Fontaine let us adjust to the spectacle on the table. "Does anything about this man look familiar? I know it's not easy."
John said, "Nobody could identify him—there isn't anything left."
"Professor Brookner?"
"It could be Grant." Alan took his eyes from the table and looked at John. "Grant's hair was that light brown color."
"Alan, this doesn't even look like hair."
"Are you prepared to identify this man, Professor Brookner?"
Alan looked back down at the body and shook his head. "I can't be positive."
Fontaine waited to see if Alan had anything more to say. "Would it help you to see his clothes?"
"I'd like to see the clothing, yes."
Fontaine folded the sheet back up over the body and walked past us toward the door to the corridor.
Then we stood in another tiny windowless room, in the same configuration as before, Fontaine on the far side of a wheeled table, the three of us in front of it. Rumpled, bloodstained clothes lay scattered across the table.
"What we have here is what the deceased was wearing on the night of his death. A seersucker jacket with a label from Hatchett and Hatch, a green polo shirt from Banana Republic, khaki pants from the Gap, Fruit of the Loom briefs, brown cotton socks, cordovan shoes." Fontaine pointed at each item in turn.
Alan raised his eagle's face. "Seersucker jacket? Hatchett and Hatch? That was mine. It's Grant." His face was colorless. "And he told me that he was going to treat himself to some new clothes with the money I gave him."
"You gave money to Grant Hoffman?" John asked. "Besides the clothes?"
"Are you sure this was your jacket?" Fontaine lifted the shredded, rusty-looking jacket by its shoulders.
"I'm sure, yes," Alan said. He stepped back from the table. "I gave it to him last August—we were sorting out some clothes. He tried it on, and it fit him." He pressed a hand to his mouth and stared at the ruined jacket.
"You're positive." Fontaine laid the jacket down on the table.
Alan nodded.
"In that case, sir, would you please look at the deceased once more?"
"He already looked at the body," John said in a voice too loud for the small room. "I don't see any point in subjecting my father-in-law to this torture all over again."
"Sir," Fontaine said, speaking only to Alan, "you are certain that this was the jacket you gave to Mr. Hoffman?"
"I wish I weren't," Alan said.
John exploded. "This man just lost his daughter! How can you think of subjecting him to—"
"Enough, John," Alan said. He looked ten years older than when he had hurled the wreath into the lake.
"You two gentlemen can wait in the hall," Fontaine said. He came around the table and put his hand high on Alan's back, just below the nape of his neck. This gentleness, his whole tone when dealing with Alan, surprised me. "You can wait for us in the hall."
A technician in a white T-shirt and white pants came through the adjoining door and crossed to the table. Without looking at us, he began folding the bloody clothes and placing them in transparent evidence bags. John rolled his eyes, and we went into the hall.
"What a setup," John said. He was spinning around and around in the hallway. I leaned my back against a wall. Low voices came from inside the other room.
At the sound of footsteps, John stopped spinning. Paul Fontaine stayed inside the room while Alan marched out.
"I'll be in touch soon," Fontaine said.
Alan walked down the hallway without speaking or looking back.
"Alan?" John called.
He kept on walking.
"It was someone else, right?"
Alan walked past Teddy and opened the door to the entry. "Tim, will you drop me off?"
"Of course," I said.
Alan moved through the door and let it close behind him. "What the hell," John said. By the time we got into the entry, the outside door had already closed behind Alan. When we got outside, he was on his way down the ramp.
We caught up with him on the ramp. John put his arm through Alan's, and Alan shook him off.
"I'm sorry you had to see that," John said.
"I want to go home."
"Sure," John said. When we got to the car, he opened the door for the old man, closed it behind him, and got into the backseat. I started the engine. "At least that's over," John said.
"Is it?" Alan asked.
I backed out of the space and turned toward Armory Place. John leaned forward and patted Alan's shoulder.
"You've been great all day long," John said. "Is there anything I can do for you now?"
"You could stop talking," Alan said.
"It was Grant Hoffman, wasn't it?" I asked.
"Oh, God," John said.
"Of course it was," Alan said.
9
I slowed down as we drove past the Green Woman Taproom, but the blue car was gone.
"Why would anybody kill Grant Hoffman?" John asked.
No one responded. We drove back to his house in a silence deepened rather than broken by the sounds of the other cars and the slight breeze that blew in through the open windows. At Ely Place John told me to come back when I could and got out of the car. Then he paused for a second and put his face up to the passenger window and looked past Alan at me. A hard, transparent film covered his eyes like a shield. "Do you think I should tell my parents about Grant?"
Alan did not move.
"I'll follow your lead," I said.
He said he would leave the door unlocked for me and turned away.
When I followed Alan inside his house, he went upstairs and sat on his bed and held out his arms like a child so that I could remove his jacket. "Shoes," he said, and I untied his shoes and slipped them off while he fumbled with his necktie. He tried unbuttoning his shirt, but his fingers couldn't manage it, and I undid the buttons for him.
He cleared his throat with an explosive sound, and his huge, commanding voice filled the room. "Was April as bad as Grant? I have to know."
It took me a moment to understand what he meant. "Not at all. You saw her at the funeral parlor."
He sighed. "Ah. Yes."
I slid the shirt down his arms and laid it on his bed.
"Poor Grant."
I didn't say anything. Alan undid his belt and stood up to push his trousers down over his hips. He sat again on the bed, and I pulled the trousers off his legs.
Dazed and unfocused, he watched me pull a handkerchief, keys, and bills from his trouser pockets and put them on his bedside table.
"Alan, do you know why April was interested in the Horatio Street bridge?"
"It had something to do with the Vuillard in their living room. You've seen it?"
I said that I had.
"She said one of the figures in the painting reminded her of a man she had heard about. A policeman—some policeman who killed himself in the fifties. She couldn't look at the painting without thinking about him. She did some research on it—April was a great researcher, you know." He wrenched the pillow beneath his head. "I need to get some sleep, Tim."
I went to the bedroom door and said that I'd call him later that evening, if he liked.
"Come here tomorrow."
I think he was asleep before I got down the stairs.
10
Ralph and Marjorie Ransom, back in their black-and-silver running suits, sat side by side on one of the couches.
"I agree with John," Ralph said. "Thin stripes and puckered cotton, that's a seersucker jacket. That's the point. All seersucker jackets look alike. Hatchett and Hatch probably unloaded ten thousand of the things."