'I've done that,' the Scot answered, 'or at least Mr Doherty has. Mr Grace bought two matching Glock 19s a couple of months back. He kept one in his Jaguar; my bet is that the other was for the house, and that he'd have taken it to the cabin.'
'You want me to run another search?'
'No, it would have been found by now if it was stil there.' As he spoke to the detective, the cathedral tones of the doorbell boomed out in the hall above: Sarah ran upstairs to answer its summons. He thanked Schultz and hung up, then fol owed her out of the den.
He had assumed that the cleaning service had arrived, finally, and so he was slightly surprised to see a youngish man in the doorway, fol owing his wife into the house. Taken off guard. Skinner gave him the classic enquiring look of policemen everywhere.
'Bob,' said Sarah, with the faintest hint of sharpness, 'this is lan Walker, our Lutheran minister. I've told you about him. As well as being our pastor, he's an old friend. Ian and I were at high school at the same time, then later at college.'
'Yes,' the newcomer concurred, 'for a while. I graduated two years before your wife.' He was a medium-sized man, with dark, crinkly hair, and round, piercing eyes, informal y dressed in a sports shirt and slacks… sure confirmation in the circumstances, Bob thought, that they were old friends. Indeed, there was something in the way they looked at each other that made him wonder, for a moment, just how friendly they had been. 'The mortician told me you were due in town this morning, Sarah,' the clergyman continued. 'I had to come right away, to express my condolences and to pay my respects.'
'Thank you, lan; that's much appreciated. We'd have cal ed you later today, in any case; we need to discuss the arrangements for the funeral service. Come through to the drawing room. Will you have coffee?' She realised that she had brought her Budweiser upstairs with her. 'Or a beer?'
Walker smiled. 'Coffee will be fine. You know how it is with us guys; we can't be breathing fumes over the faithful… not even us Lutherans.'
'I'll make it,' Bob volunteered. 'You go on through.' He headed for the kitchen, as his wife ushered the minister through to the reception room.
'I can't tell you how appal ed I am by what's happened,' he said, as the door closed on them. 'Babs is distraught too.'
'How is she?' asked Sarah. 'How are the kids?'
'She's very well; she still looks like a teenager, just like you knew her in school. And Matthew and Daniel are growing by the day. And yours?'
'Mark, our adopted son, is turning out to be a mathematical whiz; the other two, James Andrew and Seonaid, are just ordinary, peaceable children; even if Jazz is built like an outhouse, and eats more than his brother, who's twice his age. I'm happy to hear that Babs is just the same; I couldn't imagine her any other way than just as she is. I must see her. Can you get a sitter, tomorrow or Wednesday maybe, and come to us for dinner?'
'No,' said lan, 'we've thought of that. Much better if we do it the other way round. We thought that you might like to come to us on Wednesday, a couple of nights before the funeral service, to talk about the running order, as wel as to catch up.'
She yielded to his logic. 'Okay, that's a date.'
'Good; I have to tell you that we're getting in first. If you see all the people who've asked me to pass on condolences, and ask if they can cal on you, then you'l have little or no time to yourself. I have a list of all their names.'
'Thanks.' She smiled at him, but as she did, she read something in his eye.
'There is one in particular, though. When you and the baby were back home a couple of years back, that time that you and Bob had troubles in your marriage; remember you came to see me, and we had a heart-to heart about a guy you were dating? The guy you were with when we went out on that foursome?'
She smiled at him. 'Heart-to-heart, indeed; that's a sweet way of putting it. Truth was, I used you like a confessor; I told you that I had had sex with him.'
'Sure, and I didn't have any problems with that. I'm one of your newfangled clerics, Sarah; you know that as well as anyone. But the thing is, you'l find the name Terry Carter on that list. He cal ed me last week and said that because he knew that I was your friend as well as your family minister, he'd like to ask me a favour. He said that he'd like to meet you when you got here, to express his condolences in person.'
'Damn,' she whispered. 'Is he in Buffalo?'
'No, he told me that he works in New York, and he gave me a cellphone number for you to cal, should you decide to.'
'Should I decide to? Yes, should I?' she asked herself. 'Not if I've any sense, but… Fact is, lan, I've always felt just a little guilty about the way I treated him. I know he probably didn't want any more than to get himself fucked… Pardon my language, padre… but I didn't even want that, not real y.' She shrugged her shoulders and flashed him a quick grin. 'Okay, I can't lie to you of al people; sure I wanted it, but I had other things in mind too.
'I used him deliberately as a counter-balance against Bob, not to get even with him as such, but to put us on the same footing for the future.
Afterwards, I tried to hate myself for it, but I couldn't, not like I did after you and I had our col ege fling, when I knew al along how Babs felt about you, even if you didn't.'
Walker looked at the floor. 'Yeah,' he murmured. 'But we were just kids then, and we didn't do anyone any harm. I've never felt guilty about that, and I've never seen why you should, any more than I see why you should feel guilty about Terry Carter, or hate yourself for having a relationship with him, given your circumstances at the time. To lapse into professional language, I don't see the sin in it.
'As far as you and I went, Babs and I weren't dating then; that's in the past and it can stay there. You and Terry, though; I'm not advising you, understand, but from what you're saying, it sounds as if there's some closure lacking there.'
The phone rang, beside her, but she made no move towards it, knowing that Bob would pick it up in the kitchen. 'Maybe,' she conceded, as it fell silent once more. 'I'll have to think about it.' She looked up at him. 'You got that list on you?'
53
Skinner reached out and took the kitchen phone from its cradle on the wall. 'The Grace residence,' he answered.
'You sound like the fucking butler,' said Joe Doherty, tersely, with none of his usual dry humour sounding in his voice.
'Kosinski?'
'If only I knew for sure. I tried to cal him myself, on his issue cellphone; but it was unavailable for connection. So I sent two guys from the Chicago office to intercept him at Arthur Wilkins' office, but by the time they got there he'd already been and gone. They weren't briefed to interview Wilkins, so they left and reported back to me. I called the guy myself and had him cal the switchboard back to verify me. I spun him a story that I'd wanted to catch Troy at his office, and with more than my usual subtlety asked if their meeting had gone okay. He said that it had; that Kosinski had asked him about his father, whether he had done or said anything strange recently.
'He told him that last time he saw his father, before he died, he had given him an envelope. He knew from the feel of it that it had a computer disk inside, and he asked him what it was about. His father replied that it was a copy of something on a new laptop he had bought, a memoir of his time in the Secret Service. He asked Arthur if he would keep it in the office safe.
'Kosinski told him that the computer had been stolen when he was murdered, but that if the disk did contain material relating to the Service, that might make it a matter of national security. So he asked Wilkins to give it to him, and the guy, after some thought, did so. Troy thanked him and left.'