'At least,' he said, puffing, 'this investigation has taken the heat off the Department. Right? You're not getting pressure from the victim's widow and father anymore, are you?
And I haven't seen anything on the case in the papers for two weeks.'
'I'd like to see something in the papers,' Thorsen said.
'A headline like: COPS SOLVE ELLERBEE murder. That would be a big help to Suarez.'
'How's he doing? I haven't spoken to him for a while.
Maybe I'll give him a call tonight.'
'He's a better administrator than he is a detective. But I suppose you saw that, Edward.'
'Well, we've still got ten days. For what it's worth, I believe we'll clear it before the end of the year, or the thing will just drag on and on with decreasing hopes for a solution.'
'Don't say that,' the Deputy said, groaning.
'Don't even suggest it. Well, thank you for your hospitality; I've got to start running again.'
'Before you go, Ivar, tell me something-how are your relations with the DAS office?'
'The Department's relations or mine, personally?'
'Yours, personally.'
'Pretty good. They owe me some favors. Why do you ask?'
'I have a feeling that if we can pin the killing on Ronald Bellsey or Joan Yesell, there's not going to be much hard evidence. All circumstantial. Would the DA take the case, knowing the chances of a conviction would be iffy?'Now you're opening a whole new can of worms,'
Thorsen said cautiously.
'Ordinarily I'd say no. But this homicide attracted so much attention that they might be willing to take a chance just for the publicity.
They're as eager for good media coverage as we are.'
Delaney nodded.
'Well, you might sound them out. Just to get their reaction.'
Thorsen stared at the other man fixedly.
'Edward, you think this Joan Yesell could be it?'
'At the moment,' Delaney said, 'she and Ronald Bellsey are all we've got. Light a candle, Ivar.'
'One candle? I'll set fire to the whole church.'
After the Deputy departed, Delaney returned to his study and called Suarez.
But the Chief wasn't home. Delaney chatted a few minutes with Rosa, wishing her a Merry Christmas, and asked her to tell her husband that he had called-nothing important.
Then he went back to the stack of reports on Ronald Bellsey. According to Calazo, the subject was a prime suspect in four brutal beatings in the vicinity of Bellsey's hangouts.
Add to that Delaney's personal reactions to the man, and you had a picture of a thug who got his jollies by pounding on weaker men, including Detective Hogan. There was little doubt that Bellsey was a sadistic psychopath. The question remained: Was he a homicidal psychopath?
Uncertainties gnawed. Would a loco who derived pleasure from punishing another human being with his fists and boots resort to hammer blows to kill? If Ellerbee had been beaten and kicked to death, Delaney would have been surer that Bellsey was the killer.
He groaned aloud, realizing what he was doing: applying logic to a guy who acted irrationally. You couldn't do that; you had to adopt the subject's own illogic. Once Delaney did that, he could admit that Bellsey might use a ball peen hammer, an icepick, or kill with a bulldozer if the madness was on him.
Joan Yesell might be suicidal and depressed, but she didn't seem to share Bellsey's mania for wild violence. But who knew what passions were cloaked by that timid, subdued persona she presented to the world?
Outside: Mary Poppins; inside: Lizzie Borden.
Between the two of them, Delaney leaned toward Yesell as the more likely suspect, but only because her alibi had been broken.
He knew full well how thin all this was. If he wanted to be absolutely honest, he'd have to admit he was no closer to clearing the Ellerbee homicide than he had been on the evening of Thorsen's first visit.
He looked at his littered desk, at the open file cabinet overflowing with reports, notes, interrogations: all those muddled lives. All that confusion of wants, fears, frustrations, hates.
He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and went lumbering into the living room where Monica sat reading the latest Germaine Greer book.
'What's wrong, Edward?' she asked, peering over her glasses and catching his mood.
'We're all such shitheads!' he burst out.
'Every one of us gouging our way through life fighting and scrambling.
Not one single, solitary soul knowing what the fuck is going on.'
'Edward, why are you so upset? Because life is disordered and chaotic?'
'I suppose so,' he muttered.
'Well, that's your job, isn't it? Making sense of things.
Finding the logic, the sequence, the connecting links?'
'I suppose so,' he repeated.
'To make sense out of the senseless. Up at Diane Ellerbee's place, I said detectives are a lot like psychiatrists -and so we are. But psychiatrists have dear old Doctor Freud and a lot of clinical research to help them. Detectives have percentages and experience-and that's about it. And detectives have to analyze a dozen people in a single case. Like this Ellerbee thing… I feel like giving up and telling Ivar I just can't hack it.'
'No,' she said, 'I don't think you'll do that. You have too much pride.
I can't believe you're going to give up.'
'Nah,' he said, kicking at the carpet.
'I'm not going to do that. It's just that someone-the murderer-is playing with me, jerking me around, and I can't stand that. It infuriates me that I can't identify the killer. It offends my sense of decency.'
'And of order,' she added.
'That, too,' he agreed. He laughed shortly.
'Goddamn it, I don't know what to do next!'
'Why don't you have a sandwich,' she suggested.
'Good idea,' he said.
On that same evening, Detective Ross Konigsbacher was lounging on Symington's long sectional couch. He was dragging on one of Vince's homemade cigarettes and sipping Asti Spumante.
'No one drinks champagne anymore,' Symington had said.
'Asti Spumante is in.'
So the Kraut was feeling like a jet-setter, with his pot and in drink.
He was also feeling virtuous because he had filed a report clearing Vincent of any complicity in the murder of Dr. Simon Ellerbee. That had been his official duty. And, as he had anticipated, he had been rewarded by being shifted to a shit detail-spending eight hours that day sitting in a car outside the Yesells' home waiting for Joan to come out. She hadn't.
'A great meal, Vince,' he said dreamily.
'I really enjoyed it.'
'I thought you'd like the place,' Symington said.
'Wasn't that smoked goose breast divine?'
When they had returned to the apartment after dinner, Vince had changed into a peach-colored velour jumpsuit with a wide zipper from gullet to crotch.
'And that silk underwear,' Konigsbacher remembered.
'Thank you so much. You've been so good to me, Vince. I want you to know I appreciate it.'
Symington waved a hand.
'That's what friends are for. We are friends, aren't we?'
'Sure we are,' the Kraut said. And because he felt himself hazing from the grass and all the booze they'd had that night, he figured he better make his pitch while he was still conscious.
'Vince,' he said, 'I've got a confession to make to you. I know you're going to hate me for it, but I've got to do
