“But you don’t think your mother or your combat boots murdered and then raped somebody.”
“No, you’re right,” I told him. “But I don’t think you did, either. And that’s the thing that makes me most uncomfortable.”
He stopped dead in his tracks. He turned and stared at me. “You believe I’m innocent?”
“I didn’t say innocent, Tommy. You’re an officer who was having an affair with an enlisted soldier. And it happened to be a gay affair. I said I don’t think you killed and raped him.”
“Okay, why?”
“Call it instinct. I mean, every piece of evidence screams it was you, except one.”
“And what would that be?”
“You.”
“Why is that?”
“Because you don’t fit the crime. Because you’re too smart to have let it go down the way it did. Because I think you’re probably a pretty decent guy. Because the key in No’s possession proves you were lovers, and maybe, if you’re telling the truth about that, you’re telling the truth about everything.”
“Then what do you think happened?”
“I haven’t got a clue. But Katherine was right about one thing.”
He chuckled at that, which was the last thing I expected him to do. “And what could Katherine possibly be right about?”
“You were framed. You were set up. Not by a rookie, either.”
CHAPTER 23
I heard the church bells pealing over the pounding on my door. I peeked angrily at the clock: 5:15 A.M., Sunday morning. If I had a pistol I would’ve shot the bastard at the door. I’d fallen asleep only two hours before, because there’s nothing I hate more than an innocent client who hasn’t got a chance in hell of winning.
I threw on my pants and, since one punch in the nose was already one over my weekly allotment, cautiously spied through the peephole till I saw the top of Imelda’s head. In case I haven’t mentioned it, Imelda’s only five foot one and maybe 140 pounds, although a hell of a lot of cordite is packed inside that tiny shell.
When I opened the door, she stomped in without asking. Another damned thing about Imelda: She thinks she owns the world. Somebody, someday, ought to disabuse her of that notion. It certainly won’t be me, though.
“Okay,” she spat out by way of introduction, “Keith Merritt.”
“Right. Keith Merritt.”
“This guy ain’t named Keith Merritt.”
Having already ably established that verity myself, I said, “Right. Keith Merritt is not the name of the guy in the hospital bed.”
“Passport’s phony, too.”
“His passport’s phony, too,” I repeated. Now, how the hell did she know that?
“I checked at the embassy. There’s a Keith Merritt with that passport number, only he’s a lawyer down somewheres in Florida,” she quickly added, accurately reading my thoughts, as she usually did, which I found incredibly disarming.
“So who’s this guy?”
“Nothin’ too hard ’bout that.”
“No?”
“Boy’s got fingerprints, don’t he? Fingerprints can be checked, can’t they?”
“Of course,” I said. “And have you done that?”
“ ’Course I’ve done that. The man’s in a coma; what’s so hard? Go into his room, roll his finger in ink a few times. Not like he noticed. Only hard thing was getting a friend in CID to run the check.”
“So who’s this guy calling himself Keith Merritt?” I asked again, playing along, but of course I knew what she was up to. It was the old sergeant’s trick of making me go through a lengthy disposition to find out exactly how clever and resourceful she was, how many strings she had had to pull. That way I wouldn’t get any dumb ideas, like maybe I didn’t need her or something idiotic like that.
“Name’s Frederick Melborne.”
“Uh-huh.”
“As in Melborne and Associates.”
“This is not a brokerage house I take it?”
“You take that right,” she frostily announced. “It’s a private detective agency in Alexandria, Virginia.”
“So he’s a PI?”
She drew in her chin and stared down her nose at me. “Well he probably ain’t the receptionist.”
It struck me the reason she was busting my balls might be because she was still sore about this gay thing. I’m very perceptive that way.
“And does Melborne have a license?”
“ ’Course he’s gotta license,” she barked, withdrawing a slip of paper from her pocket and reading from it. “Number AL223-987 issued by the state of Virginia in the year 1995.”
“So he’s real.”
“Ex-Army, too. Used to be a lieutenant in the MPs. Penn State, ROTC grad, three years at Fort Benning, got out and went into private business. Should know his way around.”
“Imelda, you do very impressive work,” I said, offering her my most suave grin. I was trying my utmost to mend whatever little problem we were having here. That suave-grin thing works wonders for Eddie Golden, right? Why can’t it work for me?
“I’m not done,” she grimly replied, stubbornly oblivious to my charms. “Melborne got here before Miss Carlson even. Two weeks before.”
“Interesting. Do we know what was he snooping around for?”
“ ’Course we know,” she announced like it was the stupidest question in the world. “Some friends say he was askin’ around about where gays go to party, that kinda thing.”
“So it looks like he was either out for a little fun or he was trying to infiltrate the local gay community?”
“Ain’t that what I said?”
“Why would he be doing that?”
She blew some air through her lips. “Want me to go back there and ask him that? He’s in a coma. Not like he’ll answer.”
I went over and sat on the edge of the bed as Imelda studied me from behind her tiny glasses.
What I wanted to say was, “See, Imelda, just like I told you. That bitch Katherine’s been sandbagging me, uh, you… uh, us.” That’s what I wanted to say. But she was tapping her hand on the side of her leg in a pent-up way, so I controlled myself.
What I said instead was, “I’ll tell you what I think. OGMM hired Melborne and gave him the names of some local gays so he could come over here and infiltrate the local rings. Katherine was using him to run discreet background checks on Lee, Moran, and Jackson.”
“Might be that,” Imelda noncommittally replied.
“And I think Melborne found something, or got close to finding something.”
Imelda indifferently said, “Maybe.”
“So who used him to buff the front of that car? Some gays who got bent out of shape that he was looking into their affairs? Some fanatical antigay group that decided to make an example of him? Or somebody else?”
Imelda was still tapping the side of her leg. I could tell by her expression I wasn’t getting her full cooperation here.
It was starting to distract me, so I said, “You got something you want to say?”
She lowered her glasses down the bridge of her nose, an apocalyptic sign, like a battleship raising its colors to signal it’s ready for combat.
“You sure you wanta hear it?”
