. “I’ll tell the police that I think that Mr. Trasker is in no condition to make decisions for himself, that it should be left to his next of kin, whoever has power of attorney.”
“And we both know who that is,” I said.
Obermeyer said nothing. I got up. So did Ames.
“There’s a small town in North Dakota,” Obermeyer said, almost to himself. “No more than six thousand people in the entire county. That’s where I came from. They need a doctor. I think I’ll go back there. It’s simply not worth all this.”
He looked up at me as if he needed my permission.
“Sounds like a good idea,” I said. “And I won’t try to stop you if…”
