"Yeah." Same dead voice.
"Did she tell you anything about these people?"
"Everything she could remember. Some of them she only saw once or twice."
"Anybody jump out at you?"
"Nobody I could see."
"Okay," Carella said, and sighed. "Let's get started."
They took her list down the hall to the Clerical Office and ran off a copy on the Xerox machine, her handwriting duplicated now, the names seeming to multiply although the list was still only as long as it had been. Carella started with the Isola directory, Willis with the one for Calm's Point. They might have been accountants hunched over ledgers. They worked in silence, side by side, Willis's gloom almost sentient, jotting down addresses and telephone numbers wherever they found them, putting a check mark beside any name for which no number was published, intending to get those numbers later from the telephone company. It took them almost an hour to match the list of men's names with a partial list of addresses and telephone numbers from all five city directories. The list of women's names was shorter; it took them only forty minutes to come up with a second partial matching of names with addresses and telephone numbers.
It was almost six o'clock when they tackled the list of professionals.
They had come halfway down it when Carella said, "We did this one, didn't we?"
"What?" Willis said. Preoccupied, going down his own list like an automaton, eyes blank.
"This one."
"Which one?"
"Right here."
Willis looked at the name. "Oh," he said, and nodded. "Her dentist."
"Are you sure? Isn't he on the other…?"
"Used to be, anyway. She…"
"But didn't I see his name on the other list?" Carella said, and turned back to the first page, and began running his finger down it. "Sure," he said, "here it is, Ronald Ellsworth. One of the guys she dated." He looked at the name again. "Ellsworth," he said, and frowned. "Didn't we…?" He frow'ned again. "Wasn't he…?" And suddenly he looked up sharply, and turned to Willis, and said, "Hal…"
"What've you got?" Willis said at once.
"He was McKennon's dentist," Carella said, and immediately shoved back his chair and got to his feet. "Where the hell's that file?" he said, coming around the desk and moving swiftly toward the filing cabinets. "Did she really date him? Or is that a mistake? His name on the other list?"
"No, she dated him for a month or so."
Carella threw open the file drawer, yanked the McKennon folder, came back to the desk, and began leafing through it. "Here," he said. "I talked to Ellsworth after we caught the Hollander case. Here's the report. April second. I talked to him in his apartment, here's the address."
The two men looked at each other.
"Get on the phone to Marilyn," Carella said, "find out when she dated him, when she stopped dating him, and why she stopped. Where's that dental chart Blaney sent over?"
Willis was already dialing Marilyn's number. Carella took a quick look at McKennon's dental chart, and then began dialing the Medical Examiner's Office.
"Marilyn," Willis said into the phone, "it's me. Tell me about this guy Ellsworth."
"Hello, yes," Carella said into his phone. "Paul Blaney, please."
"When was that?" Willis said. "Uh-huh. For how long? Uh-huh. And why'd you stop seeing him?"
"Paul," Carella said, "this is Steve Carella. I've got some questions on the McKennon dental chart."
They did not get to Ellsworth's apartment on Front Street until seven-thirty that night. That was because they had to go all the way downtown first. Ellsworth and his wife were having dinner when they arrived. Mrs. Ellsworth—he introduced her as Claire—was a pleasant-looking woman in her late thirties, Carella guessed, with remarkably beautiful dark brown eyes.
"We were just about to have coffee," she said. "Won't you join us?"
"Thanks, no," Carella said, "there are just a few questions we'd like to ask your husband."
"Well, sit down anyway," she said.
"Privately," Carella said, watching Ellsworth's face. Not a flicker there. Mrs. Ellsworth seemed puzzled for a moment. She looked at her husband, looked back at Carella, and then said, "Well, I'll leave you then." She looked at her husband yet another time, and then went into a room Carella guessed was the bedroom. A moment later, he heard a television set going.
"So," Ellsworth said, "are you making any progress?"
He was wearing blue jeans and a loose-fitting sweater, the sleeves shoved up on his forearms. The sweater matched his blue eyes. Those eyes were smiling behind his dark-rimmed glasses. There was a smile on the mouth below his sandy brown mustache. He could have been announcing to a patient that he'd found no cavities.
"Dr. Ellsworth," Carella said, opening his notebook, "when I was here on the second of April, I asked you some questions…"
"Yes?" Ellsworth said.
"I asked you if Mr. McKennon had ever mentioned any of the following names to you: Marilyn Hollis, Nelson Riley, Charles Endicott and Basil Hollander. You told me he had not."
"That's right," Ellsworth said.
"That is what you told me, isn't it?"
"If that's what you have in your notes…"
"Yes, that's what I have in my notes," Carella said, and snapped the book shut. "Dr. Ellsworth, was Marilyn Hollis ever a patient of yours?"
"Marilyn… what was the last name again?"
"Hollis. H-O-L-L-I-S."
"No, I don't believe so."
"Wasn't she a patient of yours from December of last year through the early part of February this year?"
"Not to my recollection."
"Wasn't she, in fact, the person who recommended you to Jerome McKennon?"
"I don't believe Mr. McKennon came to me on anyone's recommendation," Ellsworth said.
Toughing it out, Carella thought. We've got him cold, and he's toughing it out.
"Dr. Ellsworth," Willis said, "isn't it true that in December of last year, while Marilyn Hollis was still your patient, you asked her out…"
"No, that's not true," Ellsworth said sharply and glanced toward the bedroom door.
"… and saw her a total of six times before she…"
"I didn't see her at all! What is this?" Ellsworth asked indignantly.
They always said the same thing, Carella thought. The indignant What is this?
"Dr. Ellsworth," Willis said, "we have very good reason to believe that you were seeing Marilyn Hollis socially, that in fact you were intimate with Miss Hollis, and that she ended her relationship with you in February when she learned…"
"I think I've heard just about enough of this," Ellsworth said.
Carella had also heard that one before.
"Dr. Ellsworth," he said, "I have here a search warrant granted earlier this evening by a supreme court magistrate, empowering us to search your person and the premises here as well as the premises at 257 Carrington Street, where your dental office is. Would you care to look at this warrant, Dr. Ellsworth?"
"Search? A search warrant? For what?"
"Specifically for a Colt Super .38 automatic pistol. Do you own such a gun?"
"It's in the top drawer of his dresser," Mrs. Ellsworth said.
The detectives turned at once. She was standing in the open door to the bedroom.
"You bastard," she said.
And Ellsworth broke for the front door.
Willis's gun came out of its holster.
"Freeze!" he shouted.
Ellsworth kept running.
"Stop or I'll shoot!" Willis shouted. The gun was trembling in his hand. The muzzle was leveled on the center of Ellsworth's back.
"Don't force me!" he shouted.
Ellsworth stopped dead.
He turned.