shower running and, slipping off his robe, joined Kathy there, then in bed, learning what mattered for the moment and what had jump-started his day.
After they smiled through a light breakfast, David drove her to her condo. They sat in the car while, for the first time, he explained his general course of action as outlined in his Tactical Plan. She offered to accompany him after church but he declined, announcing his greater maneuverability-when-solo to a raised eyebrow. They would touch base later in the afternoon.
It was eight-thirty, the rain had eased and warmed, but the air smelled sassy. He hadn't until then determined his agenda for the day as he streaked along a byway toward the main parking lot of Hollings General. It would be an ideal time to reconnoiter the site of Everett Coughlin's shooting: doctors made their rounds later on Sundays, surgeons performed only emergency procedures on weekends, and the overall vehicular flow was minimal. David preferred not to tip his hand in any way to any person.
He ran his entry card across the automated machine at the gate and parked his car in the center of the lot between two cars of the only half-dozen there. He had never understood his acceptance of a raincoat for rain, yet his aversion to an overcoat for cold. He unbuttoned two buttons of a London Fog for easy access to the shoulder rig and-Friday in one hand and a Tote umbrella in the other-walked back to the gate, stopped, and looked up at the knoll where the killer had been positioned eight days before. David realized that back then he had not fully appreciated how isolated the spot was, shielded in front by thick bushes and at the rear by the construction site for the new psychiatric facility.
Out in the open, on a morning when the lot was not jammed with doctors' cars and the construction site was free from workers, he would have felt sufficiently secure with the hardware attached to his shoulder and ankle. But he strutted around the gate two or three times, swinging Friday for the benefit of anyone who might glance out windows, not to convey to him or her a message of added firepower-because no one knew its contents-but to announce he was officially sleuthing. He was aware that most hospital personnel had come around to recognize the attache case as a special badge, distinct from the hospital-issued floppy one he refused to clip to his jacket and, as such, Friday conveyed an aura of legitimacy.
Of all the murder sites-here, the O.R. suite, the locker room, the elevator shaft, the van-this was the one he believed he had given short shrift to. Although he had recovered a spent shell and baby nipple, he recalled the ice on the incline, the distraction of the Major Crime Unit below, and his failure, at the time, to explore the construction site by motoring to a higher level and approaching it from the rear.
He tipped the umbrella and gave it a smart shake, but no drops dislodged. He tucked Friday under one arm, held out his other and felt no moisture on his hand. Convinced the rain had stopped, he looked toward the hospital windows, collapsed the umbrella, squeegeed it with his fingers and inserted it in the attache case.
The ground sounded moist but not soggy beneath David's shoes as he climbed the incline. He passed by several bushes, paying no heed to the point where he had located evidence on his prior inspection there because, now of a single purpose, he headed toward the partially erected building, the cobalt blue of its cinder blocks more striking than he had remembered, its contour honey-combed with window and door holes like a child's drawing of a house. David was one of many who had voiced their disapproval to the building committee of the structure's facade color, but then again he was not fond of its contemporary architectural design, either. In the face of entreaties by Alton Foster and Dr. Sam Corliss, however, who was David Brooks to complain?
And now, perhaps the color was a divine selection because the mortar's hue was unmistakable and potentially incriminating. David had reasoned that particles of masonry might have stuck to the killer's shoes, particles that might have been tracked by workers to the ground around piles of sand and gravel, between strewn empty soda cans, around the backhoe and generator and steam shovel, now silent. In all likelihood, David thought, the perp had arrived at his vantage point by way of the road on the upper level and, therefore, around the roughly assembled shell or through jambs on which doors had not yet been hung. He conceded to himself that the ice of two Saturdays before might have hardened any particles but counterpointed that the shortest route from the road to the top of the knoll was through and not around the shell.
The brusque remark of Nick Medicore that evidence could have been planted to ensnare Spritz had layered David's subconscious only to surface as he stooped over to examine dust and particulate matter on the floor of the shell. The remark had been too offhanded to suit David at the time but, nonetheless, he was in a position now to invalidate it: who would ever think of planting blue particles? But then again, who could ever have carried off all five murders? He stared briefly at a stack of cinder blocks and considered knocking off the corner of one of them and then pulverizing it, but he wanted to simulate in the aggregate all material that might have been picked up by a shoe.
He took out several small plastic bags from Friday and brushed in samples from random locations in the building, coughing from the smell of masonry, smacking his lips together as dust powder settled on his tongue. Kathy always told him he didn't keep his mouth closed long or often enough.
He held up one of the bags against the sunlight beginning to elbow through a window hole. His jaw tensed but could not hold back a compact smile. That son-of-a-bitch is blue-definitely blue.
He packed the plastic bags in Friday and stole away, like the winner in a game of marbles thirty years ago.
It took David ten minutes to make the fifteen-minute drive to Marblehead. Nor did he waste any time removing a crowbar from the trunk of his car and jimmying the back door of Victor Spritz's house. There had been no need to summon Musco, no need to fool a dead man.
David's visit had a dual purpose, and if his hunches were correct, he hoped that the issue of Spritz's having been set up would finally be put to rest.
Passing through the laundry room, he noticed a pair of black leather gloves, palms down on the washing machine. They reminded him to squeeze into latex gloves which he removed from Friday, along with a flashlight. He flexed and unflexed his fingers like a pianist about to embark on a concerto and, picking up the gloves, reflected on the meaning of grey powdery smudges on the inner aspect of its fingers and palms. He concluded the markings lacked even a suggestion of a bluish cast before placing the gloves in his case, palm surfaces together.
David opened the garage door with less stealth than before, cleared his throat of hydrocarbon and approached the Toyota's tires. Although he had turned on the lights, he shined the flashlight over the treads of all four tires: they were clean. He didn't know whether to wring his hands or clap them. But he did have an alternative idea.
He hurried to the carton of equipment he had packed in the trunk of the Mercedes and brought back his evidence vacuum. He vacuumed a thin layer of gritty material off the floor of the Toyota on the driver's side, bagged it and held it up to the overhead light bulb. Blue? Maybe, maybe not. But he was happy to have the material for analysis and would confer with Kathy about who the analyst should be.
Through the corner of an eye blurred by the bare bulb above, the oil-stained cardboard came into focus. He folded it in a plastic sheet and, along with the bag of vacuumed matter, compressed it atop the gloves in Friday. He then knelt and, beaming the light on the floor below the car's crankcase, saw no oil droppings.
David's sweat felt heavy at his neck and along his spine. And he hadn't yet entered the room he was anxious to enter. He unbuttoned his raincoat and opened the rear door to Spritz's gun collection and war memorabilia. The splash of lights and martial music startled him even though he knew what to expect. He marched straight for the case marked 'MISCELLANEOUS-90's.' Its middle shelf contained a tray of pistols labeled, 'KIMBER.45 ACP's.' Within the tray, four guns lay spread out in a row. Corresponding cards beneath them read, 'CUSTOM'-'TARGET'-'POLYMER'-'COMPACT.' In the center, a fifth card was labeled, 'GOLD MATCH STAINLESS.' The space above the card was empty.
Hallelujah! Sparky's words about the Kimber series thundered in his ears. One more thing to do, but not here.
He changed his mind, entered the house itself and checked the front door and all the downstairs windows. On the way out, he examined the back door closely, blocking out the damage he had created to the jamb minutes before. Other than his own, there had been no forced entry into the Spritz house.
David had fulfilled his twin objectives: to collect particulate evidence that might be there, and to determine if another evidentiary item might or might not be there. Two bonuses were the powder-stained gloves he happened upon and the oily cardboard he had kicked against the garage wall forty-eight hours before.
On the ride back to the hospital grounds, he decided not to fine-tune the meaning of his discoveries until
