"Maybe," said Eastland. "Maybe." After a moment he admitted, "It's plausible."
Sergeant Stein said wistfully, "It's a terrific payoff."
Eastland then followed up his double "maybe" by commenting insensitively, "This is all very neat except that we're investigating a missing kid, not a killing on the stock exchange. The only link we have is that the kid's mother happens to be sponsored by Manflex."
Of all people, Diamond didn't need reminding about Naomi, but he wasn't going to be shaken from the point he'd made. "Come on, there's ample evidence that professional crooks are involved. Mrs. Tanaka's was a contract killing. And the people who attacked me weren't amateurs."
"So why was Mrs. Tanaka killed?" asked Sergeant Stein.
"My guess is that she was given a job to do and she failed. They considered her untrustworthy."
"She was expendable."
"Just a pawn, like me."
"How about the kid?" said Stein. "Is she expendable, too?"
"No," said Diamond, quick to dismiss the unthinkable. "If they'd wanted to harm Naomi, they'd have done it long ago."
"I may be dumb," said Eastland, "but nobody has explained to me yet how one small, mentally handicapped girl is so important in this case."
Diamond had no answer. He'd long since reached the conclusion that Lieutenant Eastland was anything but dumb.
Leapman's house was one of six in a cul-de-sac north of Hoboken, spacious two-story wooden buildings with attached garages owned (Diamond guessed) by the kind of people who couldn't yet afford a prime position overlooking Manhattan, but had their hopes. They had plaster geese on their porches and flagpoles in their lawns.
No lights showed at the windows of the end house, but that wasn't remarkable considering that it was already 1:15 A.M. Two households were watching TV and the others were dark.
The police car glided to a stop in the street outside the Leapman address. Diamond reached for his door handle and gasped with pain. His right arm still hurt.
"I don't think so," Eastland told him. "You've seen enough action for one night. We have our procedures. Ready to go, Stein?"
Submissive for a change, Diamond remained in the car and watched them approach the house, guns drawn, moving with stealth. At the front door, Stein stood well to one side when he pressed the bell, probably mindful of cops who had been shot through doors.
The chimes were audible from the street.
No lights went on.
Eastland moved around the side of the house, leaving Stein, who sounded the chimes several times more without response.
When a light did appear, it was only Eastland's flashlight bobbing around the other side, past the garage entrance. He pointed it through a front room window and beckoned to Stein to join him. They stood together staring inside for what became to Peter Diamond an unbearable interval.
Diamond told the driver, "Blow this for a lark. They've spotted something. I'm going over."
The action of removing himself from the car gave him another uncomfortable reminder of the strains he'd put on his physique that night. No catlike movement across the drive for him. He hobbled.
Lieutenant Eastland turned and came towards him.
"What have you found?" Diamond asked, but Eastland walked right past him and used the radio in the car.
"What is it?" He was addressing Stein now, but the question was superfluous.
Michael Leapman's front room looked as if it had stood in the path of stampeding buffaloes. The moving flashlight picked out a unit lying tilted across a sofa, with books and ornaments strewn across the floor. The television set was faceup, smashed. A chair lay across a table.
"Is he in there?"
"We can't see," said Stein, still with his gun drawn. "We don't know."
"Shouldn't we go in?"
"The lieutenant wants a backup."
"I can provide that Have you checked all the doors? The windows?"
"Don't get me wrong, but he wouldn't want backup from you."
"Why not?"
"Do you have a piece?"
"No."
Stein gave a shrug that said he wouldn't want backup, either, from a man without a piece.
"Any signs of a break-in?" Diamond asked.
"No."
Eastland came back and reported that the Emergency Service Unit was on its way. "The perps could still be inside. I'm taking no chances."
Diamond awaited his opportunity to sidle closer to Sergeant Stein, from whom he learned that a perp was a perpetrator. The common language had its pitfalls.
A van was with them in six minutes, followed soon after by two cars. Armed men were sent around the side of the house. Lights were set up. There were dog-handlers and men in white overalls who spoke briefly with Eastland and then forced open the front door and went in.
Diamond stayed close to Eastland and followed the search of the interior as it came over the personal radios. The house was unoccupied, they learned, but there were more signs of violence, including blood spots on the wall in one comer of the living room. There were bloody fingerprints on the phone, which was pulled from its socket and lying upside down on the floor. A bloodstained baseball bat was found beside it.
"Looks like someone used the phone after the victim was struck," the voice reported.
"Or tried to," said Eastland. "Have you checked all the rooms now?"
"Yeah. No disturbance anywhere except the living room. This doesn't look like robbery to me, Lieutenant. The drawers and cupboards are closed."
Then a crackle of static was followed by the voice of the other searcher. "I wouldn't bet on that. His car isn't in the garage."
"They took the car," said Easdand. He turned to Stein and asked him to get a computer check on Leapman's license plate number.
Diamond groaned in frustration. "Can we take a look for ourselves now?"
"Not yet. Crime Scene has to go through."
"How long before they get here? Look, I'm not asking to tramp through the room where the assault took place. I'd like to see the rest of the house."
"What exactly is your problem?" asked Eastland. "Not satisfied with the search?"
"I'd like to take a look for myself, that's all."
"There's no evidence that the perps went anywhere except the living room."
But they wouldn't permit Diamond to step inside until an hour and twenty minutes later, after the crime scene people had been through. The possibility that Eastland was exacting some kind of revenge for the liberties Diamond had taken at the murder scene in the Firbank Hotel did occur to him at the depth of his frustration while he was waiting, but probably he was wrong. They had their procedures and they observed them rigidly. Nevertheless he was hunched and resentful as he limped about the drive.
He was unsure what he might find, if anything. He just felt driven by some inner force. Maybe, he reflected, he'd taken to heart that advice from the librarian, to unlock his sixth sense, or right hemisphere, or whatever the man had been rabbiting on about. It wasn't easy to recall on a chilly morning.
Eventually, the Crime Scene Unit passed on the word that, apart from the living room, the house was open to inspection. Leaving his new sneakers on the doorstep, he stepped inside with Eastland.
"You're looking for evidence that the kid was here, aren't you?" the lieutenant said.
"I'm keeping an open mind."
"Yeah?"
The lights were on all over the house. It was very much the bachelor businessman establishment, with the feel of a furniture showroom rather than a home. Leapman seemed to be a man of tidy habits who favored light oak and muted colors. The pieces of furniture had their functions, and there was little in the way of ornament, and certainly no clutter.
"Want to start upstairs?" Eastland suggested.
"The bedrooms."
It wasn't entirely Diamond's sixth sense that was motivating him. If Naomi had been kept here for any appreciable time, it was likely that she would have been confined in a room out of sight of the neighbors.
At the top of the stairs, they glanced into a couple of rooms, getting their bearings. A guest bedroom attracted Diamond's attention. It was small and it faced the back of the house. However, there was nothing to suggest anyone had occupied it. The duvet was positioned foursquare on the divan, the pillow plumped and tidy. Eastland went systematically through the chest of drawers and found only some spare bedding in the bottom drawer.