“Mrs. Thayer preferred it that way. She said she wanted to handle it herself.”
“Did she say why?”
“She preferred it that way, that’s all. In fact, she was going to serve him by publication, once she got to Nevada and started the proceedings.”
“Why would she want to do that?”
“Well, it’s not unusual, you know.” He shrugged. “She simply wanted to wait until next month. Considering the fact of the other man, I hardly think…”
“Next month when?” Hawes asked.
“The end of the month sometime.” Patterson tried hard to keep his hands clenched in his lap, but lost the battle. His fingers went up to his mouth, he stroked the stretch of barren flesh, seemed annoyed with himself, and immediately put his hands in his pockets.
“But she was definitely going to Reno next month, is that right?” Carella said.
“Yes.” Patterson paused and added reflectively, “I saw her several times. I gave her good advice, too. I don’t suppose anyone’ll pay me for my work now.”
“Doesn’t the will say something about settling debts and paying funeral expenses?” Carella said.
“Why, yes,” Patterson answered. “Yes, it does. I suppose I could submit a bill to Mr. Thayer, but…” His eyes clouded. “There’s a moral issue here, isn’t there? Don’t you think there’s a moral issue?”
“How so, Mr. Patterson?”
“Well, I am his lawyer, too. He might not understand why I withheld information of the pending divorce. It’s touchy.” He paused. “But I did put in all that work. Do you think I should submit a bill?”
“That’s up to you, Mr. Patterson.” Carella thought for a moment and then said,
“Would you remember when she planned to leave, exactly?”
“I don’t remember,” Patterson said. “If I were sure Mr. Thayer wouldn’t get upset, I would submit a bill. Really, I would. After all, I have office expenses, too, and I did give her a lot of my time.”
“Please try to remember, Mr. Patterson.”
“What?”
“When she was planning to leave for Reno.”
“Oh, I’m not sure. The fifteenth, the twentieth, something like that.”
“Was it the fifteenth?”
“It could have been. Is the fifteenth a Tuesday? I remember she said it would be Tuesday.”
Carella took a small celluloid calendar from his wallet. “No,” he said, “the fifteenth is a Monday.”
“Well, there was something about the weekend interfering, I don’t remember exactly what it was. But she said Tuesday, that I remember for certain. Is the twentieth a Tuesday?”
“No, the twentieth is a Saturday. Would she have said Tuesday, the sixteenth?”
“Yes, she might have.”
“Would there have been any reason for this? Was she waiting for you to prepare papers or anything?”
“No, that would all be handled by her counsel in Reno.”
“Then leaving on the sixteenth was her idea?”
“Yes. But you know, local lawyers don’t usually prepare the papers in an out-of-state divorce case. So this wasn’t…”
“What?”
“I did a lot of work even if it didn’t involve the preparation of any legal papers.”
“What did you mean about a weekend interfering, Mr. Patterson?” Hawes asked.
“Oh, she said something about having to wait until Monday.”
“I thought you said Tuesday.”
“Yes, she was leaving on Tuesday, but apparently there was something to be done on Monday before she left. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific, but it was only a passing reference, and rather vague, as if she were thinking aloud. But she was leaving on the sixteenth, I’m fairly certain about that. And naturally, I put all of my time at her disposal.”
“Mr. Patterson,” Carella said, “you don’t have to convince us.”
“Huh?”
“That you put in a lot of hard work.”
Patterson immediately stroked his upper lip, certain that no one in the world would have dared to talk to him that way if he were still wearing his mustache. “I wasn’t trying to convince anyone,” he said, miffed but trying hard not to show it. “I did do the work, and I will submit a bill.” He nodded vigorously, in agreement with himself. “I hardly think it should upset Mr. Thayer. The facts of his wife’s indiscretion were all over the newspapers, anyway.”
“Mr. Patterson, what do you think of that suicide note?” Hawes asked.
Patterson shrugged. “The one they ran in the newspapers? Sensationalism.”
“Yes, but did it seem consistent with what Mrs. Thayer was planning?”
“That’s a leading question,” Patterson said. “Of course not. Why would she kill herself after going through the trouble of arranging for a divorce? Assuming Barlow was the man she planned to marry…”
“You still seem in doubt,” Carella said.
“I’m merely exploring the possibilities. If there were yet another man…”
“Mr. Patterson,” Carella said, “the existing possibilities are confusing enough. I don’t think we have to go looking for more trouble than we already have.”
Patterson smiled thinly and said, “I thought the police were concerned with investigating every possibility. Especially in an apparent suicide that stinks of homicide.”
“You do believe it was a homicide?”
“Don’t you?” Patterson said.
Carella smiled and answered, “We’re investigating every possibility, Mr. Patterson.”
* * * *
There are many many possibilities to investigate when you happen to run the police lab in a large city. Detective Lieutenant Sam Grossman ran the laboratory at Headquarters downtown on High Street, and he would have been a very busy fellow even if the 87th didn’t occasionally drop in with a case or two. Grossman didn’t mind being busy. He was fond of repeating an old Gypsy proverb that said something about idle hands being the devil’s something-or-other, and he certainly didn’t want his hands to become idle and the devil’s something-or-other. There were times, however, when he wished he had six or seven hands rather than the customary allotment. It would have been different, perhaps, if Grossman were a slob. Slobs can handle any number of jobs at the same time, dispatching each and every one with equal facility, letting the chips fall where they may, as another old Gypsy proverb states. But Grossman was a conscientious cop and a fastidious scientist, and he was firmly rooted in the belief that the police laboratory had been devised to help the working stiffs who were out there trying to solve crimes. He took a salary from the city, and he believed that the only way to earn that salary was to do his job as efficiently and effectively as he knew how.