"The stake's been made from a chair rung," Harry said.
He pointed to a wooden desk chair with a rung missing from between its
front legs. Curls of wood from sharpening the rung to a point littered the
desk top.
Girimonte disappeared into the bathroom. "The washbowl has the plug in and
there's a little water still standing in it. Looks like he got the same
treatment Holle did."
"But much earlier." Harry sniffed. "Maybe yesterday."
Girimonte eyed Garreth from the bathroom doorway. "Where were you
yesterday, Mikaelian?"
Garreth's breath caught.
"You know where he was!" Harry snapped. "I found him at home in bed
asleep."
"At three o'clock in the afternoon, yes. What about before then?" She
raised her brows. "We have hours unaccounted for between the time you left for
work and went home after Mikaelian. Maybe he didn't answer the phone not
because he sleeps so soundly, but because he wasn't there."
"Van, don't start that again!"
"Harry, why don't you stop burying your head?" Girimonte ticked off points
on her fingers. "He fights with a hustler he claims had information about a
killer he has very personal reasons for wanting to find, and the hustler dies.
Later that day the hustler's roommate is killed, too, with signs of having
been tortured, possibly in an effort to gain information. That afternoon
someone else connected to our lady killer has words with him and today he
turns up dead. Also tortured. And this bloodbath started the day after he
arrived in town."
"Oh, come now," Fowler began.
"This is ridiculous," Garreth said. He intended the statement to be calmly
firm, but it emerged with the sharp edges of fear and disbelief he felt. How
could anyone seriously think he- "I want to collar Lane so desperately that I
commit murder myself? Three innocent civilians? Come on!"
Girimonte pulled one of her elegant cigars from her breast pocket and lit
it. "You come on, Mikaelian. You're dirty. You know a lot more about this case
than you're telling anyone. I can smell it."
She was the kind who, believing something, would dig until she got what she
was after. He could not afford to have her digging; it would turn up more than
she counted on, more than he wanted anyone to know. "Harry, you know me.
Straighten her out."
Harry sighed heavily. "A year and a half ago I'd have said I knew you. Now
you've changed, Mik-san. I can't guess what you're thinking or feeling
anymore. And I can't help feeling that Van's right about one thing . . .
killer or not, you do know more than you're telling." The almond eyes slid
away from Garreth, dark with unhappiness and profound unease.
1
God he hated daylight! Today even late afternoon dragged on him with as
much force as high noon. Garreth splashed water on his face and pushed himself
upright.
The mirrors above the washbasins in the men's room at Bryant Street
reflected a face thinner and paler than ever, with eyes smudged by weariness.
The eyes he saw, though, were violet, dancing amid the flames of a blazing
bridge. Since they had come back from the hotel, his former colleagues in
Homicide had been watching him sideways with narrowed eyes, and when they
spoke to him it was in the flat voice usually reserved for outsiders. Lane's
laughter whispered in his ears.
Fowler came out of a stall behind him. "What bloody fools those coppers
are!"
Garreth snatched for his glasses. He had almost forgotten about the writer
following him to the men's room. "They're just doing their jobs. As luck would
have it, I've been in the wrong places at the wrong time."
"I wonder if luck has had much to do with it." Fowler turned on the water
in one basin. The heat of it carried his blood scent toward Garreth. Garreth's
stomach cramped with hunger. "Have you considered that for purposes of hanging
a frame on you, you've been in exactly the right places at the right times?"
Hunger vanished in dismay. "Frame!"
Fowler rinsed his hands and reached for a paper towel. "Of course. I've
been thinking about this a good deal and a frame makes sense of everything. I
admit I'm no policeman, only a writer, but that's to my favor. I can recognize
a plot when I see one. Don't you see? The torture wasn't to gain information
at all, only to make it look like someone wanted information . . . a role your
Miss Barber has carefully tailored to you."
"Why? It doesn't gain her anything:" Even If Lane were alive.
Fowler smiled thinly. "Except revenge, old son. You've seriously
inconvenienced her, after all, haven't you . . . making her give up her job
and go into hiding, forcing her to move twice, turning friends against her. So
now she's returning the favor. It's much nastier than killing you outright.
This way she destroys you. Even if you aren't prosecuted or convicted, you'll
become a pariah."
But Lane was dead. The same motive fit Irina, though. Since leaving that
note at the apartment, she might have found out he killed Lane. He sucked in
his breath. "Maybe you're right."
"In which case you'd best find her quickly, before she kills again."
Before another innocent person died. Garreth's mouth thinned. Find her how?
The hexagram Lien had thrown for him that morning-only that morning?-ran
through his head: if the little fox wets his tail crossing the river, nothing
furthers. Thought and caution are necessary for success.
He sighed. "I think I'd be playing into her hands going after her on my [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]