Текст книги "Ghosts"

Автор книги: Ed McBain

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

7

The new Lineup Room, or Showup Room as it was alternately called, was in the basement of the station house, adjacent to the holding cells where booked prisoners were kept temporarily, awaiting transportation to the Criminal Courts Building downtown. This provided easy access to live bodies who—if they or their attorneys had no objections—could be paraded before a victim or a witness in the company of the true suspect the police hoped would be identified.

In days of yore, a lineup of all felony offenders arrested the previous day would be held downtown at Headquarters every morning. The purpose of that bygone lineup was to acquaint detectives from all over the city with the people who were committing crimes here. Detectives attended lineups as often as they attended court. But whereas court appearances were necessary if convictions were to be had, somebody upstairs decided that the daily lineups were a drain on manpower and resulted in a minimum amount of future arrests since the people on the stage were headed for confinement anyway, some of them for life. The lineup was now a strictly local affair and conducted solely for the purpose of identification.

The Lineup Room contained a narrow stage with height markers on the wall behind it and a hanging microphone above it. In front of the stage, and separating the stage from three rows of auditorium seats, was a floor-to-ceiling one-way mirror. The one-way mirror was sometimes called a two-way mirror by cops, but cops rarely agreed on anything except whose day off it was. One-way or two-way, it presented to the people lined up on the stage behind it only their own reflections. On the other side, the people sitting in the auditorium seats could look through what appeared to be a plate-glass window for an unobstructed, unobserved view of the men or women lined up beyond.

The lineup that Tuesday morning, December 26, was being held for the express purpose of eliciting from Jerry Mandel a positive identification of Daniel Corbett. Carella had called Mandel at home first thing in the morning and was delighted to learn that the Harborview security guard had returned from his skiing trip without any broken bones. He had set up a time for the lineup and then had called Corbett first at home and then at Harlow House to ask if he would cooperate with the police in this matter. Corbett said he had nothing to hide—he had definitely not been the man who’d announced himself at Harborview on the night Craig was killed.

From the holding cells next door, the detectives had selected half a dozen men roughly resembling Corbett—all of them with black hair and brown eyes. From the squadroom upstairs, they recruited Detectives Richard Genero and Jerry Barker, similarly hued. The prisoners, all wearing what they’d had on when arrested, presented a sartorial mix of sweaters, sports jackets, and—in the case of one gentleman pickpocket—a dapper pin-striped suit. Genero and Barker were wearing sports jackets. Daniel Corbett, who’d come to the precinct directly from Harlow House, was wearing a dark blue suit, a paler blue shirt, and a gold-and-blue silk rep tie. As the guest of honor he was allowed to choose his own position in the line. He elected to take the position fourth from the left. When all nine men had silently taken their places behind the one-way mirror, the spotlights went on over the stage. The auditorium beyond remained dark. Carella and Hawes were sitting together with Mandel in the second row center, flanking him.

“Recognize anybody?” Carella said.

“No, not yet,” Mandel said. He was, surprisingly for a skier, a chubby little man in his mid-fifties. He had told Carella, before the lineup, that he used to be a professional wrestler. Carella could not possibly imagine him throwing a hammerlock on anyone. Mandel kept staring at the men behind the plate glass.

“Can I eliminate the ones it definitely wasn’t?” he asked.

“Go right ahead.”

“Well, it wasn’t the ones on either end there, and it wasn’t the one in the middle.”

“Frank,” Carella said into the microphone on the stand before him, “you can take away Numbers One, Five, and Nine.” Genero was standing first in line; he slouched off the stage, looking oddly disappointed that he hadn’t been chosen the winner. The other two disqualified men were prisoners from the holding cells. In rapid sequence, Mandel eliminated two more of the prisoners and Detective Barker. There were now three men standing on the stage: the two remaining prisoners and Daniel Corbett.

“Could they say something for me?” Mandel whispered.

“Sure,” Carella said. “Gentlemen, would you mind saying in your normal voices, ‘I’m Daniel Corbett. I’d like to see Mr. Craig, please.’ Number Four, we’ll start with you.”

Number Four was Daniel Corbett. He cleared his throat and said, “I’m Daniel Corbett. I’d like to see Mr. Craig, please.”

“All right, Number Six,” Carella said.

Number Six said, “I’m Daniel Corbett. I’d like to see Mr. Craig, please.”

“And Number Eight.”

Number Eight said, “I’m Daniel Corbett. I’d like to see Mr. Craig, please.”

“What do you think?” Carella asked.

“I can’t be certain…” Mandel said, and paused, “but I think it’s the one on the right. Number Eight.”

Number Eight was a man named Anthony Ruggiero, who had been arrested early that morning for attempting to break down the door of an apartment just off Grover Avenue, three blocks from the police station. He was drunk at the time, and he claimed he thought it was his own apartment and that the woman who kept telling him to go away was his wife. Carella looked at Hawes, briefly and bleakly, and then thanked Mandel. He went behind the one-way mirror a moment later, like a stage-door Johnny without flowers, and apologized to Corbett for having taken so much of his time.

“So who the hell was it?” Carella asked Hawes.

“Somebody Craig knew, that’s for sure.”

“Had to be. Otherwise, why would he have let him into the apartment? And why would he have had a drink with him?”

“That’s right, the autopsy…”

“Right, he’d been drinking. In fact, he was drunk. But the lab techs couldn’t find alcohol traces in any of the glasses.”

“Which means they were washed afterwards.”

“Which doesn’t mean a thing if Craig was drinking alone. But Hillary told me he never drank while he was working. Never. We know he was working that afternoon because there was a sheet of paper in the typewriter. And the sentence just trailed off, which makes it reasonable to believe he was interrupted—probably when the killer rang the doorbell. But he let him in, Cotton! He knew it wasn’t Corbett, and he let him in anyway. And if he never drank while he was working, then he had to have started drinking after he quit working. Which means he sat down to have a drink with the man who murdered him.”

The two detectives looked at each other.

“What do you think?” Hawes asked.

“I don’t know what the hell to think. Maybe Craig thought it was just a friendly little visit, have a drink, make yourself comfortable, and out comes the knife.”

“It’s the knife that bothers me,” Hawes said. “The fact that he brought the knife with him.”

“Sure, that makes it premeditated.”

“Murder One, pure and simple.”

“Then why’d he accept a drink first?”

“And what did they talk about between five o’clock and whenever it was he began hacking away?”

The detectives looked at each other again.

“Esposito?” Hawes asked.

“Maybe,” Carella said. “He lived in the building, he could have presented himself as the member of some tenants’ committee or…”

“Then who was it downstairs?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who announced himself as Corbett? That couldn’t have been Esposito.”

“No,” Carella said. “Shit, let’s go talk to the Fire Department.”

At Engine Company Number Six, a half hour later, they spoke to Terry Brogan, the moonlighting bartender. Brogan looked at the photograph of Warren Esposito, nodded, and said, “Yeah, I know him.”

“Was he in Elmer’s Thursday night?” Carella asked.

“What was Thursday? The twenty-second?”

“The twenty-first.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I was working the bar that night.”

“Did Esposito come in?”

“Is that his name?”

“Warren Esposito, yes. Did he…?”

“Serve a guy drinks for months on end, never get to know his name,” Brogan said, and shook his head wonderingly.

“Was he there Thursday night?”

“Thursday night, Thursday night,” Brogan said, “let me see, what happened Thursday night?” He was thoughtful for several moments. From the second floor of the firehouse, spilling down through the hole surrounding the brass pole, Carella heard a voice saying, “Full boat, kings over.” Someone else said, “You’ve got a fuckin’ horseshoe up your ass.”

“I think Thursday was the night the redhead took off her blouse,” Brogan said.

“When was that? What time?”

“Musta been about six o’clock,” Brogan said. “She came in bombed, and she had three more drinks in an hour. Yeah, it musta been about six. What it was, some guy sitting at the bar said she had to be wearing falsies, tits like that. So she took off her blouse to show him she wasn’t.”

“Was Esposito there?” Carella said patiently.

“He coulda been. With all that excitement…I mean, who was looking anyplace but the redhead’s chest?”

“What time did you start work last Thursday?” Hawes said, figuring he’d come in by the side door.

“Four-thirty.”

“Esposito told us he was there at five-thirty.”

“He coulda been.”

“What time did the redhead come in?”

“An hour before she took off her blouse.”

“That would’ve been five o’clock, right?”

“Yeah, about five.”

“Okay, were you the only one tending bar at five o’clock?”

“Sure.”

“So you were serving the redhead.”

“Right.”

“So between five and six there was no excitement. Nothing to distract you. So can you try to remember whether or not Warren Esposito came in at five-thirty?”

“Look at the picture again,” Carella said.

Brogan looked at the picture again. Carella found himself wondering how the man would behave in a four-alarm fire. What would happen if he hacked his way into a blazing bedroom and found a bare-breasted redhead in there? Would he forget his own name? Would he jump to the street six stories below without a net under him? Would he turn his hose on an open window?

“Yeah, that’s right,” Brogan said.

“What’s right?” Carella asked, wondering if he’d stumbled across another psychic.

“Rob Roys. He drinks Rob Roys. Right. I served the redhead a Manhattan, and then the old fart up the bar a gin on the rocks, and then he came in and ordered a Rob Roy.”

“Esposito?”

“Yeah, the guy in the picture here.”

“What time?”

“Well, if the redhead came in at five…Yeah, it musta been five-thirty or thereabouts. Like he said.”

“What time did he leave?” Carella asked.

“That’s hard to say,” Brogan said. “Because of all the excitement with the redhead.”

“Was he there when the redhead took off her blouse?”

“I’m pretty sure he was. Let me think a minute.”

Carella watched him while he thought a minute. Carella imagined he was reconstructing the entire exciting event in his mind. In all his years of police work he had never known an alibi to hinge on a redhead’s breasts. But the redhead had come in at 5:00 and taken off her blouse at 6:00, and they had just established that Esposito was there at about 5:30. If Carella had wanted to pull teeth for a living, he would’ve become a dentist. It seemed, though, that they would have to work Brogan’s mouth from bicuspid to molar to canine, tooth by tooth, till they got what they were after.

Brogan began counting off imaginary people lined up along the bar, using the forefinger of his left hand. “Abner at the end of the bar, near the juke, scotch and soda. The secretary from Halston, Inc., next to him, vodka tonic. Then your guy here, Rob Roy. Next to him a guy I never saw before, bourbon and water. Then the redhead, Manhattans. And next to her the guy who made the comment about her tits, also who I never saw before, Canadian and soda. So that’s who was there at six o’clock, just before she took off the blouse. So, yeah, your guy was still there at six.”

“How do you know it was six?” Hawes asked.

“The news was just coming on. On television. We have a television set over the bar. That’s what started the whole thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“This girl they got doing the six o’clock news. What’s her name? I forget her name.”

“I don’t know her name,” Hawes said.

“But you know who I mean, don’t you? Her and this guy do the news together. The six o’clock news.”

“Well, what about her?” Hawes said.

“Somebody said she had great tits—the girl on television—and the redhead said they were falsies, and the guy sitting next to the redhead said something about hers being falsies, too, and that was when she took off her blouse to prove they weren’t.” Brogan grinned appreciatively. “Believe me, they were definitely not falsies.”

“So Esposito was there at six o’clock when the news came on and the blouse came off,” Carella said.

“Right.”

“Was he still there at six-thirty?”

“Six-thirty, six-thirty,” Brogan said. “Let me think a minute.”

Carella looked at Hawes. Hawes let out his breath through his nose.

“The boss came in about ten minutes after six,” Brogan said. “He sees the redhead sitting there at the bar starkers from the waist up, he says, ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ He thinks she’s a hooker or something, you know? He tells her to get the hell out of there, he don’t want hookers lining up at his bar, bringing heat down on the place. Just between us, he collects numbers on the side. So, naturally, he don’t want some cop coming in there to bust a hooker and accidentally tumbling to the numbers operation.” His voice lowered confidentially. “I’m telling you this because we’re all civil service employees,” he said. “I don’t want to cause the guy no trouble.”

“All right, so the boss came in at six-ten,” Hawes said. “Was Esposito there when the boss came in?”

“Yeah, he joined in the chorus.”

“What chorus?”

“Everybody told the boss to shut up and leave the redhead alone.”

“Then what?”

“The boss told her to put on her blouse and get out of there before he called the police. He wasn’t really going to call no police because then he might get the kind of trouble he wasn’t looking for; he was just kind of threatening her, you know?”

“Did she put on the blouse?” Carella asked.

“She put on the blouse.”

“At ten minutes after six?”

“At a quarter after six.”

“Then what?”

“She left. No, wait. First she called the boss a tight-assed son of a bitch. Then she left.”

“At six-fifteen?”

“Six-fifteen, right.”

“Was Esposito still there when she left?”

“He was still there.”

“How do you know?”

“He asked me for another Rob Roy, and he also commented that those were the biggest tits he ever saw in his life.”

“Good, so now it’s six-fifteen,” Carella said. “Was he still there at six-thirty?”

“I gave him his tab at six-thirty.”

“How do you know it was six-thirty?”

“Because the news was going off.”

“Did he leave when you gave him his tab?”

“He paid it first.”

“And then did he leave?” Hawes asked.

“He left,” Brogan said, and nodded.

“At six-thirty?”

“A few minutes after six-thirty, it musta been.”

“How do you know it was Esposito who left?”

“He gave me a five-dollar tip. He said the five bucks was for the floor show.”

“Why couldn’t you remember all this when we first asked you?” Hawes said.

“Because everything in life has a beginning, a middle, and an end,” Brogan said, and shrugged philosophically.

He had, at long last, established Warren Esposito’s alibi. The man had been at Elmer’s, drinking and watching an impromptu ecdysiastical performance, just about when his wife was being stabbed to death on the sidewalk outside their building.

They were back at the beginning again, and the middle and end seemed nowhere in sight.

At 6:00 that night, car Boy Seven of the 12th Precinct was dispatched to 1134 Llewlyn Mews to investigate what the caller had described as “screaming and hollering in the apartment.” It was a peculiar fact of police nomenclature in this city that precincts like the 87th and the 63rd were familiarly and respectively called the Eight-Seven and the Six-Three, whereas all precincts from the 1st to the 20th were called by their full and proper designations. There was no One-Six in this city; it was the 16th. Similarly, there was no One-Two; the men who responded to the call in the Quarter that day after Christmas were cops from the 12th.

They got out of the RMP car, stepped over the bank of snow at the curb, and gingerly made their way across the slippery sidewalk to a sculpted black wrought-iron fence surrounding a slate courtyard. They opened the gate in the fence and went through a small copse of Australian pines to the bright orange front door of the building. One of the patrolmen lifted the massive brass knocker on the door and let it fall. He repeated the act four times and then tried the knob. The door was locked. There was no sound from within the place now; they assumed at once that they’d be calling in with a 10-90—an “Unfounded.” But being conscientious law enforcement officers, they went around the side of the building and through a small garden banked high with snow, and rapped on the back door, and then peered through a window into a kitchen, and then rapped on the door again, and tried the knob. This door was open.

One of the patrolmen stuck his head into the kitchen and yelled, “Police officers. Anybody home?”

There was no answer.

He looked at the other patrolman. The other patrolman shrugged. Tentatively they entered the apartment, somewhat uncertain of their rights, knowing only that they were responding to a call and supposing it was their duty to investigate thoroughly, especially in view of the unlocked back door—which they guessed they could say indicated forced entry, if push came to shove.

In the wood-paneled library they found a dead man wearing a red smoking jacket with a black velvet collar.

The detective/2nd from the Twelfth Squad was a man named Kurt Heidiger, who responded to the homicide alone because his partner was home sick with the flu and because the squadroom was a madhouse today and nobody could be spared to accompany him. He established at a glance that the probable cause of death was multiple stab wounds, and he learned from the neighbor across the mews—the woman who’d placed the Emergency 911 call—that the dead man’s name was Daniel Corbett, and that he worked for a publishing firm called Harlow House.

Heidiger was a smart cop and a prodigious reader. When the city’s papers weren’t on strike, and that was rarely, he read all three of them from first page to last every day of the week. He recalled reading on Friday about the death of a writer named Gregory Craig—whose book Deadly Shades he had also read—and he remembered seeing a black-edged in memoriam notice on the book page of this morning’s edition of the city’s more literary newspaper; the notice had been placed by a publisher called Harlow House. Primarily he remembered that Craig had been the victim of a brutal stabbing. There probably was no connection, but Heidiger was too smart and too experienced to allow even the smallest of possibilities to go unexplored. When he was through with all the Medical Examiner-lab technician-Homicide Division bullshit at the scene, he went back to the office and checked with Headquarters for the name of the detective investigating the Craig murder. He called the 87th Precinct, was connected with the squadroom upstairs, and was told by a detective named Bert Kling that Carella had gone home at a little after four. He reached Carella in the Riverhead house at a quarter past 8:00. Carella listened attentively and then told Heidiger he’d meet him at the scene in an hour.

It looked as if they had another companion case.

Jennifer Groat was a tall bony blonde in her late forties, her hair piled haphazardly on top of her head, the front of her long blue robe stained with what looked like either mayonnaise or custard. She explained that she was just getting ready for bed. The holidays had simply exhausted her, and now this had to happen. She made it plain from the moment she admitted the detectives to her apartment that she was sorry she’d called the police at all. In this city, it was best to mind your own business and go your own way.

“When you called 911,” Heidiger said, “you mentioned that you heard screaming and hollering in the Corbett apartment…”

“Yes,” Jennifer said, and nodded.

“We have the call clocked in at five-fifty-three, is that about right?”

“Yes, it was a little before six.”

“What kind of hollering and screaming did you hear?”

“What kinds of hollering and screaming are there?” Jennifer said. “Hollering and screaming is hollering and screaming.”

“By screaming…”

“Somebody screaming at the top of his lungs.”

“And by hollering?”

“I don’t know what the person was hollering.”

“Was he hollering for help?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was it the same person doing both the hollering and the screaming?”

“I don’t know. I heard the noise over there, and I called the police. There’s always noise over there, but this was worse than usual.”

“What do you mean?” Carella asked at once. “What kind of noise?”

“Parties all the time. People drinking and laughing at all hours of the night. Well, you know. With the kind of friends Mr. Corbett had…” She let the sentence trail.

“What kind of friends were they?” Heidiger asked.

“You know.”

“No, I’m sorry, we don’t.”

“Pansies,” she said. “Fruits. Faggots. Gay people,” she said, stressing the word “gay” and pulling a face.

“Homosexuals,” Carella said.

“Queers,” Jennifer said.

“And they were partying all the time, is that it?”

“Well, not all the time. But enough of the time. I’m a telephone operator, I work the midnight shift, I try to catch a little nap before I leave the house each night. With all the noise over there, it’s impossible. I was about to take my nap now, in fact. If it isn’t one thing, it’s always another,” she said, and again grimaced.

“These friends of Mr. Corbett’s,” Carella said, “how do you know they were homosexuals?” He was remembering that Corbett’s alibi for his whereabouts at the time of the Craig murder was a married woman named Priscilla Lambeth who had entertained him on her office couch.

“One of them came here just the other night,” she said, “looking for the big party.” She lisped the word “party” and accompanied it with a mincing limp-wristed gesture. “He didn’t realize Mr. Corbett lived on the other side of the mews.”

“Did he give you his name?” Heidiger asked.

“Who?”

“The man who came here looking for Corbett.”

“Man? Don’t make me laugh.”

“Did he give you his name?”

“Why would he? He asked for Danny”—and again she lisped the word and hung her limp wrist on the air—“and I told him this was 1136, and what he wanted was 1134. He thanked me kindly and went flitting across the courtyard.”

“This was when, did you say?”

“Christmas Eve. Mr. Corbett had a big Christmas Eve party. I had to work on Christmas Eve, I was trying to get some sleep. Instead, I got a fruit knocking on the door asking for Danny.”

“Did you see anyone entering the courtyard tonight?” Carella asked.

“No, I didn’t.”

“I mean, before you heard the screaming.”

“Nobody. I was in the tub, in fact, when I heard all the fuss. What I like to do is take a bath before dinner. Then I eat a little something, take my nap, which I should be doing now,” she said, and glanced at the clock, “and then get dressed and go to work.”

“Did you see anybody in the courtyard after you heard the screams?”

“I stayed in the tub.”

“You mean you didn’t immediately call the police?”

“No, I called them when I got out of the tub. There’s always noise over there. If I called every time I heard noise, it’d be a full-time job.”

“What time was it when you heard the screams?”

“I don’t wear a watch in the tub.”

“How long did you stay in the tub? After you heard the screams, I mean.”

“About fifteen minutes, I guess.”

“The call came in at five-fifty-three,” Heidiger said. “That means you heard the screams at…” He hesitated, doing his mental calculation, and then said, “Approximately twenty to six, somewhere in there.”

“I would guess.”

“When you got out of the tub,” Carella said, “did you see anyone in the courtyard? Anyone near the Corbett apartment?”

“I didn’t look. I went to the phone and called the police. I figured if I didn’t do something about it, the noise would go on all night. And I wanted to have my dinner and take my nap in peace.”

“Was the screaming still going on?”

“No, it had stopped by then.”

“But you called the police anyway.”

“Who knew when it might start again? You know how those people are,” she said.

“Mm,” Carella said. “Well, thank you very much, Miss Groat. Sorry to have bothered you.”

In the street outside, Heidiger lighted a cigarette, belatedly offered one to Carella, who refused, and then said, “Ever talk to this Corbett guy?”

“Last Saturday,” Carella said.

“Strike you as being a fag?”

“Seemed straight as an arrow.”

“Who can tell these days, huh?” Heidiger said. “How about Craig?”

“He was living with a beautiful twenty-two-year-old girl.”

“Mm,” Heidiger said. “So what do you make of it? Any connection here, do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Knife in both murders.”

“Yeah.”

“If the witch in there was right, this one might’ve been a lovers’ quarrel.”

“Maybe. But we’ve only got her word for what Corbett was. Did she strike you as a particularly reliable character witness?”

“She struck me as a particularly reliable character,” Heidiger said dryly. “You want a beer or something? Officially I’m still on duty, but fuck it.”

“Shooflies are heavy around the holidays,” Carella said, smiling.

“Fuck the shooflies, too,” Heidiger said. “I’ve been with the department twenty-two years, I never took a nickel from anybody in all that time. Just let them bring charges for a glass of beer, I’d like to see them do that.”

“Go on without me,” Carella said. “There’s somebody I want to talk to.”

“Keep in touch,” Heidiger said, and shook hands with him, and walked off up the street. In the phone booth on the corner, Carella checked the Isola directory for a Priscilla Lambeth listing, found none under her name, but two for a Dr. Howard Lambeth—one for his office and one for his residence. The residential number was Higley 7-8021, which sounded like the number Carella had dialed from Corbett’s apartment last Saturday. He dialed the number now. A woman answered the phone; her voice sounded familiar.

“Mrs. Lambeth?” Carella said.

“Yes?”

“Priscilla Lambeth?”

“Yes?”

“This is Detective Carella, we talked last Saturday, do you re—”

“I asked you not to call here again,” she said.

“Daniel Corbett has been murdered,” Carella said. “I’d like to talk to you. I can come there, or we can meet someplace.”

There was a long silence on the line.

“Mrs. Lambeth?” he said.

The silence lengthened.

“Which would you prefer?” Carella said.

“I’m thinking.” He waited. “Give me half an hour,” she said. “I’ll be walking the dog in half an hour. Can you meet me on Jefferson and Juniper at…What time is it now?”

“Close to ten.”

“Make it ten-thirty,” she said. “He’s a golden retriever.”

As befitted an editor of children’s books, Priscilla Lambeth was a petite brunette with a pixie face and wide, innocent eyes. There was a huge dog at the end of her leash, a hound intent on racing through the city streets in headlong search of yet another lamppost to sniff, dragging Priscilla willy-nilly behind him. Carella was hard put to keep up.

Priscilla was wearing a dark blue ski parka over blue jeans and boots. She was hatless, and the wind caught at her short dark hair, bristling it about her head and giving her the appearance of someone who’d just been unexpectedly startled out of her wits—rather close to the truth. She told Carella at once that she’d been truly shocked by what he’d revealed on the telephone. She still couldn’t get over it. Danny murdered? Incredible! Who would want to kill a sweet, loving person like Danny?

Jefferson Avenue at this hour of the night was largely deserted, the shopwindows shuttered, a fierce wind tossing up eddies of snow from the banks along the curbs. To the north, on Hall Avenue, there were still strollers, still browsers in the bookshops that remained open till midnight in hope of catching the after-theater crowd drifting southward from the Stem and the theatrical district. Even those hardy souls were small in number on a night like this, with the wind howling in over the River Harb and the temperature hovering at twenty-four degrees Fahrenheit. Carella walked with his hands in his pockets, the collar of his coat pulled high on his neck, his shoulders hunched. The dog trotted ahead of them like the lead dog on a sled team, tugging at the leash, yanking Priscilla behind him and by association Carella as well.

“Mrs. Lambeth,” he said, “Daniel Corbett told us you and he had been intimate. The thing I want to—”

“I wish you wouldn’t say that,” Priscilla said. Her voice was tiny, the voice of an eight-year-old trapped in a thirteen-year-old’s pubescent body. He wondered briefly what kinds of books she edited. Picture books? Had his daughter, April, read any of the books that crossed Priscilla Lambeth’s desk? The dog stopped at another lamppost, sniffed it, found it to his liking, and lifted his hind leg.

“But it’s true, isn’t it?” Carella said.

“Yes, it’s true. It’s just that when you put it that way…”

The dog was off again, almost yanking her arm out of its socket. She held gallantly to the leash, out of breath, racing along behind the dog. Carella trotted beside her. His face was raw from the wind, his nose was running. He took a handkerchief from the pocket of his coat, hoped he wasn’t coming down with something, and blew his nose.

“Mrs. Lambeth,” he said, out of breath himself, “I’m not particularly interested in how you and Daniel Corbett passed the time of day. But he was murdered tonight, and a neighbor intimated—look, would you do me a favor, please? Would you tie that dog to a lamppost so we can stand still for a minute and talk?”

“He hasn’t pooped yet,” she said.