'Nothing on record. Only reason the bartender remembered her leaving was he was on a smoke break, just outside.'
'He wasn't considered a suspect?'
'Nope. Tell you one thing, the asshole who did it came prepared-think about all those weapons. We're talking a predator, Alex. Maybe someone watching the club, prowling the area cause he knows there's lots of women around. He waits until he sees exactly what he's been looking for. Lone target, maybe a certain physical type, maybe he's just decided tonight's the night. With the added bonus of a ronier'ible on a quiet, dark street. With the top down.
Which is like You are cordially invited to assault me.'' 'Makes sense,' I said, feeling my gorge rise.
A grad student, huh? Too bad she flunked Logic One-A. I'm not trying to blame the victim, Alex, but add the dope and booze to her behavioral pattern and it doesn't sound like a lady with strong instincts for self-preservation. What'd she steal?'
As I told him, he ate more soup, used his spoon to wedge marrow out of the bone, and ate that too.
I said, 'The Murtaughs said she seemed to have plenty of money even after she quit her job. And you've just added cocaine to her budget.
So blackmail makes some sense, doesn't it? She latches on to the fact that one Jones kid died and the other keeps coming back into the hospital with unexplained illnesses. She steals the evidence and tries to exploit it. And now she's dead. Just like Ashmore.'
He put his glass down slowly. 'Big leap, from petty pilfering to putting the squeeze on biggies, Alex. And there's no reason, from the facts of the case, to think a psycho didn't cut her up. In terms of where she got her money, we still don't know her family didn't give it to her. For that matter, the coke could have been asset, not a debitmaybe she dealt dope, too.'
'If she had family money, why would she rent a cheap single room from the Murtaughs?'
'Slumming. We already know she played roles-the whole punk bit. And the thefts she pulled on her landlords were illogical, not for profit.
Exactly the kind of thing that's likely to get discovered.
She comes across disorganized to me, Alex. Not the type to plan and execute a high-level blackmail scheme.
'No one said she was good at it. Look at the way she ended up.'
He looked around the empty room as if suddenly concerned about being overheard. He drained his ale glass, then lifted his spoon and pushed the soup bone around his bowl like a kid playing toy boat in a tiny green harbor.
'The way she ended up,' he finally said. 'So who killed her?
Daddy? Mommy? Grandpa?'
'Wouldn't you say hired help? Those types don't do their own dirty work.'
'Hired to slice her and do a mechanical rape?'
'Hired to make it look like a psycho thing' that'll never get solved unless the psycho does it again. Hell, maybe Ashmore was involved, too, and the same guy was paid to set up a phony mugging.'
'Imaginative,' he said. 'You just sat there with those people, playing with their kid, making chitchat, and thinking all this?'
'You think I'm totally off-base?'
He ate more soup before answering. 'Listen, Alex, I've known you long enough to appreciate the way your mind works. I just don't think you have much more than fantasy at this point.'
'Maybe so,' I said. 'But it sure beats thinking about Cassie and everything we're not doing for her.'
The rest of the food came. I watched him carve up his chicken.
He took a long time to section the meat, showing more surgical skill and deliberation than I'd ever seen before.
