The two men scraped their chairs back along the wooden floor and stood, baring their teeth in broad smiles. David's ears felt like molten rocks and he was sure they noticed but decided he didn't care.
'Please sit,' he said. They returned to their chairs.
'David, I'd like you to met my wife, Gretchen,' Nick said. 'Dear, this is Dr. Brooks.'
She extended her hand and David reached down and shook her fingers. 'Hello,' he said, evenly.
'Nicholas speaks of you often, Dr. Brooks.'
'And I speak of him often,' David said, too quickly.
He put his arm around Kathy to guide her to his side. He noticed her saying shut up silently.
'And of course you know Kathy Dupre,' Nick said.
'Yes, hi there again,' Gretchen said. She was an industrial size woman with a puffy face, a shade shorter than her husband. In silhouette from the shoulders down, she resembled a question mark. Her smoky hair was coifed high on her head and she wore a black granny dress without ruffles. David wondered whether her pearl necklace was real.
'What brings you here?' David asked, looking at Nick. What he actually had in mind was, what brought him and Sparky there?
'Just a night out,' Nick said. 'And you're here to celebrate Kathy's birthday, I take it?' He wore a dark business suit and appeared to be on his best behavior.
'I didn't know you two were social friends,' David said, bowing first at Sparky, then back at Nick.
'Oh, but we are,' Nick replied. 'Cross-country for years. I guess that's not really social but it's good to celebrate any friendship at last.'
David had to work at a smile. Is that all they're celebrating? He faced the unmarried criminalist whom he had seen eating out many times before, usually alone. Sparky looked out of place in a blue pinstripe.
'Spark, as long as I've run into you, can I ask two `shop' questions? It'll save a phone call.'
Sparky gave an annoyed nod before glancing at Nick.
'Prints and slugs,' David said, not waiting for a reply.
'You mean at the Spritz scene?'
'Uh … yes.' Where else, pal?
'I couldn't lift any prints except his own on some of the equipment.'
'Not even mine?' David knew he had his winter gloves on when he entered the van and latex when he probed it.
'Not even yours.'
David noticed Nick's etched smile and Gretchen buttering bread as if shoptalk had been her way of life. 'And the slugs?'
'There were six of them. I only examined the three we pried out of the floor some distance behind the body. Incidentally, I think he was in a sitting position when the perp pumped him. I'll get the other slugs from the medical examiner tomorrow but I'm sure they're the same. Anyway, they check out as.45's. I can't be a hundred per cent sure but they could have been fired from one of the new Kimber ACP's. We just got some information on them. They come in a series.'
'Hmm,' David said. A bit too much information, or is he trying to impress Gretchen? Even David felt he was over reading the criminalist. He took Kathy by the hand.
'Thanks, Sparky,' he said, leading her away. He looked back. 'Good to see you folks. Enjoy your meal. Nice meeting you, Gretchen.'
'Good night, everybody,' Kathy said, bracing her legs. 'See you two tomorrow.'
Verdi had replaced Sinatra as they edged their way among the tables. Only Kathy acknowledged well- wishers.
Seated in the Mercedes, the ignition off, David said, 'Well, what do you think?'
'I think you never let me ask a question in there-or say anything for that matter.'
'You see them everyday.'
'Exactly. Aha, exactly. So do Nick and Sparky-see each other everyday, I mean. So what's the fuss about their eating out together?'
'What fuss?'
Kathy snuggled against him, reached up and grabbed his chin as she always did to make a point. 'Darling, you've already pegged them as the killers because they had dinner at the same table.'
He snatched her wrists, circled them to her back and, elevating her to his size, gave her a brief but hefty kiss on the lips. He pulled back an inch and said, 'Wrong,' even as he informed her he'd changed his list to 'Suspect- 6.'
'Suspects, not killers,' he added. Then he replanted his lips and released her arms which she wrapped around his neck.
As Kathy dozed on the drive home, David dwelled on questions they hadn't addressed, and the, one that kept recurring was: why didn't Spritz dispose of evidence better? Its corollary: was the evidence planted? The answer to the last question would shape the entire character of the future investigation. In one scenario, he reasoned, Spritz killed the other four and someone then killed him. In the other scenario, a serial killer was still on the loose. David's inclination was that Victor Spritz murdered the others for very clear-cut reasons, but David questioned how long he could rationalize away Spritz's sloppiness in disposing of the evidence by means of his psychiatric history. Therefore, unless and until additional findings tilted the scales in that direction, he would assume a single evildoer was responsible for all five slayings.
David swerved into the driveway at 10 Oak Lane and Kathy flinched awake. He thought the night, though clear, seemed darker, the trees brooding, the silence thicker. In the garage, he noticed the slit to Kathy's eyes and, once in the den, he said, 'You go on up. I'm clear on something and I want to upload it. I'll be up soon.'
She opened the closet door and in attempting to hang up her coat, dropped the hanger twice. Exasperated, she said, 'I give up,' and flung the coat over the back of the sofa before climbing the stairs.
David, following her actions, said, 'See you in the morning.'
He sat at the computer and typed:
Five Point Tactical Plan:
1 — Interrogate 4 of the 6 suspects: Foster, Bernie, Robert, Corliss
2 — Visit or revisit homes. May need Musco: Bernie, Spritz, Robert
3 — Visit murder site: Coughlin at parking gate
4 — North End for druggie belchers. Definitely need Musco
5 — Special situation with Nick and Sparky: SURVEILLANCE
He turned off the computer, picked up Kathy's coat and dropped the hanger once himself before securing it in the closet. Upstairs he found her in bed, approaching full sleep. He was not far behind.
Chapter 21
David heard rain pounding against the window, his first cognitive process in a dreamless sleep he had not anticipated nine hours ago. For if children had visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads, he had expected sour balls.
It was seven o'clock Sunday morning and he marveled at the clarity of church bells penetrating the dense showers outside, calling it Archimedes' Law. Or Bernoulli's. No, neither. It's the law of reflection: 'As sound reflects off tiny moist barriers, the sound intensifies.' David had made that up and chuckled as he poured orange juice. Getting ditsy, he told himself. Or just trying to cover up the anxiety already congealing for the day. Once again, he questioned his presence in the suction of escalating and violent unknowns. Too premature for a beginner detective at this level? Too emotive a baptism for a medical man trained to keep his cool, to call the shots?
It mattered not that it was Sunday or that the weather he checked through the kitchen window appeared dug in. And it mattered not his mood or his uncertainties; he had to make the most of Time. He heard the bathroom
