"Second-hand smoke?" Michelle King asked lighting up with a silver-plated lighter. "It's a myth created by anti-smoking fanatics who have nothing better to do."
"And first-hand murder," said Mac. "Is that a myth?"
The agent looked at Aiden, who said nothing, which seemed to unnerve King more than Mac's questions.
"All right," King said. "I advised her to get a gun, even suggested the kind she might get, one just like mine."
"Can we look at yours?" asked Mac.
"You think I shot that man?" she asked, blowing out a plume of smoke and pausing in her pencil tapping.
"We know he's dead," said Mac.
"Why on earth would Louisa or I want to kill this man, whoever he was?"
"His name was Charles Lutnikov," said Aiden. "He was a writer."
"Never heard of him," King said, putting out her cigarette.
"Your name and phone number were in his address book," said Mac.
"My-?" King said.
"He called your office three times last week," said Aiden. "It's in his phone records."
"I never spoke to him," King insisted.
"Your secretary?" asked Mac.
"Wait, the name does ring a bell," said King. "I think that may have been the name of the person who kept leaving his number. The message from Amy, my assistant, was that he said he had something important to tell me."
"But you didn't call him back?"
She shrugged.
"Amy said he sounded nervous, was very insistent and… well, I'm an agent. I've got lots of oddballs wanting to talk to me about their ideas for books. One of Amy's jobs is to keep them away from me."
"But this oddball lived in the same apartment building as one of your biggest clients," said Aiden.
"My biggest client," King corrected. "I was unaware of that."
She reached into her desk drawer suddenly and came up with a small gun which she pointed at Aiden. Neither detective flinched.
"My gun," King said, handing it across her desk.
Mac took it and handed it to Aiden who examined it and said, "Never been fired."
"Not even loaded," said King. "It's like a chenille blanket I had when I was a little girl. I keep it around for comfort and a sense of security, which I delude myself is real."
"What happens to the manuscripts of Louisa Cormier's books after she gives them to you?" Mac asked.
"She doesn't give me manuscripts," said King. "She E-mails me her manuscripts as attachments. I read them and send them on to her editor. Louisa's work requires very little editing by me or the publisher."
King picked up the pencil again, considered tapping it, changed her mind, and put it down.
"What about the first three books," said Mac.
King looked at him warily.
"The first three books were… a little rough," King said. "They needed work. How did you know?"
"I read them last night, as well as the fourth and fifth," said Mac. "Something changed."
"With experience and confidence, Louisa's work, I'm pleased to say, has steadily improved," said King.
"Do you keep her books on your hard drive?" asked Mac.
"I have hard copies made in addition to disk copies of all Louisa's books," King said.
"We'd like to borrow the disks," Mac said.
"I'll have Amy make copies for you," she said, "but why would you- "
"We won't take any more of your time right now," said Mac, rising.
Aiden got up too.
King remained seated.
"We'll be in touch," said Mac, going to the door.
"I sincerely hope not," said King, reaching for her cigarettes.
When they got past the reception area and into the hall, Aiden said, "She's lying."
"About?"
"Those first books," said Aiden.
Mac nodded.
"You noticed," she said.
"She's protecting her golden calf," said Mac.
"So?" asked Aiden.
"Let's go see Louisa Cormier."
Stella saw the red, amoeba-shaped splotch of blood on a low snowbank on the sidewalk next to a black plastic garbage bag.
The driver, a Nigerian named George Apappa, had taken her to the spot where he had dropped the man who had bled on his backseat. George had noticed the blood as soon as he got to his home in Jackson Heights. He couldn't miss the blood. The man had left a small puddle on the floor and a dark, still-moist streak on the seat.
It had taken George almost an hour to clean the bloodstains. He got into bed with his wife at two in the morning and the phone rang at six- his dispatcher, telling him to get into the garage immediately. He told Stella all this with the sound of a man who had planned to sleep until noon, but instead had dragged himself out of bed, half expecting to be told he was fired when he got to the garage. Stella had a feeling the twenty she slipped him would help him get over his lack of sleep.
Stella could feel him watching her from the car as she wiped her nose and took a picture of the mound of snow, then scooped up some of the snow with a shovel and dropped it in a plastic bag.
She started to move slowly along the sidewalk, pausing every few steps to take another photograph. The trail of blood was reasonably easy to follow, frozen in place. Few pedestrians had yet trampled the icy sidewalk.
Stella put the back of her left hand against her forehead and felt both moisture and fever. She had a thermometer in her kit, but it was reserved for the dead. She had taken three aspirin back at the lab along with a glass of orange juice. She had no hope for this remedy.
It took her four minutes to find the doorway. There were blood splatters on the door, not thick, but visible. There was blood on the doorstop and something yellowish-brown that looked like vomit. She took photographs, got a sample of the yellow-brown goop, and started to stand when she noticed a spot of white in the crevice of the concrete step. She knelt again. It was a tooth, a bloody tooth. She bagged it and rose to check the listing of the names of the tenants of the building lined up, white on black, near the right side of the door. The names meant nothing to her. She wrote all six down in her notebook.
Whatever had happened here had happened just before ten, according to the driver's log. It was possible someone inside had heard whatever it was that caused someone to vomit and lose what looked like a reasonably healthy tooth.
Stella rubbed her hands together and called Danny Messer at the lab.
"Check out these names," she said. "Got a pen?"
"You sound terrible," he said.
"I sound terrible," she agreed. "The names."
She read off the names slowly, spelling each one.
"Got it," he said.
"Check them all out. If you find something, call me back. Guista may have been on his way to see one of them last night when something went wrong."
"What?" he asked.
"I'm sending what I've got over to you with a cabbie," she said. "Pay my fare. I've already given him a tip."
Stella tried to hold back a cough. She couldn't do it.
"Stella…" Danny started, but she cut him off.
"Got to go."
She clicked off and went to the car where George Apappa sat, head back, eyes closed. She opened her kit, dropped the digital disk of photos, the blood samples, the bloody tooth, and the clump of vomit, all separately bagged, into a zippered insulated bag. Then she opened the driver's side door.
George awoke and had the bag in his hand before he could speak.
She gave him the CSI address and told him to put the bag directly in the hands of Daniel Messer, who would be waiting for it. Messer, she said, would pay whatever the charge was. She handed him a ten dollar bill on top of that.
There was a beat in which she saw George wanted to ask what this was all about, but he didn't. He placed the bag on the seat next to him as Stella closed the door.
This time when Louisa Cormier opened the door for Mac and Aiden she was not quite so bright and bubbling. She looked as if she hadn't slept and she was wearing what looked like an oversized flowered smock. Her hair was in place, as was her make-up, but not as perfect as the day before.