“Then where’d all that booze go to?” Grossman said. “And something else, Steve. Where are the glasses?”
“I don’t know. Where are they?”
“In the kitchen sink. Washed very nicely. Two glasses sitting in the sink all sparkling clean. Funny?”
“Very funny,” Carella said. “If you’ve turned on the gas and are trying to get drunk, why get out of bed to wash the glasses?”
“Well, they had to get out of bed anyway, didn’t they? To put on their clothes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look, Steve, the whole thing smells of a love nest, doesn’t it? We checked their garments for seminal stains, and there weren’t any. So they must have been naked if they…”
“They didn’t,” Carella said.
“How do you know?”
“Autopsy report. No signs of intercourse.”
“Mmmmm,” Grossman said. “Then what were they doing with most of their clothes off?”
“Do you want an educated guess?”
“Shoot.”
“They probably planned to go out in a blaze of romantic glory. They got partially undressed, turned on the gas, and then were overcome before anything could happen. That’s my guess.”
“It doesn’t sound very educated to me,” Grossman said.
“All right, then,” Carella said, “they were exhibitionists. They wanted their pictures in the paper without clothes on.”
“That not only sounds uneducated, it sounds positively ignorant.”
“Give me a better guess.”
“A third person in that apartment,” Grossman said. “That’s educated, huh?”
“That’s highly educated,” Grossman said “Considering the fact that three glasses were used.”
“What?”
“Three glasses.”
“You said two a minute ago.”
“I said two in the sink. But we went through the cupboard over the sink, and we checked the glassware there, just cause we had nothing else to do, you understand. Most of them were shattered by the blast, but…”
“Yeah, yeah, go ahead.”
“Light film of dust on all the glasses but one. This one had been recently washed, and then dried with a dish towel we found on a rack under the sink. The lint on the glass compared positive. What do you think?”
“They could have used three glasses, Sam.”
“Sure. Then why did they leave two in the sink and put the third one back in the cupboard?”
“I don’t know.”
“A third person,” Grossman said. “In fact, when we consider the last, and, I must admit, very very peculiar phenomenon, I’m almost convinced the third person is much more than just an educated guess.”
“What’s the phenomenon, Sam?”
“No latent impressions in the room.”
“What do you mean?”
“No prints.”
“Of a third person, do you mean?”
“Of anybody, I mean.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m telling you,” Grossman said. “Not a fingerprint on anything. Not on the glasses, not on the bottles, not on the typewriter, not even on their shoes, Steve. Now how the hell do you type a suicide note and not leave prints all over the keys? How do you take off a pair of shoes-where there’s a good waxy surface that can pick up some beauties-and not leave some kind of an impression? How do you pour yourself a drink, and not leave at least a palm print on the bottle? Uh-uh, Steve, it stinks to high heaven.”
“What’s your guess?”
“My guess is somebody went around that room and wiped off every surface, every article that anybody-especially himself-had touched.”
“A man?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You said himself.“
“Poetic license. It could have been man, woman, or trained chimpanzee, for all I know. I just finished telling you there’s nothing in that apartment, nothing. And that’s why it stinks. Whoever wiped up the place must have read a lot of stories about how we track down dangerous gunmen because they left behind a telltale print.”
“We won’t tell them the truth, huh?”
“No, let ‘em guess.” Grossman paused. “What do you think?”
“Must have been an orgy,” Carella said, smiling.
“You serious?”
“Booze, a naked broad-maybe two naked broads, for all we know. What else could it have been?”
“It could have been somebody who found them in bed together, clobbered them, and then set up the joint to look like a suicide.”
“Not a mark on either one of them, Sam.”
“Well, I’m just telling you what I think. I think there was a third party in that room. Who, or why, you’ll have to figure out for yourself.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. How’s the wife and kids?”
“Fine, Sam…”
“Mmmm?”
“Sam, not any prints? Not, a single print?”
“Nothing.”
Carella thought for a moment and then said, “They could have wiped the place themselves.”
“Why?” Grossman asked.
“Neat. Just as you said. Note neatly typed, clothes neatly stacked, shoes neatly placed. Maybe they were very neat people.”
“Sure. So they went around dusting the place before they took the pipe.”
“Sure.”
“Sure,” Grossman said. “Would you do that?”
“I’m not neat,” Carella said.
* * * *
7
The combination of Bert Kling and Michael Thayer was a curiously trying one. Hawes liked Kling a hell of a lot, or at least he had liked the Bert Kling he’d known until last year; the new Bert Kling was someone he didn’t know at all. Being with him for any length of time was a strange and frustrating experience. This was surely Bert Kling, the same clean young looks, the blond hair, the same voice. You saw him coming into the squadroom or walking down the street, and you wanted to go up to him with your hand extended and say, “Hi, there, Bert, how are you?” You wanted to crack jokes with him, or go over the details of a perplexing case. You wanted to sit with him and have a cup of coffee on days when it was raining outside the squadroom. You wanted to like this guy who was wearing the face and body of Bert Kling, you wanted to tell him he was your friend, you wanted to say, “Hey, Bert, let’s get drunk together tonight.” You wanted to do all these things and say all these things because the face was familiar, the walk was familiar, the voice was familiar-and then something stopped you dead in your tracks, and you had the feeling that you were only looking at a plastic mold of Bert Kling, only talking to the recorded voice of Bert Kling, that something inside this shell had gone dead, and you knew what the something was, of course, you knew that Claire Townsend had been murdered.