None of it ever sticks he runs a tight ship, he’s got good legal dvice, and he knows what he can get away with. As far as anyone can II, he’s smart and weird, but he ain’t crooked.” “What about the kid that died?
Hamilton said some kid fell off a ridge a while back.” Spinney shrugged.
“I looked at the file: pretty cut and dry. They aid it was an accident, we investigated, and we agreed. The kid took nose dive off the bridge.
We gave a more careful look than we might ave otherwise, because of the people involved, but that kind of thing appens. The bridge railing was a joke-designed for adults. The little uy just squirted underneath, according to the witnesses.” “So there was a bunch of them there.” %144
“Oh, yeah-it was an outing. Twelve kids and two adults. The kid apparently broke ranks and ran to the edge of the bridge.” “How old was he? Hamilton thought fourteen months.” Spinney closed his eyes for a moment, concentrating. Yeah, that was it, just a toddler. It was a real shame. Apparently he was mentally retarded. That might have been why he made a run for it-never understood the danger he was in, plus at that age, what does anyone know?” He pulled a drawing from the file on his lap and handed it to me. It was a scaled sketch of the crime scene with Wingate’s outline and six sets of footprints in different colors spread out around him like multi-hued flower petals.
“Pretty.” “Crofter’s handiwork-he loves stuff like this.” Spinney had another copy for himself. “Still, it helps, considering the crowd that was there before us. There is one caveat that Crofter wanted us all to understand, though. This is all pre-crime lab. They haven’t reported back on their version of what happened, so we don’t have details like the estimated weight of the individuals involved, the shoe sizes and manufacturers, or even who went where first or last or whatever.”
“Okay.” I studied the diagram. “So, let’s see. Two sets belong to Rennie Wilson blue and red. The blue set was made this morning just before I got there, and after he’d been called to the scene by Mitch Pearl, the hunter. The red set was made earlier, and matches the blood-stained boots you boys found in his house.” “Yeah. Red for blood, get it?” I looked up at him and deadpanned, “Got it. The green ones belong to Pearl, and the black ones to Wingate himself-black as in dead, I suppose. So that leaves the yellow and the white, the two that are unaccounted for. The yellow appear to shadow Rennie’s red tracks, and the white come from an entirely different direction.” I paused.
“Rennie and the white tracks seem to have a couple of odd connections…” I pointed at clusters at opposing distances from the body. “Maybe both of them stood around for a while, shifting their weight, as if waiting. Rennie’s seem the busiest, and are concentrated near the head of the victim, while whites are the least busy, just coming in, turning around, and leaving.” Spinney looked up at me.
“Christ, you’re good at this.” “Practice.” “I guess so.” Spinney shook his head and returned to the diagram.
“Crofter thought the other mysterious tracks-the yellow were a bit unusual. They’re smaller than the others and smooth, as if they were made by bare feet or moccasins.” %145 “So that might point at someone in the Order, since they all wear emade shoes, or it may be a setup.” I sat back and laid the sketch y lap.
“Have you confronted Rennie with all this yet?” Spinney gave me a long, enigmatic look. “Well, that’s proved to little difficult. We can’t find him. We went by the bar that trooper us about. He’d been there, knockin’ ‘em back pretty steady, but staggered out about a half hour before we got there. Now he’s ished.” I looked out the window at the traffic below, imagining Rennie out re somewhere. What the hell was he doing? If he had killed Wingate, then played dumb at the crime scene with me, then why had he he’d his bloody clothes where we could find them? It was a logical stion that played in his favor. “You follow up on his story about night?” “He checks out at the job. We found one guy who says he saw him king out to the parking lot and getting into his car at around thirty; the guy added that Wilson often stays late, wrapping things The Maple Door was a washout, though. The bartender I talked was there all last night, knows Wilson slightly from seeing him und, and says he definitely never showed his face. The only waitress firmed that, and she said she knew him pretty well; he’s got a utation as a boozer and a ladies’ man. “And you talked to Chaney.” “Chaney and a bunch of other people-nothin’.” He handed me erox copy from his file.
“Here’s a photo of Julie Wingate. We’ll be ting a sharper version later, but Smith figured the sooner the better.” “Any luck finding her?”
I eyed the picture, a slightly grainy but hful copy of the snapshot Bruce Wingate had showed me the mornfollowing the fire.
“The Order’s not cooperating, and until we get something legal inst her, we can’t force ‘em to open up. It’s almost too bad Rennie you did such a thorough search of that house-now you’re their witness that she wasn’t there hours before the fire. We’re doing at we can, though. We’ve instituted two twelve-hour uniformed fts, two cruisers each. With the rest of us making rounds, maybe ‘II luck out and bump into her-or Rennie, for that matter.” “Do you have anything new on Paul Gorman?”
“No, we’re just starting on him.” “I have my doubts about his mobile phone routine this morning. ean, what was he doing, sleeping in his car? When I spoke to ingate and his wife last night, he said he hadn’t called Gorman since 0 nights ago-Monday-right after they’d spotted their daughter. I d him we would be checking the Inn’s phone records, and he sud %146 denly looked very pleased with himself. It struck me that he’d probably called Gorman more recently and that he’d used a public phone to do it-not the ultimate innocent gesture. If that pulls your chain, you might want to subpoena a few public phone records.” I slid a stapled sheaf of papers over to him. “That’s my report on the entire conversation.” Spinney nodded and wrote himself a note, muttering, “Great, thanks.” He looked up suddenly. “By the way, Gorman’s been making friends.” I hesitated a moment and then rubbed my forehead.
“Greta?” “The one and only. She’s asked him to address a small crowd tonight and tell them of the evil that lurks among them.” He said the last in a tremulous voice, reminiscent of Boris Karloff. “Where?” “The Rocky River. We thought it might be a little confrontational to send one of our own to listen in, but you’re a good ol’ boy.
I exchanged a sour expression for his ear-to-ear grin and heaved myself to an upright position. “And here I was thinking it was nice of you to have dropped in.” My entrance had the subtlety of a wasp up the nose.
Aside from the bar, the Rocky River’s entire ground floor was lined with rows of seats: armchairs, sofas, straightbacks, metal folding chairs taken from the fire department-enough to seat the thirty or so people who were staring at me as if I was the only dru,k at a temperance meeting.
“Lieutenant Gunther. Welcome.” Paul Gorman stood with his back to the closed double doors of the darkened cafe/bar. Beside and slightly behind him, looking a whole lot less thrilled to see me, sat Greta.
“What do you want, Joe?” she asked warily. I sensed the same antagonism that had risen between us this morning. But there was also something else, a defensiveness perhaps at my having found her with Gorman, as if her innate, almost buried common sense agreed with my own skepticism of the man and his motives. “Heard there was a meeting.”