“Right. Hamilton said last night the lab had come up with some new information about all this, something about chronological sequencing?”
Spinney looked over the paper debris Iittering the table and came up with a thick binder. He leafed through it a bit, scanning the indexes.
“Yeah, here it is. What do you want to know?” “Any sense of who went where first.” Spinney read quickly, flipping through several pages.
“Well, let’s see. We got Mitch Pearl and Rennie’s tracks on top of all the others.” I scanned the board. “Okay, that’s when they found the body. What else?” “Of the earlier prints, it looks like white is on top… Well, he didn’t hit all the other prints. He is on top of black and red-he missed yellow.” I translated, using Crofter’s color key.
“Gorman’s white, so he came after black, which is Wingate. So Gorman either entered the picture while Wingate was still alive, hitting some of Wingate’s prints but not all, or he came in after Wingate was already dead.” “Which means he could have killed him.” %211 “Maybe. What else?”
“White-Gorman is also on top of several reds.” “Red. Crofter called him the busiest-” “And Gorman the least busy-in and out.” “Right, so he is; one line in, one line out, pretty clean if you’re oing to hack someone with a knife a half-dozen times.” “Perhaps.” “Red is stomping all over the place, particularly near where Winate’s head finally wound up.” I stepped away from the board and faced Spinney. “I kick you in he balls; what happens?” “I shoot you and sing soprano the rest of my life.”
“Which won’t be long. You double over, clutching yourself with ne hand, and I finish you off with the knife. You fall at my feet.
rgo, my footprints end up all around where your head ends up, ight?”
“Possibly. Maybe you kick me in the balls and I fall down like a ack of potatoes and the little lady finishes me off.” “Oh?” “Yeah.” He pointed at the binder. “Let’s assume the yellow tracks elong to Julie for the moment, a likely choice since she addressed the nvelope to her father and none of our other suspects fit those small, ight moccasin prints.
Now, this report says both she and red step all ver each other. No way to tell who went first.” I nodded my acknowledgment. “But Gorman’s definitely on top fred?” “Yeah.” “So if yellow-Julie-and red are intermixed, we might assume orman appeared after Julie, too.” Spinney shook his head and dropped the book in front of him. ‘Maybe.
This is like reading tea leaves. Just because one set of prints on top of another set doesn’t mean they came later than a few econds. If you have ten guys walking in a line, did the last guy follow he first nine by two hours, or was he holding a short rope attached to he ninth guy’s belt? You can’t tell.” “Okay, I’ll grant you that. But nowhere does it say Gorman’s rints appear under anyone’s, right?” “Right.” “And since yellow’s and red’s prints are mixed together, it’s reaonable to assume they were together at the time.” “Two against one? Yellow and red against Wingate, with Gorman ntering the scene after?” %212 “It works, doesn’t it?” Spinney rubbed the sides of his nose with his forefingers.
“Yeah, but so does three against one.” “Does it?” I used the pointer again. “Here’s Wingate standing around, shifting his weight, staggering finally, and then falling. Here’s yellow, also standing around, back and forth, in front of Wingate. And the same’s true for red. But Gorman…” I tapped at the two neat parallel rows of white marks, “goes straight in, pauses maybe squats down or something-and then leaves.” “In a hurry.” “What?” Spinney pointed at the book. “In a hurry. The lab says he left running, leaving only toe marks, no heels.” “It fits,” I said, tossing the pencil onto the table. I felt disappointed in some ways: Gorman, obviously, was not our killer.
“So who’s red, and is Julie yellow?” The first question had a numbing regularity to it; it seemed we had fit everyone except Buster into those red footprints. I ducked answering.
“And what was Gorman doing there in the first place?” Spinney leaned way back in the chair and locked his hands behind his neck. “You know, Joe, red could still be Rennie.” I shook my head and sat down. “Concede the point. It is possible.” “I’d be happier conceding it if he hadn’t gotten killed.” “That’s because you’re linking all three events together the fire and the two murders. What if they’re not connected?” That struck me as unlikely. “Remember when we visited Rennie’s place, and got the boots and clothes and knife? Well, I asked Nadine, just as we were leaving, whether Rennie ever went without a belt. Remember what she said?” He looked at me closely. “That he always wore a belt.” “So what was blood doing on the waistband of the pants we found? If he always wore a belt, the blood would be on the belt.” Spinney rolled his eyes.
“Wait, I know it’s not evidence, at least nothing that would stand up in court, but to me it shows something fundamentally wrong with Rennie being the killer.” Spinney decided to skirt the issue. “Those red prints were definitely made by his boots, and he definitely had ties to both Wingate and Julie.
It wouldn’t be the first time lovers attempted murder.” “They were hardly lovers, from what I hear. Chaney said Rennie dumped her.” %213
“Come on, we don’t know that. For all we know, they were still uts about each other. Plus, Wingate took a swing at Rennie; some people have killed for a parking space.” I remembered something else. “Rennie said he lost his lighter bout six months ago, just a short time after Chaney said Rennie jumped Julie Wingate. Maybe that’s why he clammed up on us. I hought at the time it was odd that he knew when he’d lost the lighter, ut not where or how.
If he suspected Julie stole it, or that she picked up after one of their trysts, then he also suspected her of planting it nder Wingate’s body.”
“Which might explain what Julie’s footprints were doing off emon Road.
Rennie called the meeting to find out if she’d framed Im.
I got up to look out one of the windows. “So who killed Rennie?” hat, almost more than anything, was what was sticking in my craw. ‘If Rennie was framed, why kill him oIl? Especially when he was the ost obvious suspect?” “How about asking, ‘who didn’t kill Rennie’?” “All right.”
“Not Julie, because her tracks come and go, leaving Rennie alive.” I nodded, content for the moment that my assumptions about ulie’s actions were reasonable.
“Not Gorman.” “Why not?” “All right, probably not Gorman. Because he would have used is one pair of hiking shoes, just as he had the night Wingate died, hoes which obviously haven’t been used since. Also, as a city boy, e’d have crashed around the woods like the twosome who met with ennie. He’s no woodsman. The guy who iced Rennie walked around zke a cat.” “So, by the same logic, Gorman couldn’t have been part of the duo ho met Rennie at the rock.” “Right. Plus, it wouldn’t make sense. From what we’ve estabshed, it looks like Julie was there, so what would Gorman be doing with her meeting Rennie?” “All that’s based on the hypothesis that Gorman knows nothing bout moving in the woods which we don’t know for a fact-and that e only has the one pair of boots that he would naturally wear to that ind of meeting. Beverly Hillstrom has a pair of boots permanently ored in the trunk of her car.” Spinney looked sourly at the tabletop. “All right, so it might have een Gorman.” %214 “Among others,” I added, looking out the window. “Like Sarris, or one of his people, or someone we haven’t even thought of.”