He looked appraisingly at me. "He's one of the most powerful book lawyers in the country, mingles freely with editors, agents, writers, all of whom may privately hate him but find it unwise not to fear him. Supposedly he regularly lunches at the Algonquin, and insists on signing all movie and book contracts there while he no doubt inwardly smirks at Dorothy Parker's ghost."
He paused. "Sound farfetched?"
"No. One doesn't need to be a psychologist to figure it out," I said.
"Here's what I'm going to suggest," Ethridge said, his eyes fixed on mine. "Let me handle Sparacino. I want you to have no contact with him at all, if possible. You mustn't underestimate him, Kay. Even when you think you've told him very little, he's reading between the lines, is a master at making inferences that can be uncannily on the mark. I'm not sure what his involvement with Beryl Madison, the Harpers, really was or what his real agenda is. Perhaps a mixture of unsavory things. But I don't want him knowing any more details about these deaths than he already knows."
"He's already gotten a lot," I said. "Beryl Madison's police report, for example. Don't ask me how-"
"He's very resourceful," Ethridge interrupted. "I advise you to keep all reports out of circulation, send them only where you must. Tighten the lid on your office, beef up security, every file under lock and key. Make sure your staff releases no information about these cases to anyone unless you're absolutely certain the person calling in the request is who he says he is. Every crumb Sparacino will use to his advantage. It's a game to him. Many people could be hurt-including you. Not to mention what could happen to the cases come court time. After one of his typical publicity blitzes we'd have to change the damn venue to Antarctica."
"He may have anticipated that you'll do this," I said quietly.
"That I'd relegate myself to being the lightning rod? Step into the ring instead of letting an assistant handle it?"
I nodded.
"Well, perhaps so," he answered.
I was sure of it. I wasn't Sparacino's intended quarry. His old nemesis was. Sparacino couldn't pick on the attorney general directly. He would never get past the watchdogs, the aides, the secretaries. So Sparacino picked on me instead and was being rewarded with the desired result. The idea of being used this way only made me angrier, and Mark suddenly came to mind. What was his role in this?
"You're annoyed and I don't blame you," Ethridge said. "And you're just going to have to swallow your pride, your emotions, Kay. I need your help."
I just listened.
"The ticket that will get us out of Sparacino's amusement park, I strongly suspect, is this manuscript everyone's so interested in. Any possibility you might be able to track it down?"
I felt my face getting hot. "It never came through my office, Tom-"
"Kay," he said firmly, "that's not my question. A lot of things never come through your office and the medical examiner manages to track them down. Prescription drugs, a complaint of chest pain overheard at some point before the decedent suddenly dropped dead, suicidal ideations you somehow manage to get a family member to divulge. You have no power of enforcement, but you can investigate. And sometimes you're going to find out details no one is ever going to tell the police."
"I don't want to be an ordinary witness, Tom."
"You're an expert witness. Of course you don't want to be ordinary. It's a waste," he said.
"And the cops are usually better interrogators," I added. "They don't expect people to tell the truth."
"Do you expect it?" he asked.
"Your local friendly doctor usually expects it, expects people to tell the truth as they perceive it. They do the best they can. Most docs don't expect the patient to lie."
"Kay, you're speaking in generalities," he said.
"I don't want to be in the position-"
"Kay, the Code reads that the medical examiner shall make an investigation into the cause and manner of death and reduce his findings to writing. This is very broad. It gives you full investigative powers. The only thing you can't do is actually arrest somebody. You know that. The police are never going to find that manuscript. You're the only person who can find it."
He looked levelly at me. "It's more important to you, to your good name, than it is to them."
There was nothing I could do. Ethridge had declared war on Sparacino, and I had been drafted.
"Find that manuscript, Kay."
The attorney general glanced at his watch. "I know you. You put your mindto it, you'll find it or at least discover what's become of it. Three people are dead. One of them A Pulitzer Prizewinner whose book happens to be a favorite of mine. We need to get to the bottom of this. In addition, everything you turn up that relates to Sparacino you report back to me. You'll try, won't you?"
"Yes, sir," I replied. "Of course I'll try."
I began by badgering the scientists.
Documents examination is one of very few scientific procedures that can supply answers right before your eyes. It is as concrete as paper and as tangible as ink. By late Wednesday afternoon the section chief, whose name was Will, and Marino and I had been at it for hours. What we were discovering was a vivid reminder that not one of us is above being driven to drink.
I wasn't sure what I was hoping. Maybe it would have been a simple solution had we determined right off that what Miss Harper had burned in her fireplace was Beryl's missing manuscript. Then we might conclude that Beryl had relegated it to the safekeeping of her friend. We might assume that the work contained indiscretions that Miss Harper chose not to share with the world. Most important, we could conclude that the manuscript really had not, after all, disappeared from the crime scene.
But the amount and type of paper we were examining were not consistent with these possibilities. There were very few unburned fragments, none bigger than a dime or worth placing under the infrared-filter-covered lens of the video comparator. No technical aids or chemical tests were going to assist us in examining the remaining tissuey white curls of ash. They were so fragile we didn't dare remove them from the shallow cardboard box Marino had collected them in, and we had shut the door and vents of the documents lab to keep the room as airless as possible.
What we were doing amounted to a frustrating, painstaking task of nudging weightless ashes aside with tweezers, picking here, picking there, for a word. So far we knew that Miss Harper had burned sheets of twenty-pound rag paper imprinted with characters typed with a carbon ribbon. We could be sure of this for several reasons. Paper produced from wood pulp turns black when incinerated, while paper made from cotton is incredibly clean, its ashes wispy white like the ones in Miss Harper's fireplace. The few unburned fragments we looked at were consistent with twenty-pound stock. Finally, carbon does not bum. The heat had shrunk the typed characters to what was comparable to fine print, or approximately twenty pitch. Some words were present in their entirety, standing out blackly against the filmy white ash. The rest were hopelessly fragmented and sullied like sooty bits of tiny paper fortunes from Chinese cookies.
"A R R I V," Will spelled out, eyes bloodshot behind unstylish black-framed glasses, his young face weary. He was having to work at being patient.
I added the partial word to the half-filled page of my notepad.
"Arrived, arriving, arrive," he added with a sigh. "Can't think of what else it could be."
"Arrival, arriviste," I thought out loud.
"Arriviste?" Marino asked sourly. "What the hell is that?"
"As in social climber," I replied.
"A little too esoteric for me," Will said humorlessly.
"Probably a little too esoteric for most people," I conceded, wishing for the bottle of Advil downstairs in my pocketbook and blaming my persistent headache on eye-strain.
"Jesus," Marino complained. "Words, words, words. Never seen so many words in my damn life. Never heard of half of 'em and not sorry about the fact, either."