"Satisfied?" he inquired of Diamond.
"Almost." Intuition was prompting him strongly now, spurred on by something Julia Musgrave had said. He told Eastland, "Autistic kids quite like to hide things, toys and so on, objects that they value. If I'm right, it's just possible mat she used a hiding place she once favored before, in another place." He crouched by the bed. "It was this side last time." He slipped his hand between the mattress and the spring box of the divan with a sense of anticipation little less than Lord Caernarvon's at the opening of Tutankhamen's tomb. His fingertips had touched something solid. He took it out in triumph: a ballpoint pen. "I would say that it's ninety-nine percent certain that Naomi was here."
"You knew it would be in there?" said Eastland.
Elated, Diamond risked more strain on his battered body by pulling up the mattress. There may be something to intuition, but good luck is a deception. There was no drawing pad lying under the mattress. Not even a sheet of paper.
Cause for celebration: Naomi was alive-or had been at the time she hid the pen here. Cause for concern: the trail had gone cold again; there was no telling who was holding her now. The forensic tests might provide clues, but the men in white coats always take days to report their findings.
"Did Sergeant Stein get anything on the stolen car?" he asked Eastland.
"Leapman's car? It was a dark blue Chevy Citation. We have the license plate number from Central. Every radio car in New York has it"
There was nothing to detain them any longer. Knowing that he would keel over if he didn't get some sleep soon, Diamond asked for a lift to his hotel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
One can only guess at Lieutenant Eastland's thoughts next morning when he arrived at the station house to find his office occupied by Peter Diamond wearing just an unbuttoned shirt and red jockey shorts. The fat Englishman was standing with the phone anchored between his shoulder and his fleshy jowl. The desk was heaped with clothes, some discarded, some obviously back from the cleaner. Judging by the clutter of phone books, notepads, pens and screwed-up tissues, he had been installed there for some time. "Beef, for a start," he was saying. "Have you got beef?… Right. What else? Liver, I should think. Lamb, yes… Well, as much as you can manage at short notice… Excellent. How soon?… Oh, give me strength! I'm talking about lunchtime today… Yes, today… Right, I know you will. I'll call you back around noon… One o'clock, then. No later." He put down the phone. "Morning, Lieutenant. Did you oversleep?"
Eastland regarded him with glazed, red-lidded eyes.
Diamond told him, "My clothes came back."
"So I see."
"There's just time to get down to the Sheraton Center."
Eastland said, "This used to be my office."
Diamond announced in the same up-lads-and-at-'em tone, "The conference opens at eleven."
"Conference?"
"Manflex. Remember? This is the big one, when they unveil the wonder drug. David Flexner will be there and so will Professor Churchward. We've got to be there."
"Who do you mean-weT
"You and I. Sergeant Stein as well if you want."
Eastland ran his fingertips down the side of his face as if to discover whether he'd shaved yet "The Sheraton Center, you said?"
"Seventh Avenue and Fifty-third."
"I know where the Sheraton is," Eastland said in a growl.
"Snap it up, then."
"Diamond, you have all the finesse of a sawed-off shotgun."
To be charitable to Eastland, he hadn't seen Diamond so animated before. The Englishman was unstoppable. Within three minutes they were in a car heading downtown.
"I've been turning things over in my mind," Diamond said, as if to explain the transformation. "Last night, the scene at Leapman's house seemed all wrong."
"Wrong?"
"What we found."
"The ballpoint?"
Diamond stared in surprise at the lieutenant. "No. The ballpoint wasn't wrong. That was a genuine find. Just about everything else was wrong."
"For instance?"
"The damage to the front room. It looked impressive at first, as if there'd been a fight, but what did it amount to in breakages? One smashed TV screen. The shelf unit had tipped across the sofa and some books and things were on the floor, a chair was overturned and lying across a table and that was it"
"The phone was pulled from its socket," Eastland added.
'True-but it wasn't damaged. To me, the scene looked as if it had been staged by a rather fastidious owner who didn't want to damage his living room more than was necessary."
"You think that was staged?"
"I think it's more than likely."
"Aren't you forgetting the bloodstains?"
"No, I haven't forgotten them. First, consider the state of the bedroom where the child was held. Immaculate-apart from the ballpoint There was no other evidence that Naomi had ever been there. Not so much as a hair on the pillow. Wouldn't you expect some sign that she'd been removed from there in a hurry?"
"Maybe she was already downstairs when the fight started," said Eastland.
"Dressed in her coat and shoes and everything? They're not in the house."
"Whoever took the kid must have taken her things."
"Picked them up with his bloodstained hands and helped her into her coat? Does it sound likely?"
"Do you have a better explanation?" asked Eastland.
"Then there's the matter of the car," Diamond continued as if the question hadn't been put. "How did the assailant-what do you call him, the prep?-how did he travel to the house. On foot? If he came in a car, where is it, because he couldn't have driven two vehicles away from the house after the attack."
"Two perps," said Eastland doggedly. "One drove his car, one drove Leapman's."
'Taking Leapman with him?"
"Yeah."
"All right-then why was it necessary to take Leapman as well as the child?"
"Maybe they killed him. There's enough blood, for sure. They got rid of the body."
'To hinder your investigation, do you mean?"
"Sure," said Eastland. "They carried him to the garage, loaded him in the car and then opened the garage door and drove out with the body in the back. That way they avoided carrying him out into the street in the view of the neighbors."
"And that's how you see it?"
"Do you have a better explanation?" Eastland asked for the second time.
"Let me take you back a bit," said Diamond. "Leapman definitely took the child to his house at some stage. We found the ballpoint where I said it would be. We agree on that, right?"
"Uh huh."
"Look at this from Leapman's point of view. Yesterday when David Flexner arranged to meet me at the ferry, Leapman was listening. Either the office or the phone was bugged. He has links with organized crime and he alerted his criminal friends and asked them to meet me and dispose of me, while he created a smoke alarm diversion at Manflex Headquarters to delay David Flexner. Is that a reasonable inference from the facts as we know them?"
"It's conceivable."
"Conceivable? I was dumped in the river. You won't question that?"
"No, I don't question that."
"Leapman must have believed I was dead, but he still had a problem, because you-the cops-brought David Flexner in for questioning the same night. He couldn't understand how you made the connection, but he knew how dangerous it was. It was getting too close to home. And home was where he was holding Naomi."
Eastland was waking up. "He didn't want the cops calling. This is not a good time in his life to get arrested."
"Right. If he's going to cash in on PDM3, it's essential that the conference goes ahead. Are you with me so far?"