“Come on,” she said, and pulled a face that made her look twelve years old. “Me? In Sports USA? Come on.”
“Well, not you alone. But we’ll be concentrating on female athletes...”
“College athletes?”
“Not all of them. And not all of them track stars.”
“Here we go with the stars again,” she said, and again rolled her eyes.
“We’ll be covering swimming, basketball, gymnastics... well, we’re trying to make it as comprehensive as we can. And forgive me if I use the word again, but we’re trying to zero in on the young American women of today who may very well become the stars of tomorrow.”
“Twelve-three for the hundred-yard dash is a star of tomorrow, huh?” Darcy said.
“At Sports USA,” he said solemnly, “we’re not entirely unaware of what’s happening in the sports world.”
She studied his face again, nodding, digesting all that he’d told her. “I wish you hadn’t seen me today,” she said at last. “I was really rotten today.”
“I thought you had great style.”
“Yeah, some style. Sixty yards in nine seconds, that’s really terrific style.”
“Did you do much running this summer?”
“Every day. Well, not Sundays.”
“What sort of a routine did you follow?”
“You really interested in this?” she asked.
“I am. In fact... if I could have a little of your time later this evening, perhaps we can go into it at greater length. I’m primarily interested in your goals and aspirations, but anything you can tell me about your early interest in running, or your training habits...”
“Listen, are you for real?” she said.
“I beg your pardon.”
“I mean, is this Candid Camera or something?”
She looked around suddenly, as though searching for a hidden camera. They were standing quite alone on the edge of the track. She studied an oak in the near distance as a possible place for Allen Funt to be hiding. She shrugged, shook her head, and turned back to him again.
“This isn’t Candid Camera,” he said, and smiled. “This is Corey McIntyre of Sports USA, and I’m interviewing young female athletes for an article we plan to run in our February issue. We’ll be concentrating somewhat heavily on track in order to take advantage of the season’s start, but we’ll also be covering...”
“Okay, okay, I believe you,” she said, and shook her head again, and grinned. “Sheeesh,” she said, “I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it.”
“Okay,” she said. “So you want to interview me, okay, I believe it.”
“Do you think you can spare some time tonight?”
“I’ve got a heavy test coming up in Psych tomorrow.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” he said. “How about...?”
“But I think I know the stuff already,” she said. “Tonight’ll be fine, provided I get to bed early.”
“Why don’t we have dinner together?” he suggested. “I’m pretty sure I can do the interview in one meeting, and then — if you don’t mind, that is — I’d like to set up a convenient time for a photographer to...”
“A photographer, sheesh,” she said, grinning.
“If that’s all right with you.”
“Yeah, sure,” she said. “I can’t believe this, I’ve got to tell you.”
“Would eight o’clock be all right?” he asked.
“Yeah, fine. Boy.”
“If you can start thinking about some of the things I mentioned...”
“Yeah, aspirations and goals, right.”
“Early interest in...”
“Right.”
“Training habits...”
“Okay, sure, that’s easy.”
“Any anecdotes about running... well, we’ll cover all that tonight. Where shall I pick you up? Or would you rather meet me?”
“Well, can you stop by the dorm?”
“I had in mind a midtown restaurant. It might be easier if you took a taxi.”
“Sure, whatever you say.”
“Get a receipt. Sports USA’ll pick up the tab.”
“Okay. Where?” she said.
“Marino’s on Ulster and South Haley. Eight o’clock sharp.”
“Corey McIntyre,” she said. “Sports USA. Wow.”
In the stillness of Nancy Annunziato’s bedroom, her mother and grandmother silently moving around the house outside the closed door, Carella and Hawes went through the dead girl’s belongings. There had been no need to call in the lab technicians; this room could not possibly have been the scene of the crime. And yet, they went through her personal effects as delicately as if they were preserving evidence for later admission at a trial. Neither of the men mentioned the Deaf Man. If the Deaf Man had been responsible for Nancy Annunziato’s death, if he had slain both her and Marcia Schaffer, then they were dealing with a wild card in a stacked deck. They preferred, for now, to believe that there was a reasonably human motive for the murders, that the crimes had not been concocted in the Deaf Man’s computerized brain.
Hawes was now reading the girl’s training diary.
Carella was looking through her appointment calendar.
Nancy had been killed on October 13. The medical examiner’s report on the postmortem interval — premised on body temperature, lividity, degree of decomposition, and rigor mortis — had estimated the time of death as approximately 11:00 P.M. The lab had come up negative for any fingerprints on the wallet found at the scene; the killer, though conveniently providing identification of the girl, had nonetheless wiped the wallet clean before dropping it at her feet. They now had only her personal record of events to help them reconstruct where she’d been and what she’d been doing on the day of her murder.
Her training diary revealed that on Thursday, October 13, Nancy Annunziato had awakened at 7:30 A.M. She had recorded her early morning pulse rate as fifty-eight. She had gone to bed the night before at 11:00 P.M. (A flip back through the pages revealed that this was her usual bedtime; yet on the night of her murder, she had been abroad in the city someplace at that hour.) Her body weight at awakening had been 120 pounds. She had recorded the place of her daily workout as “Outdoor track, CPC,” and had described the running surface as “Synthetic.” She had recorded the day’s temperature (at the time of her workout) as sixty-four degrees, and had described the day as fair, with low humidity and no wind. She had begun her workout at 3:30 P.M.
She had detailed the workout that day as “usual warm-up,” followed by four 80-yard sprints from blocks, with walkbacks for recovery and a full-track walk after the last sprint; four 150-yard sprints around the turn from running starts, with walkbacks for recovery; and six 60-yard sprints from blocks, again with walkbacks after each sprint. She had listed the total distance run as 1,280 yards, her weight before the workout as a hundred and twenty-one pounds and after it as a hundred and nineteen pounds. Under the words “Fatigue Index,” she had scribbled the number “5,” which Hawes assumed was midway on a scale of 1 to 10. She had ended her workout at 4:15 P.M.
Her mother had already told them that she’d arrived home after practice that day at 6:00 P.M. Calm’s Point College was only fifteen minutes by subway from the Annunziato house. That left an hour and a half of unaccountable time. There was nothing in the dead girl’s appointment calendar that gave any clue as to how she had spent that hour and a half. Presumably, she had showered at school and changed back into street clothes. That narrowed the gap to an hour. Had she gone to the school library? Had she stopped to chat with friends? Or had she encountered the man who’d later killed her?
Her appointment calendar for Thursday, October 13, read: