“Sorry, Nadine. I’ll be right back.” “Don’t hurry,” Buster muttered.
“What’s up?” I asked Spinney in the hallway. “Follow me.” He led the way down the hallway through the kitchen, to a small mudroom beyond. A narrow, cluttered, stalesmelling bedroom lay off to one side by the back door. It was as incongruous with the rest of the house’s interior as spilled garbage on a clean floor, and obviously Rennie’s home away from home. The room’s location made it clear why Nadine hadn’t heard Rennie come home, if he had come home. Smith and several troopers were also in the room.
“Take a look at these.” Spinney bent down and picked up a pair of work boots, already encased in a plastic bag.
“A match?” Smith opened an envelope he’d pulled from his coat pocket.
Inside were a handful of Polaroid pictures, all of footprints found at the scene. They were not “offlcial”-those were taken by the crime lab with %137 rger, fancier cameras and would yield sharper results-but they rved an immediate purpose. Smith selected one and showed it to me.
I compared it to the tread I could see through the plastic. They right down to a stone caught between two of the Iugs that showed as a dent in the photo. Furthermore, I could make out circular stains the boots that looked a lot like dried blood. I let out a heavy sigh. “Where’d you find them?” Spinney pointed to the top shelf of the one closet in the room. uried in back, under this.” He held up a shirt. “It’s ‘plain view’ culpatory evidence, along with a pair of pants, too.” He spread them th out on the bed, the shirt above the pants, like flat paper-doll othes. There was a single red-brown spot bridging where the shirt ould have met the pants, and several more splotches descending the ght leg.
The pattern was consistent with Dr. Hoard’s hypothesis that e killer kneed Wingate in the groin to double him over, and then ifed him from overhead.
“Your friend’s in deep shit,” Smith muttered. “I realize that.” As usual, his voice had been utterly without tonation, which technically made his comment a mere statement of ct. But the utter lack of sympathy angered me, especially when I knew was right. Not wanting to count myself as one of the people roping ennie in tighter and tighter, I chose to dislike Smith all the more for relentless, lifeless enthusiasm.
“I’m afraid that’s not all.” Spinney led me back into the kitchen d showed me a large carving knife, lying on the counter. I bent over-not touching it-and looked carefully. There was me clotted material caught between the blade and the wooden hane.
“Look at the tip.” About an eighth of an inch had been broken off recently, by the earn of the metal. I was grateful Smith wasn’t at my side to gloat out that, too. To him, these were rewards, sought-after pieces of the zzle. To me, they spelled heartbreak and doom, the tearing of a fabric cherished most of my life.
They also hit a rebellious chord deep inside. The more I found out out Rennie, the more I realized how much he’d changed since our e together.
Time had obviously ground him down considerably, aking him drink to excess, become moody and pessimistic, neglectful his wife. But that was hardly unique to him-even Buster was a adow of his former self, albeit still a benevolent one. What I couldn’t Iieve was that the same person who had risked his life a few days ago tering a burning building in an attempt to save others would stab a %138 man six times with a kitchen knife because of a punch in the face.
Unless there was something more I didn’t know about his relationship with Wingate. I played dumb and shrugged at the broken tip. “So?”
“Smith called Burlington just now to see if Hillstrom had gotten far enough into the autopsy yet to make a possible connection. She found a blade tip-same size-stuck in the spine. The Iab’ll have to prove it, but it sounds right.” His voice was solicitous, like a doctor’s with bad news. Smith came out of the small bedroom carrying several plastic bags.
“All right, pack up the knife. I think we’re out of here. What did you get out of the wife?” “She didn’t see him or hear him all night. She did say, though, that every Wednesday night, for the last several years, he’s gone to play cards with a guy named Pete Chaney in East Burke; he runs a small grocery out of his house.” “Good, good.” Smith wrote the name down in his notebook. He checked his watch. “We better get out of here. Hamilton wants a powwow with everybody in an hour.” “Him too?”
Spinney jerked his thumb at me. It was the first time the subject of my tagging along had actually come up for discussion. So far, I’d just managed to lay low and avoid the matter. For once, I’d wished Spinney had put a cork in it.
Smith looked at us both with obvious distaste, almost as if by bringing the subject up, we d ruined the delicate shelter under which he’d allowed us to operate. Now he could no longer pretend I wasn’t what I was. “The State’s Attorney’s office will get a full report.” Buster was still holding Nadine’s hand when we returned to the living room.
“It looks like they’re about to wrap up here. I’m sorry for the intrusion, Nadine.” She shook her head. “That’s all right, Joe. I know it’s your job.
Did you… find anything?” “Odds and ends. We won’t know anything until we can look at them closer, and even then, they may not mean anything. There’s a lot of this that goes on in an investigation like this. Most of it doesn’t mean a thing.” She nodded. “Thank you.” “You will give us a call if you see Rennie again, though, won’t you?
He and I ought to talk. I’m staying at Buster’s.” “Of course.” I gave her shoulder a squeeze and straightened. “By the way, does Rennie ever go without a belt?” %139 “Not wear a belt?” “Yeah.” “Oh, no. He always wears one.” She gave that ghost of a smile ain.
“With his tummy, he has to.” I smiled back, but for other reasons.
I leaned back in my chair and put my feet up on the table. I was Potter’s office, having completed another couple of hours of paperork with the meticulously accurate Flo Ginty. She was gone now, I as alone, and the office was dark, except from the single lamp on my sk, just the way I liked it. I pulled the phone onto my lap and dialed Beverly Hillstrom’s mber, reading it off a scrap of paper I had tacked to the wall in front me.
“I was wondering when I’d hear from you,” she said after we’d changed greetings. “I take it you’d like a rundown on Bruce Winte.” “If it’s not too inconvenient.” “Not at all. It was a transverse Iaceration of the carotid-from that one, he would have been dead within a minute. But he also had a good sh in the aorta, a severed spinal cord, and a variety of other less ectacular injuries.” “And he’d been kicked in the scrotum, like Hoard thought?” “Oh, yes, and not tenderly, either. The testicles were quite enrged.” “Lending weight to the theory that he was stabbed after being ubled over.” “That’s correct.” I mulled that over for a couple of seconds and then changed bjects. “So tell me about feathers.”
I heard her chuckle at the other end of the phone line. “I thought at would attract your attention.” I could hear soft classical music in the background. “Was the ather you found ingested, inhaled, or just placed there?” There was a long pause. “I honestly can’t say. The neck was %
140 burned entirely through, and the feather was just below that point of total incineration-near the top of the trachea, but also bridging the esophagus.” “Could it have been carried to the spot by a bullet?” She thought a bit. “Possibly. If so, it’s the only sign of a bullet we’ve got. The soft tissue was too damaged for me to find any of the usual traces. Why would a feather be involved?” “The killer might have held a pillow over the gun. We found another feather at the top of the stairs.
Also, their clothing is insulated with goose down-a bullet could have carried a feather from there into the body.” I looked at a small pad on my desk where I’d scribbled some notes. By the way, did you hear whether the crime lab made a match between your knife tip and their knife?” “Yes, they did. I hung up on them just before you called.” “And I suppose the dimensions they gave you of the knife fit the wounds.”