‘By the way, huh?’
‘It just occurred to me.’
‘I’m sure it did. But yeah, I guess so. What is it?’
‘I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know.’
When Jeff hung up, he took a sip of his wine and kissed Dorothy. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘when news breaks…’
She kissed him back. ‘When you win the Pulitzer,’ she said, ‘I’ll forgive you for this.’
‘Dismas, you’ve got to get some sleep.’ Frannie looked very pregnant, standing in his office doorway. ‘What time is it?’
Hardy stretched, afraid to check his watch. ‘Time is for wimps,’ he said.
She came behind his desk and put her arms around him, leaning into his back. ‘How will you be able to think tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow’s Friday,’ he said.
‘Good. Actually today is Friday. Does that mean anything?’
‘It means tomorrow I can catch up on some sleep. Tonight I’ve got to catch up on these dailies’ – he held up a thick pile of typed pages – ’two days’ worth. I took last night off, remember?‘ He rested his head back against her. ’Remember?‘
She messed his hair. ‘I remember very well. But still…’
‘Andy Fowler didn’t kill May,’ he said. ‘She killed herself, just like it looked.’
Frannie straightened up. ‘Well, that’s good, I guess.’
‘It’s good, though why the idiot went to May’s house -’
She shushed him. ‘Don’t get going,’ she said. ‘Do your reading, come to bed. Now.’
‘A few more pages. Promise.’
The first thing he had to do in the morning was call Ken Farris and get some answers. If he didn’t like the answers he would call Jeff Elliot back, maybe even hire his own Emmet Turkel and do a number on a weekend in Taos last June.
He also had to remember the questions. They kept flitting in and out, and he found himself making a list while he tried to read the dailies from two days before, which now seemed like two months. With all that had happened since they’d testified, he barely remembered Tom Waddell and José Ochorio, much less what they’d said or why it might be relevant.
The yellow pad with his notes said: ‘Nash paying May? Records?’ On another line, the words: ‘Specifics of O.N. changes? How was he different?’ Then: ‘Breaking up? Why ring?’
The notion that May had been honest throughout put a very different light on everything that had happened. Hardy started another pad, intending to begin with the assumption that May and Owen had, in fact, loved each other. He would go through his first file folders – the ones he’d copied so long ago – over the weekend and review every word she’d said.
He wrote a few words on the May pad, then jumped to the dailies. He had to turn back to see who was talking, Tom or José. He reminded himself – Tom was the afternoon guy, the kid he’d met that first day. He grabbed the early folder, opening it to Glitsky’s interrogations of them both, intending to start over, get a fresh grip on the facts. Again.
He hadn’t slept in twenty hours. Now he was reading about José seeing May Shinn leaving the boat on Thursday, but José was the morning guy, so he couldn’t have seen May on Thursday morning, it must have been Wednesday, which made no sense because May said she’d gone to the boat on Thursday, so Hardy – quick – went back to the pad with the May questions.
He looked back. Oh, it must have been Tom, after all, who’d said it. One of the folders was open to Tom.
Frannie was right – you couldn’t work if you couldn’t think, and Hardy’s brain had just shifted to OFF. Enough. He couldn’t keep it all straight.
56
What seemed like only seconds later, he was in bed, the telephone was ringing in his ear and it had gotten light.
‘Wake you up?’ Glitsky asked brightly.
Hardy looked at the clock: 6:10. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I was just sorting my socks. I like to get it done before the weekend.’
‘This is what time real working people get up,’ Glitsky said. ‘Besides, I thought you might have hung around downtown to find out what Strout decided.’
‘Strout decided May Shinn killed herself.’ He started to tell Abe about last night, a little of his talk with Freeman. Frannie came in with a cup of hot coffee, and Hardy, still talking, swung himself up to sit on the side of the bed. ‘So Freeman says they were really planning to get married,’ he concluded. ‘How does that grab you?’
Glitsky was silent a long moment. ‘Nash was wearing the ring, wasn’t he?’
‘Right there on his finger.’
‘And he wasn’t wearing it the last time Farris saw him?’
‘If Farris wasn’t lying.’ Hardy went on to describe a few of the inconsistencies he’d come across in the last twelve hours. ‘So what do you think?’
‘It’s something to think about,’ Abe said, ‘especially if you’re convinced Farris lied.’
Hardy, fully awake, sipped his coffee. ‘This whole business has made me be not positive of anything, Abe. First, I’m not positive May was in love with Owen or vice-versa. The difference is, now I’m willing to consider it, and once I do that, it opens this other can of worms.’
‘Preconceptions are my favorite.’
‘Yeah, they’re a good time.’ Hardy was still on his earlier problem. ‘I guess the only thing I’m positive of is that, if May didn’t lie, then I’ve got myself a passel of rethinking to do over the weekend.’
‘Well, you know,’ Abe said, ‘I’m busy, but I’m here.’
It was an offer Hardy knew didn’t come easy. But Abe had his own reasons, too. As had happened with Hardy months before, when Pullios took his case away, it rankled.
Hardy thought a minute. It had to be something Abe -the police – had access to and he didn’t. ‘You could find out who took the coat,’ he said. ‘I mean, maybe they took something else. One of your guys…’
No response.
‘Hey, Abe, you there?’
‘Sure. I thought you were talking to Frannie.’
‘No, Abe, I was talking to you.’
‘You were talking to me about a coat?’
Hardy caught up to where Abe must be, then ran it down to him. Abe could check over the inventory on the Eloise, find if a member of the department had taken May’s coat, apply a little pressure, find out if some evidence had been misplaced.
‘Diz,’ Abe said, ‘our guys don’t steal from crime scenes. I mean, if they do, we’ve got to go to Internal Affairs. But they don’t.’
Hardy drank more coffee. ‘It’s someplace to look. See if something jumps out at you. Maybe, although of course I’d never suggest you do this, you could have an off-the-record chat with the guys who were there.’
‘Taking the inventory of what was on the Eloise?’
‘Right.’
‘I could never do that.’
‘I know,’ Hardy said. ‘And as I said, I’d never ask.’
Hardy had tried Farris at his home and gotten his answering machine. At his office he got another answering machine and left a message, hearing a couple of beeps as he did so. There was a concept, he thought. Recording the answering machine recording. Department of redundancy department indeed.
He felt like a receptionist. As soon as he’d finished leaving his message at Owen Industries for Farris to call him at home and leave a number where he could be reached, his telephone rang again.
‘Grand Central Station,’ he said, picking it up.
‘What are we going to do about clothes?’ It was Jane. She told Hardy that they’d taken her father’s suit for the lab tests, and what was he going to wear to court today? Hardy told her to swing by her father’s house, get him a decent change and meet him downtown at eight-fifteen, enough time to change and try to determine where they would try to go today with what he figured would be by now the most hostile jury in the history of jurisprudence, angry at having been locked up themselves. Since Jeff Elliot’s article had made the morning edition, like the rest of the world, Jane knew for certain now that her father hadn’t killed May.