When Alex was done speaking, Hastings said, “Let’s go over a couple of things. Booker was already dead when you found him?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get inside the garage?”
“Through the side door,” Alex said. “It was open. I saw it as I pulled into the driveway behind Booker’s wagon.”
“Did you see anyone else in the vicinity?”
“No. No one.”
“Did you touch anything in the garage?”
“No.”
“Did you go inside the house?”
“No. I just… ran. I was confused and afraid; all I could think to do was to get away from there.”
“Do you have any idea who would want him dead?”
Alex shook his head.
“Or why he was murdered?”
“No. No.”
“Do you know a man named Mal Howard?”
“Howard? No, I’ve never heard that name.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. Is he the man who tried to break in here?”
“Yes. Have you left this apartment since Friday?”
“No.”
“Not even for a newspaper or groceries?”
“Not at all. I didn’t eat much and I listened to the news on television.”
“Did you call anybody at all?”
Alex looked at me again. “Just him.”
“So no one knew you were here.”
“That’s right. No one.”
“Mal Howard knew it,” Hastings said.
That got him a couple of blinks and another bewildered headshake. “I don’t know how he could have…”
“The woman who lives here — what’s her name?”
“Virginia Davis.”
“How long have you been seeing her?”
“About six months.”
“Is your relationship an open one?”
“Open one?”
“Do other people know about the two of you? Friends of yours, relatives. Or have you kept it a secret for some reason?”
“Oh, I see,” Alex said. “No, we haven’t kept it a secret. I haven’t taken Virginia to meet my family or anything like that; it’s just a casual thing — you know, a sex thing. But I’ve mentioned her to people.”
“Would you also have mentioned where she lives?”
“I might have. I don’t remember.”
“If you did, it would indicate someone you know fairly well has it in for you, wouldn’t it?”
“I guess so. But it doesn’t make sense. I don’t know why anybody would want me dead. Except Booker, and now he’s dead himself.”
“Whoever it is must want you out of the way pretty badly,” Hastings said. “What happened here this afternoon makes two attempts on your life in three days.”
“I don’t know,” Alex said again, and there was desperation in his voice now. “I just don’t know.”
Hastings ran a hand through his thick brown hair. “Do you have any idea what the word ‘Twospot’ means, Mr. Cappellani?”
That was another one out of left field for Alex, apparently, because the police had not released anything about the Twospot note to the media. He just sat there looking blank. “Twospot?”
“That’s right.”
“Is that a name or what?”
“We’re trying to find out. There was a piece of paper on the floor beside Booker’s body, with the address of your Russian Hill house and the word Twospot typed on it.”
“Twospot,” Alex repeated, and the blank look transformed into a frown. “You know, it does sound vaguely familiar.”
“In what way?”
“I’m not sure. I may have heard it once — but I don’t know where.”
“Think about it, Mr. Cappellani.”
Alex thought about it. And came up empty. He spread his hands in a helpless gesture.
On the stairs outside there were more sounds — thudding footfalls, the clatter of something bumping down the steps, a voice grumbling a warning to somebody else to watch out for his end of the stretcher. Which meant that the city ambulance had arrived. I listened to the sounds recede down the stairs to the privet hedge, and then shifted my gaze to Hastings.
“Frank,” I said, “do you think Howard might be the man who attacked Alex at the winery?”
“It’s possible,” he answered. “There’s no way of knowing for sure now.”
Alex said abruptly, “Maybe this Howard is the one who killed Booker too. Maybe somebody hired him to do it.”
“Howard killed Booker, all right. There’s not much doubt of that.”
I leaned forward. “How do you know, Frank?”
“We found his fingerprints inside the Cappellani house,” Hastings said. “And he had a gunshot wound under a bandage on his left shoulder; I checked that before I came up here. It explains the different types of blood on the floor of the garage and what happened to the missing bullet from Booker’s gun.”
Relief had slackened the muscles in Alex’s face. “Christ,” he said, “why didn’t you tell me all of that before? I’ve been half out of my head sitting here, worrying that you still suspected me—”
“You’re not off the hook yet, Mr. Cappellani,” Hastings said quietly. “Running from the scene of a murder, hiding out the way you did, doesn’t make you look particularly innocent.”
“But I told you—”
“What you told me seems plausible enough, but it doesn’t clear you of complicity in Booker’s death. Not yet.”
Alex’s eyes turned plaintive again. “Are you going to arrest me?”
“Not exactly. I am going to take you in as a material witness, for further questioning. You can call your attorney from the Hall of Justice if you’ve changed your mind about wanting one present.”
Alex had nothing to say to that. He stared down at his hands, and the ostrich look came back onto his gray face.
I said to Hastings, “Do you want me to come down to the Hall, too?”
“I don’t think so. I’ll let you know later if we need you to sign a statement.”
So the three of us got on our feet and went out of there, Hastings locking the front door after us with a key Alex gave him. When we climbed up to Greenwich Street there were twenty or thirty people milling around, gawking, and half a dozen reporters and mobile camera crews from the local television stations. Alex covered his face with one arm as Hastings led him away to a parked police car. Most of the media people followed them, chattering questions and working their cameras, but a couple of them decided to come after me. I managed to get to my car before they reached me and locked myself inside. I started the engine, pulled away immediately through the crowd.
And damned if one of the cameramen didn’t stand in the middle of the street and film me all the way down to the corner and around it out of sight.
14
I drove straight home to my flat.
On the way the attempted break-in by Mal Howard, Howard’s apparent death, the things Alex Cappellani had told me, and then Hastings, kept replaying in my head. Along with the string of questions centering on this whole business: Who wanted Alex dead, and why? Why hadn’t his attacker killed him outright at the winery on Thursday night, instead of knocking him unconscious and trying to drag him off somewhere else? Why had Booker been killed? How and why had Howard been recruited as triggerman? What did Twospot mean? Was the Cappellani Winery a factor, or did the motive or motives behind the murder of Booker and the two attempts on Alex have to do with something else entirely?
Too many questions, no answers at all that I could see. Well, Hastings was in the best position now to get to the bottom of it, either through a break in further questioning of Alex and the others involved, or through police technology and legwork. And when the break came I’d have my answers. Meanwhile, there was not much point in brooding about the case. Now, finally, I was out of it, wasn’t I?