“As you know,” he told Debra, “we now have four victims of this person, and whereas until now there didn’t seem to be any definite link between the four…”
“Haveyou found a link?” Debra asked.
“The killer left a note at the scene of the last murder,” Parker said gravely. You had to play different women different ways. You had to impress certain blonde and glacial types with your sincerity. He was hoping Debra Wilkins would see him as a dedicated professional for whom she would happily take off her panties. “If it isn’t too much trouble, Mrs. Wilkins, I wonder if you’d take a look at the note and tell us if you recognize the handwriting. Bert?” he said, as if prompting his presenter-partner at the Academy Awards to hand him the envelope, please.
Kling produced the photocopy of the note Midtown South had given him. He handed it to Parker who in turn handed it to Debra. She studied it carefully.
“It doesn’t look at all familiar,” she said.
“It was written on a scrap of paper he probably picked up at the scene,” Parker said. “One of these throwaway flyers advertising a neighborhood deli. We figure the note was a spur-of-the-moment idea.”
“We figure he wants to get caught,” Kling said.
“How do you figure that?” she asked.
“What my partner’s trying to say,” Parker said, “is that if we can match this handwriting, then we’ve got him on all four murders. Because it was found at the scene of one murder, and he confesses in the note to the other three .”
“I see. But why would he do such a stupid thing?” Debra asked.
“Like my partner says, he may want to get caught.”
“Either that,” she said, “or he’s a copycat who committed only the one murder and wants to take credit for the previous ones as well.”
“Now that is very good investigative thinking, Mrs. Wilkins,” Parker said, and shook his head in appreciative wonder. “Have you ever done police work?”
“Never,” she said.
Kling suddenly wondered if she was employed. The Wilkinses didn’t have any children, and homemaking for a childless couple didn’t seem like much of a fulltime occupation. Before he could ask her, though, Debra said, “I was once a legal secretary. For a firm that mostly handled criminal cases. That’s how I met Peter. He’d negotiated the divorce settlement for a woman whose husband later held up a bank. We were defending the husband in the criminal suit, and we called the former wife in for a deposition. I think he was claiming her as an alibi on the day of the robbery, I forget the exact circumstances. In any case, Peter and his partner…”
She turned to Kling.
“Jeffry Colbert,” she said. “You met him here last Saturday.”
“Yes, I remember,” Kling said. “We talked to him yesterday.”
“Oh?” Debra said.
So the son of a bitch didn’t call her like he said he would, Parker thought.
Kling was wondering if this would be a good time to bring up the will. He decided it wasn’t. But he felt further explanation about why they’d gone to see Colbert…or was it necessary?
“Few questions we wanted to ask him,” he said, and then, immediately, “You were telling us how you’d met your husband.”
“Yes, he and Jeffry accompanied this woman to the deposition. I started dating Peter and…well…eventually we got married.”
“How long ago was that?” Kling asked.
“Three years,” she said.
Her lip was beginning to quiver again. Maybe she wasn’t quite as much in control as Kling had earlier thought. Partly to move her away from memories of what had been a happier time, partly because the logistics were still bugging him, he said, “I’ve been trying to figure how your husband could have got all those paint cans into the apartment without your noticing. I gather you’re not working now…”
“No, I’m not.”
“Are you gone a lot? Out of the apartment, I mean.”
“I walk a lot,” she said. “I’m still learning the city, you see. I came here from Pittsburgh four years ago, but I was just beginning to know it when Peter…when the…when he…he got killed.”
“I wonder if we can take another look at those paint cans,” Kling said.
“I threw them out,” she said.
“Why?” he said, surprised.
“They…reminded me that Peter had a secret life, something I knew nothing about. I couldn’t stand looking at them any longer.”
“When did you throw them out?”
“Yesterday.”
“Where?”
“I left them in the basement. We have a man…”
She caught herself. She could no longer use the word “we” when discussing her family. Her husband was dead. Now it was the singular. I. She avoided that, too.
“A handyman comes in three times a week. We leave…”
It could no longer be avoided.
“I leave things down there for him to get rid of.”
“To get rid of how?”
“Some things he puts out with the garbage. The rest he carts off himself.”
“Where is he now? Your handyman?”
“I saw him outside just a little while ago. Working in the yard.”
“I don’t see what’s so important about those cans,” Parker said, “you should be bothering Mrs. Wilkins about them.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t know you’d need them.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Parker said. “Mrs. Wilkins, I’m going to leave you my card. If you remember anything you think we should know…if, for example, anything about the handwriting rings a bell…we’ll be leaving this with you, by the way, it’s just a copy…you call me, okay? I’ll be here in a minute,” he said, and grinned like a shark.
“Thank you,” Debra said, and accepted the card.
“There’s just one more thing,” Kling said.
She looked up from the card.
“When we saw Mr. Colbert yesterday, he mentioned that your husband had left a will….”
“Yes?”
“You know about the will, do you?”
“Yes?”
“I know it hasn’t been probated yet….”
“Now that…the…the funeral is over and I…”
The lip quivering again, the eyes beginning to well with tears.
“I plan to do that tomorrow,” she said.
“Then…if the will’s going to be made public, anyway,” Kling said, “can you tell us who the beneficiaries are?”
“There’s only one beneficiary,” she said. “I’m the sole beneficiary.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“You have my card,” Parker said, and winked at her.
In the hallway outside, Kling said, “Let’s go talk to that handyman.”
“Why?” Parker said.
“She cries too much.”
“For Christ’s sake, her husband got whacked last week!”
“And she’s his sole goddamn beneficiary .”
Parker looked at him.
“How come she never saw those cans in his closet?” Kling asked.