Luckily Truman Jefferson had an afternoon free and, laboring under the misconception that his name was David Smith and that he was looking for real estate, his secretary gave him an appointment for one-thirty.
Olivia wasn’t so available. He got her voice mail and left a message. “It’s me. I need to talk to you about a woman named Mary O’Reilly. Call me. It’s important.”
“Now what?” Glenn said.
“I’m going upstairs to have some of Ma’s soup before I meet Lincoln’s brother.”
Glenn followed him out of the garden. “Tripping over cats works up an appetite.”
“Smacking down smug old men works up a bigger one. You coming?”
Glenn’s smile was sweet. “Sure, I like your mom’s cooking.”
Wednesday, September 22, 12:00 p.m.
The super opened Eric Marsh’s door and he, Olivia, and Noah flinched in unison. The odor wasn’t unbearable yet, but it was definitely getting there.
“Ah, damn,” the super muttered. “I hate it when this happens.”
Me too, Olivia thought. Noah took her elbow surreptitiously and gave her a shove forward. It was what she needed to move. The body was in the bedroom, lying on the bed, sprawled on his back, nude, an empty plastic baggie on the nightstand.
“That’s him,” the super said. “Eric Marsh. Never thought he’d go this way.”
“How did you think he’d go?” Noah asked, giving Olivia a chance to settle down.
“Always thought that friend of his would do him in. Guy was a thug.”
Olivia didn’t think anyone would describe Joel as a thug. “You mean Albert?”
The super nodded grimly, still staring at the body. “Yeah. Good old Al. Always thought his accent was a put-on, but it was good enough to get the ladies to swoon.”
Noah’s brows lifted. “We thought Albert and Eric were a couple.”
“They were. But Albert has a key and when Eric was away… Albert was a man who saw opportunity knocking. Maybe Eric found out Al was cheating on him.”
“Did he ever cheat with Mary?” Olivia asked and the super frowned.
“Don’t know that name. But if she was pretty and had money, I wouldn’t doubt it.”
“What does Albert look like?” Noah asked.
“Big guy. Hockey player at the university. Helluva checker, but no finesse with the stick.” He pointed to a photo in which Eric stood arm in arm with a tall, dark, good-looking guy with very broad shoulders. “He looks exactly like that. That’s him.”
Perfect, she thought with satisfaction. “Sir, we’re going to need to get the ME and crime lab up here. Can you wait for us outside? And please, don’t talk to the press.”
“Nah. I got no patience for those people.” He backed away with a sigh. “At least the rent was paid for next month. It’ll take that long to get rid of the smell.”
Noah walked him out while Olivia called for the ME and CSU. Then she crouched next to the bed and, on a hunch, shone her flashlight on Eric’s pelvic region.
“Everything still there?” Noah asked dryly when he came back in.
She looked up. “Little knot of dried blood, right where Joel was injected.”
Noah’s brows went up in surprise. “Sonofabitch. Looking at the photo, Albert’s big enough to haul Joel around and put him in the front seat of a car.”
“Ian said whoever hit Weems would have had to be at least six feet, based on the placement of the crack in Weems’s skull. Albert is easily six feet.” Olivia looked around the room. “No sign of struggle.”
“You seem okay now,” Noah noted.
“Once I get past the body, I’m usually all right. Thanks for the nudge before.”
“Anytime. Abbott called when I was walking the super out. He talked to Kenny in the safe house. Said the boy remembers seeing a police scanner in the shooter’s van.”
“He’s listening to us,” Olivia said.
“Yeah. Abbott wants to keep him in the dark on Austin’s whereabouts, so we have a special frequency for any mention of the search. Also, somebody’s been burning paper in the fireplace. Looked like blueprints.”
“Getting rid of evidence. Even if we find Albert’s fingerprints in here, he can just say he lived here, so that’s no good. We need a way to tie him to this.”
“Maybe he kept his kit. No sign of syringes or spoons anywhere.”
“And you have to heat the oxy to get it to dissolve in water so you can inject it,” Olivia said. “Whoever hit these guys with a needle did it right.” She opened drawers, frowning. “No cell, no laptop.”
“None in the other room either. Next stop, the university’s registrar’s office. They’ll have Albert’s address. Can’t be too many Alberts on the hockey team.”
“We still need to find Mary, though. Grumpy Early next door said she and Joel came here together to study, with rolled-up paper-the blueprints. She’s in on this.”
“And,” Noah said, “if Albert’s killing off his cohorts, she could be next.”
“I’m thinking she can give us the connection to Tomlinson and Dorian Blunt. Those fires still make no sense unless the first one was just a cover and they were planning something bigger all along.”
“Or like you and Dr. Donahue said yesterday-different agendas. Somebody left glass balls at the first two fires, but not the third. An environmentalist agenda links fires one and two. But Tomlinson links fires two and three.”
Olivia bit at her lip. “Joel was dead before fire two. Micki said there were three people. Albert was there, because he’s the only one tall enough to whack Weems in the head. Joel was there because we’ve got smoke in his lungs and glue in his shoes.”
Noah opened Eric’s closet. “Whoa, this kid spent some serious money on clothes.” He crouched down and a moment later stood, a running shoe in his hand. “Glue. They must not have known they tracked through it, or they’d have gotten rid of the shoes, too.”
“So Eric was also there. That’s three. Kenny said Austin saw a guy getting into a boat off the dock. That’s four. Was Albert the guy at the dock? He shot Weems?”
And Kane. A spurt of fury shot up inside her, but then Olivia frowned. Something wasn’t right, didn’t fit. “One set of glue tracks at the fence where they got away, no glue on the dock side of the condo, so neither Eric nor Joel walked over there. Let’s assume Joel wanted to change his mind and Albert whacked him, too. Could Eric have carried Joel away on his own, leaving none of Joel’s tracks behind while Albert ran around the building to escape off the dock, shooting Weems on the way?”
Noah studied Eric’s body. “He’s pretty skinny. He might have been able to haul Joel, especially if he was scared. But it makes more sense that Albert carried him out, especially since he whacked him.”
“Mary wasn’t on the dock, because Austin saw a man. Maybe it was Albert on the dock and Mary helped Eric carry Joel away.”
“Maybe, maybe. Let’s find Albert and Mary and get something solid.”
Wednesday, September 22, 12:30 p.m.
Austin hung back in the shadows in the alley beside the library. From here he could see any car coming in from the street and at his back was a chain-link fence, eight feet tall, so no one would sneak up from behind.
It was as safe as he was going to get under the circum-stances.
He held his breath, although his gut told him what was about to happen. The library was almost a mile from the school. For Kenny to make it here by 12:30, he’d have to cut the last ten minutes of his third-period English class. And old lady McMann did not give bathroom passes. Ever. Chances that Kenny was coming? Close to nil.
A white van pulled into the parking lot and a man got out and walked by Austin’s mom’s car. Frozen where he stood, Austin’s eyes fixed on the face of the man who’d shot that guard, who’d set the fire that killed Tracey. When he moved, his jacket shifted and Austin could see the glint of metal. He had a gun. The gun he’d used on the guard.