"So that's the husband?" I asked, hooking my thumb to the body bag. "It doesn't fit my guy's motive or yours, going after a couple."
"Boyfriend," she said, and she couldn't keep a sardonic smile from pulling at the corners of her mouth.
"Excuse me?"
"George Harris is, was, Ms. Thompson's boyfriend. He lived three blocks away. A widower. She'd been seeing him for about a year." Richards was flipping through a narrow notebook. "Younger man. Seventy-four."
Ms. Thompson was closer to eighty. She was in the same generation as the others on Billy's list. Her living arrangement didn't bother me. It was the change. If this was meant to be part of the string, the guy had screwed up on his surveillance. Which meant he was slipping.
"So the killer comes in, thinking she's all alone and gets surprised?" I said.
"Ms. Thompson says George was very discreet," Richards said, but her eyes were past me, caught by something out past the front window.
Outside one of the cops was having an arms-crossed discussion with two black women on the curb. One already had her hands up on her hips, not a good sign. The other was trying to see past him, as if just a glimpse of her friend inside might change the mask of worry on her face. I turned back to Richards.
"So, have you got anyone on the paper trail? The insurance?"
"That's why you're here, Freeman," she said. "You and Billy already have an inside track on that. You could find out a hell of a lot faster than we could. If it fits with your theory, it's a whole different case. But I'm not going to bring this whole idea to Hammonds without a more solid connection."
She was a good detective, willing to look at the long odds if there was a possibility, but smart enough to play the game by the book. It was something I had never learned.
"Give me Ms. Thompson's date of birth and social security number and we'll work it," I said.
She was already tearing a slip from her pad, and looking back outside.
"Thanks, Max," she said, moving now to the front door.
When she left I wandered back through the house. It had the same feeling as Ms. Jackson's, a place caught in the past. High school graduation pictures of the grandkids, propped up to form a small altar on the console TV. A threadbare runner over the worn carpet in the hall. Hand towels, faded with age, snapped around the handles of drawers. I kept my hands in my pockets and went into the utility room. The scene techs had dusted the door casings and all of the jalousie panes. They'd left smears of black powder on the white enamel of the washer and dryer. But there was something in the air, an odor that wasn't an old person's. It wasn't a detergent or bleach smell. It wasn't the sweat of men gathered here to do their technical work. There was one small window in the room, sealed and barred and facing the backyard and the alley behind. I stood staring and closed my eyes and took a full, deep breath into my nostrils. It was the smell of the streets, the subway passage deep below Philly's City Hall, the heating grate after midnight at Eleventh and Moravian, the pile of stained and oily blankets piled around the homeless guy a block from the bus terminal on Thirteenth, and the acrid odor at the brick shack only a couple of miles from here.
I could feel it in my nose and it was a smell that did not belong here.
On my way out I passed Richards, who was escorting the two black women from the curb to the back patio where Ms. Thompson still sat. She pointed them in a direction they already knew and turned.
"You alright?" she said looking into my face.
"Yeah. I'll call you when I get something," I said. "Your guys check the alley?"
"Of course."
"Nothing?
"Trash. Why? You expect anything?"
"No. Not with this guy," I said and walked away.
Back in my truck I called Billy at his office. I gave him a rundown on the overnight killing and the information on Ms. Thompson.
"I'll start as much of a paper chase as I can," Billy said. "But you're going to have to get this over to McCane."
"Yeah. I'll page him next," I said. "I already owe him a call."
Billy, as usual, was right. McCane's resources would be better and faster than even he could get out of public records, though it wasn't a collaboration I relished. Billy listened to my silence.
"Are you turning into a believer yet?" he asked.
"Maybe."
"And now we've got a survivor."
"But she didn't see a damn thing, Billy," I said in frustration. "There was a pillow over her face the whole time."
"Max. Max," he said, waiting for my attention. "I didn't say witness, Max. I said survivor. Survivor is a good thing."
16
I beeped McCane. Punched in my cell number and waited. My truck cab was hot, the glare of the sun snapping off the hood and windshield. Out in front of me the trio of men I'd seen earlier had taken up a position across the street in the shade of a tree. I started the truck and kicked up the A.C. My cell chirped.
"Freeman. How you doin', bud? Thought maybe you forgot about me son, and right now, you don't want to be forgettin' me."
"I can't imagine you're the kind of guy who's easy to forget, McCane."
In the background I could hear music. Maybe it was the same song that had been playing before. Maybe McCane hadn't moved from his seat at the bar.
"I've got another name for you to run through your insurance sources," I said, expecting a skeptical grumble.
"Yeah? Well start talkin', cause all you're going to be doin' is listening when you get here, partner. We got us some fat to chew."
McCane gave me directions to an address on the east side, and as I rolled down the street the neighborhood posse of three was watching me. All three turned their heads as I passed and I couldn't be sure, but it looked like the head man tipped up his chin.
I drove to a commercial strip in the city. This time of year the shopping malls and restaurants were doing a brisk business. The closer to the ocean, the brighter the building facades, the more commerce ruled.
I was looking for a movie marquee on the right and then a turn into a plaza. Kim's Alley Bar was deep in the corner and I found a space in the lot several doors down and walked back. Inside the stained-glass door I had to stop and let my eyes adjust to the dimness. It was a small place, split in two by a hip-high wall that separated a lounge area from a bar that ran the length of the back wall. There were four men sitting on stools. As my sight sharpened I saw McCane at the far end, a sheaf of papers spread out in front of him, an empty shot glass and a half-drunk shell of beer within reach.
As I crossed the distance a young, perky bartender called out a greeting, as if she'd just seen me yesterday. As I came closer I saw that she was standing in front of the most handsome hand-carved wood and beveled glass bar back I had ever seen. I was still staring when I got to McCane's side. The dark wood was intricately scrolled at the ends and across the high facade. Tiers of glass-fronted cabinets were stacked up, and they framed three individual mirrors. It had to be a century old, a stunning piece in this place where everything outside was new and sun-brightened and faux tropical.
"Suzy. Get Mr. Freeman here a drink, darlin', so's he'll have somethin' to put in that open mouth of his."
McCane pushed back the stool next to him with the toe of his shoe and I asked Suzy for a dark ale in honor of the place.
"Nice, huh?" McCane said, matching my sight line to the woodwork before us. "They say it was imported from some place in New England somethin' like fifty years ago in pieces and put back together here. Somehow makes you feel at home even if you ain't never had anything like it at home."