"What's the matter with McNeil as a suspect? He's too easy?"
"I would welcome easy, Tee, believe me. I would love just once for one of these guys to show up on the doorstep and confess. I just think we ought to check him out a bit more before you fit him for a noose."
"Like what?"
"Like check his alibi for the night Inge Schrag went missing, for starters."
"You mean… investigate?"
"Something like that."
"I knew there was a reason I didn't like this job… He said he was in bed with his wife."
"You asked him already?"
"Sure. I'm not as shy as I look."
"So did you confirm that with his wife?"
"She thought he probably was. She was asleep."
"Not the most inventive alibi in the world, but it might serve."
"Serve, shit. He's going to have to do better than that. He's going to have to come up with a videotape of him sleeping before I buy it."
"Do you have any evidence at all?"
"I knew I shouldn't have brought the Feds into this. I'm a small-town chief of police. I thought I got to railroad innocent men and women. I don't have evidence, I got a gut feeling. You work on gut feelings a lot, you told me so., I "Yes, but I don't hate the man first. I use my instincts to try to understand or anticipate the suspect, I don't just look at somebody, decide I don't like the cut of his jib, then try to stack things against him."
"You'd have a better arrest rate if you did."
"You may have a point there. I wonder if I could convince Karen to let me work that way."
"You must have some pull with r. Threaten to withhold your favors…
What, am I crazy? Withhold your favors from Karen, you lucky stif."
"Scratch that idea."
"Speaking of Karen, it's time for me to pick up Jac from play practice, then go home and cook dinner. Keep working, Chief, you're doing great."
"We've narrowed this down to about a thousand houses. What am I supposed to do now?"
"See how many of them have able-bodied males between the ages of sixteen and sixty." 'In Clamden? Just about all of them."
"That should make your job easier, less eliminating to do." Becker patted Tee on the shoulder and left the office. He walked through the parking lot and past the library and skirted the law offices on the corner beside one of Clamden's four stoplights. There were no crosswalks and Becker waited for traffic to clear before slicing diagonally across the road. He came to the tiny shopping center and was cutting through it, heading for the empty lot behind the shops and the slot in the hedge that led to his neighbor's backyard and eventually his own house, when he encountered Tovah Kom.
She stood with the leggy insouciance of the model she once was, one hand resting on a jutting hip, her eyes taunting and mocking him with the same superior expression Becker thought she reserved just for him, as if he were a species she had seen before, as if she had his number coming and going but, like an indulgent relative, was mildly fond of him nevertheless. The take-out pizza carton from the luncheonette that she held in one hand did nothing to detract from the look of amused condescension. "Well, well, well."
"You have me there. How are you, Tovah?"
"You look like you're in hot pursuit of someone. Head down, striding along, looking neither to the right nor to the left. I thought you were trying to snub me."
"Just thinking about what to fix for dinner." He nodded toward the pizza box. "I see you've solved the problem."
"Stanley's not coming home for dinner," she said. "Another hip replacement or something. I don't pay much attention to his excuses anymore."
"You're welcome to join us," Becker said, regretting it imm ediately. He did not know what had possessed him to make such an offer.
"Oh, I can just picture that. Me and your wife at the table together.
Wouldn't that be cozy."
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean."
"I haven't a clue."
"Your wife hates me."
"What are you talking about? That's not true."
She smiled smugly.
"Tovah, really, you're dead wrong."
"If she doesn't yet, she will soon."
'Why?"
"Ask her," she said.
"I'm asking you," he said, struggling to remain patient. "Please tell me what you're talking about." I "You haven't noticed? I thought you were supposed to be such a hotshot observer. You must have seen signs."
"Signs of what?"
She tilted her head to one side as if she could better determine his honesty from that angle.
"You really don't know?"
"I may know, I may know everything. I just don't know what in hell you're referring to."
Becker waited. She continued to study him, her head aslant. She wore dark leather pants that would have looked ridiculous on almost anyone else, but she had the legs, the height, the supreme air of indifference that made it possible. The shiny material rode atop her limbs like a second skin, a visual inducement to grab and touch and remove. But Becker was not interested in her appearance. He decided that she was playing another of her baroque games with him, and that he was as irritated as he was going to allow himself to become.
Becker shrugged. "Okay," he said. "Forget it. I'll see you around."
He turned to go as she shifted the pizza from one hand to the other, holding it on her fingers like a waitress with a tray.
You really don't know, do you?"
"No, and I've ceased caring."
"Your wife…" She let the sentence trail off, then added as if to remove any possible doubt, Karen, is after my man."
His first impulse was to laugh and his second was to hit her, but he controlled them both and just stared at her, trying to keep the emotion from his own face while studying hers to see what she was trying to do.
Her taunting look was gone, and her condescension, and all he saw now was her pain and a desperate hope that Becker would contradict her. "You mean… Stanley?" he asked stupidly, the sense of what she had said still not clear to him, only the accompanying aura of dread.
"That's the boy," she said, her defenses quickly in place again. "My guy's at it again."
"You're nuts," he said, but not strongly enough. He wanted to slap her, he wanted to knock the look of savage victory from her face. Like a child confronted with an unfaceable truth, he wanted to twist her arm until he had forced her to admit she was lying, until she cried out in pain and took back the hurtful words as if they had never been said.
"Wasn't she supposed to be working in New York today?"
Becker nodded mutely.
Tovah-smiled painfully. "They spent the afternoon together. "
"Where?" he said, knowing it was the wrong response. He had already played into Tovah's hand and she knew that she had him. The sadism was open in her face now, and his only comfort was that he could see it hurt her as much as it did him.
"At your house. I just saw them. Hurry and you might catch him."
"You're a liar."
"Look around when you get home," she said. "Don't mention anything to her. If she doesn't tell you about it, then she's hiding it."
He reeled away from her and hurried home through the hedge, telling himself that Karen's car would not be there, she would still be in New York, Tovah's whole vicious slander would be revealed for the nonsense that it had to be.
As he cleared the hedge, pushing the last of the tangled, whiplike branches from his line of sight, a car pulled away down his road. He willed himself not to run, not to give credence to the lie, but his pace quickened as he tried to get past the neighbor's house to see whose car it was. By the time he reached the road, the car had turned the corner and gone, but sitting in his driveway was Karen's green Camry.
17
Kom had asked to meet with her to talk about Becker, and Karen had responded out of curiosity as much as courtesy. He had his usual mixed manner of forwardness and diffidence, but this time Karen noticed something else, a quality she was unable to define precisely beyond ascribing it to a new intensity.