“I told you, I have information that will make your day-although not for the better I would guess.” Riker tapped the ash off his cigarette but never took his eyes off me.
“I assume this great revelation is going to cost me.”
He leaned forward, put his elbows on the table, and said, “Not one red cent. I don’t indulge in blackmail.”
“Then that’s about all you didn’t indulge in.”
“A smart mouth,” he said with disdain. “You think it’s so funny? A person facing life for something that person never did? That’s your idea of justice, isn’t it? I bet you and Culhane got along famously.”
“One murder’s as bad as another.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’ve dusted a lot of people in your time, Riker. You deserve every minute you’ve served, even if you were framed for the one thing they got you for. The one you keep whining about.”
He jumped up, forgetting he was cuffed to the table leg, and his arm snapped at the end of the cuff. I didn’t move, I just stared at him. He stood for a moment, his face reddening. Then he composed himself, smiled, and sat back down.
“I don’t know what else you’ve lost in stir,” I said quietly. “One thing you damn sure haven’t lost is your rotten temper.”
“I don’t whine,” he hissed.
Still staring at him, I said, “Whine, cry, whatever you call it. You’re in here to stay.”
He realized I was getting to him and his mood suddenly changed. He relaxed and slouched back in his chair again.
“He who laughs last, laughs best,” Riker said.
“It’s ‘laughs best, laughs last,’ ” I said. “You’re just full of homilies, aren’t you? I’ll tell you what, why don’t you sit there and have a big laugh. Me? I’ve got a long drive ahead of me.”
I started to get up.
“Who do you think you’re kidding?” he said.
I was perplexed by the question. “About what?” I asked.
“That stuff about that Parrish dame?” he said. “You’re showboating, Sergeant Bannon. To be crude about it, you’re pissing in the wind.” He leaned forward again. “You aren’t any closer to Verna Hicks than I am to the King’s palace in London.”
“And you are?” I said.
“What do you think you’re doing here? When I saw the front page this morning I knew what was going on. As soon as I saw the paper today, I knew you’d been grabbing at straws.” He made a little motion with his hand, grabbing an imaginary speck in the air. “Grabbing at straws.” Then he chuckled. “Been working this case what, five, six days? A week, maybe? Still on square one?”
He was annoying me but I didn’t want to show it.
“Why don’t you just say what you have to say.”
“Maybe Lila’s picking up five C’s a month just like old Verna was. Maybe she had a little work done on her face. Culhane’s easy with the favors-all those rich friends lay it out for him.”
“That’s what you think? Everybody who leaves San Pietro has a meal ticket for life?”
“Verna’s paycheck ran out, didn’t it, Sergeant?”
“Why would anybody kill her?” I said.
He shook his head and chuckled.
“Your boy’s running for governor, certainly you’ve heard? The word is, he’s going to announce this week. Maybe that’s why Verna’s no longer with us.”
“Make your point, Riker. Why would Verna pose a threat to Culhane?”
“Verna Hicks could have blown Culhane out of his big, comfortable saddle.”
“With what? What did she have on him?”
He leaned as close as the cuff would let him, and whispered. “You’re supposed to be so smart, Bannon,” he said, shaking his head. “Oh, it was my red jacket Lila Parrish saw the man wearing that night, my gun that was fired, my car Wilma got thrown into. But I didn’t shoot Wilma Thompson.”
I didn’t say anything. I sat there looking stupid, waiting for the punch line, and it was a showstopper.
“Don’t you get it, Sergeant? Nobody shot her. Wilma Thompson was Verna Hicks.”
CHAPTER 31
“I knew it as soon as I saw that picture on the front page,” Riker hissed softly, his black eyes glittering. “She was about fifty pounds heavier and she let her hair go natural and she had her nose bobbed, but I knew Wilma better than anybody. I knew she peroxided her hair back then because she thought it made her look like a movie star. I knew she had big dreams that wouldn’t happen, knew she had broken her ankle hiking up near Monterey, because I was with her that day. I piggybacked her down to the first-aid station. And here’s the clincher. I know that lady in the morgue, the one you found in the tub, has bridgework.” He stuck a finger in the corner of his mouth, rubbed it across three teeth. “These three, right side on the bottom.”
Worms of anxiety began to gnaw at me. I hadn’t read the whole autopsy report, I had been out the door as soon as Bones told us we had a homicide on our hands. Riker couldn’t have gotten that detail from the newspaper. The story had only quoted the paragraph from the report that pertained specifically to the fact that she was murdered.
“Anybody could have read that report and phoned you,” I said.
“I didn’t even see the paper until I got up this morning. It doesn’t even hit town here until 4:00 a.m. And there’s nothing in it except the information about water in her lungs and the radio causing it to look like an accident.”
“Your lawyer called you this morning. He could have gotten a copy of that report with a phone call, called you up, and read it to you.”
“Wrong again; I called him first, when I read the Times. He called me back the same as you, in no time flat.”
I thought about what he was telling me. It made a kind of terrible sense. Someone paid to have Wilma’s nose fixed to make her harder to recognize. Then she laid low for a while. Then someone arranged to get her a job in the tax office. Someone with clout.
Someone like Culhane.
“I considered the possibility that she wasn’t dead,” Riker said. “I always figured it was Eddie Woods who set me up on Culhane’s orders. But what could I do? I’m in the can for life. Then I saw the picture this morning and read the story and I knew it wasn’t Lila. So there it was. Verna Hicks was Wilma. I figure the little twist wanted to up the ante on Culhane since he’s running for governor. And if he got elected, she’d probably jack it up again. So Woods did the job for good this time.”
“Pure guesswork,” I said bitterly. “You think you can con everybody into thinking Wilma Thompson’s been alive for the last twenty years, something nobody can prove.”
His lips curled into a sneer.
“Just another lousy cop,” he snarled. “You don’t want to know what really happened. You have any idea what it’s like to live in a cage? The worst part about it is you have no options. You get up at the same time every day, shower at the same time, eat three lousy meals at the same time, and go to bed at the same time. One day is just like the next. You know it will never change for the rest of your life. And worst of all, you know you’re innocent. Well, now it will change. I can change it because now I can prove I was framed. The dentist who did Wilma’s bridgework still lives in San Pietro. His name is Wayne Tyler. I’ll bet he’s still got all the charts and pictures he took when he was working on her. If you’re such a good cop, you’ll go get it. And the coroner can see if I’m telling the truth.”
His smile was an evil leer.
“You know what I like best about all this?” Riker threw his head back, laughed, and smacked his hands