wondering how doctors would retrieve their cars to leave. Worry about that later. He also wondered if the crime scene unit kept its vehicles idling, waiting for such calls to come in.
'It didn't take you long,' he said to Kathy.
'Luckily, we were having a special Saturday morning briefing. Dropped everything. What do we have?' She raised the collar of her blue trench coat against the drizzle, now turning coarse.
'Coughlin.'
'Coughlin? Dead?'
'Very.'
'They said `shooting.'
'I just got here myself, but looks like he took it in the temple.'
Kathy raised her voice as she looked around. 'Anyone hear a shot?' No one answered.
'Probably used a suppressor, anyway,' she said.
As Kathy joined Nick who was leaning over the body from the passenger side, David drifted off into the elevated wooded area opposite the gate, surmising the killer had sniped from a dense cover there rather than from the bluish shell of a budding psychiatric building on a higher landing fifty yards away. For six months, crews had worked the equipment in forty-hour weeks but the diesels and jackhammers were silent on weekends.
He examined for footprints and, damning the rain for melting the snow among the bushes, felt his knee buckle as he threaded his way up the ice-crusted slope. On a small ridge behind an oak, he spotted a rubber object sprouting through some wet leaves and used a handkerchief to pick it up; it was a rubber nipple from a baby bottle. Two feet away, he found a single cartridge casing resting against a heap of cartons, planks and mortar discarded from the construction site. He placed them into separate envelopes which he took from his breast pocket.
David returned to the oak tree and inspected the bushes on either side of it. He stood there for a moment, proud of collecting evidence but frustrated by the turn of events. Another murder to foul things up. Coughlin didn't do the first job? Is this a diversion killing or the second in a payback plan? Spritz? Or some enemy we haven't met, yet. Two murderers? Coughlin threatened Tanarkle pretty good. And, what about the police. This botches
He walked left to a gentler slope and returned to the car. He tried to disguise the look of anguish he felt in his face. 'I had a premonition,' he said to Nick.
'That Coughlin would be killed?'
'No, that he'd be the one who would kill again.' Nick flashed a superior grin. 'Well,' he said, 'at least you got the character right.'
The statement didn't resonate well with David and he sensed Kathy noticed. She motioned him aside. 'You all right?' she said. 'You seem wounded. Forget it, that's just his brand of humor.'
'Ha-ha, laugh a minute,' David said. 'But, that's not it. That over there-I guess it's kinda…you know…jolted my confidence.' He curled his lip in disgust as he nodded toward Coughlin's body.
'Well, it shouldn't. It should just double everyone's responsibility, that's all.'
She moved closer to him and whispered, 'David, you've done all the right things. It's not your fault the guy killed again-plus … '
'Yeah, I know,' he replied, stepping on her words. He thought he'd finally licked his habit of cutting people off in conversation. 'Look, you all carry on. I'm going to walk it off for awhile. I'll be back.'
He started to turn but then reached into his pocket and handed Kathy the envelopes. 'Here's your suppressor,' he said. 'It's pretty crude. Plus a spent casing.' He pointed toward the bank of woods. 'I found them up there by the big tree.'
David slouched off like a kicked dog and headed for the Hole. He'd had setbacks in the past and walks like this, all brief but therapeutic. So, by the time he reached Belle's desk, he had decided on at least the preamble to a necessary new resolve. He left a note on her desk for Monday morning:
'Belle-you've read the papers or we've already talked if you called me. Don't book any more house calls. We'll play it week by week. D.'
He returned to the others, coming first upon Sparky who was overseeing the technician taking photographs. 'Here we go again, Spark,' David said. 'Same as before I can check with you later?'
'Absolutely. I'll be around all weekend, I'm afraid.' David felt a strong hand on his shoulder. It was Foster's. 'David, this is lunacy! You realize we're ruined? Why couldn't he have been shot in his own goddamned parking lot?'
'Nothing like healthy sorrow,' David said but-reconsidering-winked. He saw Nick talking to a group of security men and jotting down notes in his own notepad. Kathy was half inside the back of the car inspecting the floor with a flashlight.
David spoke to her, his voice carrying an edge of resignation. 'Kath, I've seen enough for now and Sparky said it'll be okay for me to check with him later. We're still on for tonight, right?'
She emerged and, after scanning his face, shook the beam of light on it. She turned off the light and inched closer to whisper, 'C'mon, darling, snap out of it. This is what happens if we have a killer out there with a planned agenda. And, yes, I'll be over after I finish here and freshen up. We can cover what we have so far and I can watch you you-know-what.'
'What?'
'Tie one on. Right?'
David didn't react.
'Right?' she repeated, sticking the flashlight against his solar plexus and twisting it.
David doubled over in mock distress and, forcing a smile, said, 'If you insist.'
That afternoon, David stepped onto his small front porch to check the weather. The rain had stopped but the aroma was damp and the air was so heavy on his arms, it felt like sleeves.
Twenty minutes later, he climbed out of the shower as the phone rang. It was Belle,
'David,' she said, her voice raised a notch, 'I know about Coughlin. It's all over the news. But before that, you've got to hear this. It can't wait till Monday. At first I thought it could but the more I thought of it-you know I wouldn't call unless it was important and so I figured …'
'All right, already! Calm clown. What have you got?'
'You know my old lunch girls at the hospital-the E.R. gang?'
'Yes.'
'One of them just called. Cindy. I don't know how she found out, but if she says something's true, it's true. Alton Foster and Betty Tanarkle have had something going for months, if not years. Can you believe it?'
'She said that?'
'Yes. And she's pretty certain Ted knows about it ' 'Well, I'll be a son-of-a … how about Nora? Does she know?'
'Cindy can't be sure.'
David thought out loud into the phone. 'Why that old duck. No wonder he never wanted to leave here. Taking all that crap from Bugles.'
'What's she see in him, anyway?' Belle asked.
'Power? Some physical quirk? People are funny.' He deliberated, oblivious to Belle's next question until she repeated it.
'You still there?' she said.
'Yeah, I'm-uh-I'm still here. This blows my mind. This absolutely blows my mind.'
'It couldn't possibly tie in with the murders, could it?'
'I don't know.' David shook his head. 'Unless we say Foster's our man-and that's remote to begin with-and that he knocked off Bugles because he knew about the relationship, and Coughlin because of their rivalry.' He spoke as if he were addressing himself. 'Those are pretty big leaps.'
'Do you think there'll be more?'
The question jerked David off his line of thought. 'You mean murders?' He knew what she meant. 'Yes.'
While David speculated, he heard breathing at the other end and was conscious of his own. 'Give me your opinion,' he said. 'If you hadn't just heard about Foster and Betty, would you still ask the question?'
