John had bled slowly, both internally and onto the ground, for as much as an hour before his heart stopped.
There was one other piece of possible evidence, which Hawkin interpreted as sinister, though Kate privately reserved judgment,- twenty feet from the body, at the foot of a tree, had been found a lone cigarette stub that had been pinched off, not ground out. Oddly, though, the-drift of ashes on the ground around the tree was considerably more than could be made from one cigarette. The crime scene investigator estimated that five to eight cigarettes could have produced that quantity of ash. There was another, smaller pile of ash just in front of the stump. In three places at the site were found boot prints, none of them complete, but together an indication that a pair of size nine men’s heeled boots, not cowboy boots but similar, had been there within a day of the time John had died.
When the lab results were in, Al had Kate drive him across town to the park. He stood within the fluttering yellow tapes marking the crime scene and stared at the ground.
He said deliberately, “I think a man wearing a pair of those expensive men’s boots that make you two inches taller stood here and talked with John, smoked a cigarette, walked around, picked up something—baseball bat, tree branch, nightstick— and hit John with it as hard as he could. John collapsed but didn’t die, and the man dragged him away from the stump and under the bush so he was invisible. He then stood behind that tree over there, smoking cigarettes—which he pinched off and put in his pocket, except the one he dropped—and watching John die. Cold-blooded, deliberate, smoking and watching.”
“I can’t see this as a pleasure killing,” objected Kate.
“No. Too casual, no ritual. And he didn’t come in close to watch,- it was more just waiting. He wanted John dead, didn’t mind if he suffered, but didn’t want to be too close. Could have been simply caution—he could get away more easily from over there if someone came down the road, couldn’t he?”
“You think he had a car along one of the streets outside the park?”
“Let’s get some posters up, see if anyone noticed something. Funny, though, about the cigarettes.”
“What about them?”
“Why did he pinch them all and take them?”
“To leave nothing behind. He watches too much television, thinks we can find him from a fingerprint on paper. Or just didn’t want us to know he was here.”
“Why not knock the ashes out into the cellophane wrapper, then? I’ve done that myself, smoking on a tidy front porch. And why didn’t he worry about his footprints? They’re at least as distinctive as his smoking habit.”
“Maybe the TV programs he watches only deal with fingerprints. That could also be why he waited for the man to die instead of bashing him again—he wasn’t necessarily coldblooded, just afraid of getting blood on his clothing. With the single hit, he was probably clean, but multiple blows would increase the risk of contamination.”
“You have an answer for everything, Martinelli. How about this one: What kind of man habitually pinches his cigarettes out rather than smashing them?”
“You’re the smoker, AI. You were, anyway. J don’t know. Someone showing macho? Like striking a match with your thumbnail to show how tough you are. Someone about to put the butt in his pocket and wanting to make sure it didn’t light his pocket on fire?”
“You’re probably right,” he said absently.
“Okay, AI. What kind of man would you say habitually pinches off his smokes? And why do you think it’s habitual?”
“Because he went through at least six or eight of them without once forgetting and putting it out against the tree or under his foot. Pretty calculating for a guy standing there smoking nervously, waiting for a friend to die.”
“Friend?”
“Acquaintance at least. And you may be right about the reason for the habit. Or it could be he’s a man who doesn’t mind a bit of ash but doesn’t want to toss a burning butt onto the ground. Someone who works around flammable things, maybe. Or someone concerned with the litter. Groundskeepers rarely toss away their cigarettes, knowing they’ll have to clean them up.”
“So, we have a short, vain groundskeeper in expensive boots who is friends with a homeless man who doesn’t smoke, drink, or do drugs, bashes him on the head, and stands around being tidy until the homeless man dies.”
“Yep, that’s about it,” said Hawkin.
“I like it.” Kate nodded and followed Hawkin to the car. “Sure, that is a doable theory. Let’s give it to the DA and just arrest every gardener in the city, starting with the park workers. Get a bus and shovel them in.”
“You’ll take care of it, won’t you?” asked Hawkin. “I have a date with Jani tonight.”
“No problem. Drag ‘em in, beat ’em up, get a confession, be home for dinner.”
“I knew I could count on you, Martinelli.”
♦
NINE
♦
The way to build a church is to build it.
Six days, seven days. Lee came up with some references and sent Jon in several directions to pick them up and request more from the university’s interlibrary loan service. She began to read and digest, in between physical therapy, a trip to the doctor’s, the lengthy preparation for and exhaustion following an appointment with one of her two clients, and sleep. Dean Gardner phoned Kate every day, even though Erasmus had been released, until finally, to get rid of him, Kate gave him the same research assignment she’d given Lee: Find me someone who knows what a Fool is.
Kate didn’t quite know why she was interested, though she did know that it had more to do with the enigma that was Erasmus than with the investigation into John’s murder. She mentioned her by-proxy academic investigations to Hawkin only in a passing way, he, in turn, nodded and told her to let him know if anything came up.
♦
Nine days after the murder, eight days after the cremation, the first faint hairline crack appeared in the case, although Kate did not at first recognize it as such. She was mostly annoyed.
“Dean Gardner, I do not have any news for you. I haven’t even seen Erasmus since—oh, he is? Of course, it’s Thursday.” Erasmus had been told not to leave San Francisco, but somehow she wasn’t surprised that he was following his usual rounds. “Is everything all right?”
“Oh yes, he seems in good spirits. The reason I called is that I have some suggestions for that question you put to me. Do you have a pencil?”
“Go ahead.”
“The first name is Danny Yamaguchi. Danny is a woman, a professor of Religious Studies at Stanford. Her specialty is cults, she should know if there is a Fool’s movement. Second is Rabbi Shlomo Bauer. He’s a GTU visiting professor this semester, his field is Jewish/Christian relations in Russia from the seventeenth century to the present. And third is a Dr. Whitlaw, who teaches at one of the redbrick universities in England and is over here on a sabbatical. I don’t know her, but I was told that she’s something of an expert on modern religious movements.” He then gave Kate telephone numbers for Yamaguchi and Bauer, explaining, “Dr. Whitlaw is staying with friends in San Francisco, but I couldn’t come up with her number. The only one I have at the moment seems to be an answering machine.
I’m sure I’ll have a number for you in a few days, and I know she’s coming to lecture here the end of next week, but do you want the machine’s number?“