"Fine, I plan to talk to them too. I also intend to ask McNeil where he was the night the girl disappeared. He wasn't on duty, I know that much."
"You're going to make him an official suspect?"
"Official, unofficial. John, you know I told you I'd been in his garage and found the knife that could have done it… Are we off the record?"
"If you like."
"Are we just two friends talking now?"
" Okay. "
"Well, I went back and got my fingerprints off the knife."
"And his, too."
"If there were any on there in the first place. You should see how clean he keeps those things."
Becker waited.
"I know I shouldn't have done that," Tee said, hoping Becker would contradict him. He gave Becker time enough to speak, and then continued. "But this case isn't going to come down to finding McNeil's fingerprints on his own knife in his own garage, is it?":, Not anymore," Becker said.
"Thanks for your support."
"I can't tell you that you did the right thing, if that's what you're waiting for."
"I know."
"The right thing was to wear gloves when you went in there the first time."
"Well, I wore gloves this time. And I found something else… a golf trophy, very expensive blown-glass kind of thing, Steuben glass, I think."
"McNeil doesn't strike me as a golfer."
"It wasn't McNeil's. It had the name of the owner right on it. It belongs to Paul Hill."
"The same Hill?"
"The same. I asked him about it. He hadn't realized it was missing until I asked. Which means McNeil was in Hill's house sometime. My guess is the same night he took Inge."
"You think McNeil is burgling houses as well as killing young women?"
"I think this was what Kiwasee called to tell me about."
"But you didn't see it the first time you searched the garage? You said you did a thorough search, right?"
Tee shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "I missed it the first time. Or maybe it wasn't there and McNeil shifted it later, I don't know. It was there this time."
Becker looked out the window of the police headquarters. The station shared a parking lot with the town hall and the town library. He watched a clot of little children and their parents emerge from the weekly story hour in the library. "I don't know McNeil well," Becker said slowly. "I don't like him, he's feisty and defensive and generally oh structive. I make him to be the kind of guy who's envious of anybody he thinks is ahead of him in life and meanspirited about it.
Probably a bully, too. But I don't get the impression that the man is a moron."
"I didn't say he was a moron."
"He would have to be to kidnap a girl and at the same time swipe an expensive trophy that can't be worth much to anybody except the guy whose name is on it. What's he going to do, sell it? Do you want a trophy with the name Paul Hill on it? Nicklaus or Palmer, maybe, but not Paul Hill, amateur golfer. So then what? He'll keep it? Put it on his mantel so he can daydream about what a great golfer he isn't? Who could he show it to? I know-how about steal it, a one-of-a-kind item that can be traced immediately, and hide it in his garage? That way if anybody finds it they can link him to the Hill house right away. An especially good idea if he's just killed a girl who lived there. I'd call that moronic, wouldn't you?"
"The trophy is there, I saw it."
"But who put it there? Why didn't you see it the first time?"
"It was hidden."
"How well?" Tee hesitated. "Not very well."
"How did Kiwasee know it was there? What was Kiwasee doing so close to McNeil's house the night he got killed? Why did Kiwasee drop the dime on McNeil in the first place?"
"You're telling me Kiwasee planted this trophy in McNeil's garage?"
"Kiwasee was a professional burglar. He specialized in Clamden. The Johnny Appleseed case has been in all the papers, he could have read about it in Bridgeport, he could have read about it in jail. Inge Schrag was listed as missing in the police log in the Clamden Forum.
With a little diligence, Kiwasee could have read that. Assume he has a grudge against McNeil for whatever reason and hits on the bright idea of making him a suspect in the Johnny case."
"So he calls me up, says check out McNeil, steals something from Hill's house that can be traced, and plants it in McNeil's garage where I can find it. So why didn't I find it the first time?"
"Maybe you just didn't see it."
"I found it in a rug. I'd spread that rug out flat before believe me, it wasn't there."
"Maybe you got there before Kiwasee thought you would. Maybe-I don't know why."
"And how would Kiwasee know Inge was a victim unless he was there-or McNeil told him?"
"He wouldn't have to know. All he had to know was that she was missing-that would be enough to make a link of suspicion," Becker said.
"I don't have all the pieces to a theory, Tee. But it sounds better at first blush than your notion that McNeil is stupid enough to plant that kind of evidence on himself."
"To each his own," said Tee.
Metzger had hoped to speak to the chief alone, but since the discovery of the latest body the chief had not been alone. He was forced to see him with Becker in attendance.
"There was-uh-an incident the other night that I didn't put on my report because it didn't seem really significant at the time," he said, avoiding the chief's eyes. "I think I was maybe wrong about that. You know, in light of everything else."
"Okay," said Tee. "What was it?"
Metzger told Tee and Becker of his nighttime discovery of the unfinished grave, the light in the woods-he did not refer to it as eerie-and his subsequent check of the cars in the vicinity. "I ran the plates through the computer and they were all where they belonged except for one."
Metzger read from his notebook. "One car was parked in a driveway where the owner did not live, as far as I can determine. It was a four-year-old Chevy Caprice, a beige four-door sedan, and the registration was to something called Lovely Works, which listed an address in Westport. I checked out the address, it's a box in the Mail Box outlet, you know, where they rent you post office boxes. The manager said the box was paid up for three years in advance. Paid in cash. Registered to Lovely Works. He doesn't have a clue who paid him, or what he looked like, it was over two years ago."
"A company has to give names for the drivers of the car for insurance purposes," Becker said.
"Yes sir, I know that. I looked into that, too, because I was hoping there was a logical explanation for it all. The driver listed is a Mr.
T. F. Schilling, who lives at Sixtytwo Ledgewood."
"Have you talked to Mr. Schilling?"
"No sir, not yet. I thought I should tell you about this first. "
"Let's go see Mr. Schilling," said Tee, who was on his feet with an alacrity that Becker had not seen in him in years. "We'll screw his feet to the floor."
Schilling couldn't have been more surprised to have three cops suddenly arrive on his doorstep, asking questions about a car he knew next to nothing about.
"I don't know what car you're talking about," he said. "I don't know anything about Lovely Works, whatever that is-I've never heard of it.
What the hell is this all about?"
"A four-door beige Chevy Caprice," said Tee. "You don't know what that is?":'No, why should I?" 'Because it's parked in front of your house right now."
"That's not my car. That's the Emros' car."
"Who are the Emros?"
"Our neighbors. That's their car. I think it belongs to one of their kids, they leave it parked out there most of the time." Schilling's house was at the end of a cul-de-sac that swelled into a bulb-shaped rotary at its terminus. Three driveways fed into the bulb. It was a common arrangement in the more recently developed sections of the town, and the circular curves at the dead end of the roads made one of the few places in town where a car could be parked outside a driveway without arousing suspicion.