Part 22 (1/2)

”Yes, sir.”

”Interview that old guy at the front desk. Someone saw the killer come in.”

”Yes, sir.”

”Wowie wowie wow,” says Dotseth, talking through a small yawn. ”A full investigation. At-what are we? Six months to go? Color me impressed.”

”It's the kid,” says Culverson, and since he's down on his knees now, hunting the rug for the spent casing, it takes me a second to realize he means me. ”He's keeping us honest.”

I'm watching a silent movie in my head, a woman looking for a file, slim fingers walking across the tabs, a sudden click of a door opening behind her. She turns-her eyes widen-bam!

”Skip the manager, Officer McConnell. The guy who called this in. I'll talk to him.” Culverson flips searchingly through his book.

”Gompers,” I say.

”Gompers, right,” he says. ”You'll join me?”

”Yeah.” I stop, grit my teeth. ”No.”

”Palace?”

I feel bad. A kind of pressure, a horror, is inflating itself in my lungs, like I swallowed a balloon full of something, some kind of gas, a poison. My heart is slamming repeatedly against my ribcage, like a desperate prisoner hurling himself rhythmically against the concrete door of his cell.

”No, thank you.”

”You all right there, son?” Dotseth takes a step back from me, like I may vomit on his shoes. McConnell has scooted behind Naomi's body, she's running her fingers along the wall.

”You gotta-” I drag a hand across my forehead, discover that it's slick and clammy. My wounded eye socket is throbbing. ”Ask Gompers about the files in this drawer.”

”Of course,” says Culverson.

”We need copies of everything that would have been in that drawer.”

”Sure.”

”We need to know what's missing.”

”Hey, look,” says McConnell. She's got the bullet. She pries it from the wall behind Naomi's skull, and I turn and flee. I stumble down the hallway, find the stairwell, and then I take the stairs two at a time, then three, hurling downward, and I kick open the door, spilling into the lobby, out onto the sidewalk, heaving breaths.

Bam!

All of this, all of it, what did I think? You go into this hall of mirrors, you chase these clues-a belt, a note, a corpse, a bruise, a file-one thing and then the next, it's this giddy game that you enter into, and you just stay down there, in the hall of mirrors, forever. I'm sitting up here at the counter because I couldn't face my usual booth, where I sat with Naomi Eddes over lunch and she told me about Peter Zell's secrets, his addiction, his grim fleeting joking fantasy about killing himself in the Main Street McDonald's.

The music drifting from the kitchen of the Somerset is nothing I recognize, and it is not to my taste. Pounding and electronic, keyboard-driven, a lot of shrill beeps and whistles and hoots.

My notebooks are lined up in front of me, six pale-blue rectangles in a neat row like tarot cards. I've been staring at their covers for an hour, not interested, unable to open them and read the history of my failure. But I can't help it, the thoughts keep coming, one fact after another shuffling across my brain, like grim refugees trudging along with their packs.

Peter Zell was not a suicide. He was murdered. Fenton confirmed it.

Naomi Eddes was murdered, too. Shot through the head while looking for insurance files, the files that we talked about together last night.

She sat at the foot of my bed before she left; she was going to tell me something and then she stopped herself and went home.

He told her about the McDonald's: if he was going to kill himself, that's where he would do it. But he'd told his sister the same thing. Who knows who else?

Sixty-milligram bottles of MS Contin, in a bag, in a doghouse.

I'm dimly aware of a cup of coffee growing cold in front of me on the counter, dimly aware of the television floating above me, bolted high on a metal arm. A newsman stands in front of some kind of palace, speaking in agitated tones about ”a minor confrontation beginning to a.s.sume the dimensions of a crisis.”

Peter Zell and J. T. Toussaint, Detective Andreas, Naomi Eddes.

”All right, honey,” says Ruth-Ann, ap.r.o.n, order pad, one fist around the handle of a coffeepot.

”What's this music?” I say. ”Where's Maurice?”

”He quit,” she says. ”You look terrible.”

”I know. More coffee, please.”

And then, too, there is my baby sister. Missing, possibly dead, possibly in jail. Another catastrophe I failed to predict or prevent.

The television now shows jerky footage of a line of South Asian men behind a table, green military uniforms with gold epaulets, one of them speaking sternly into a microphone. A guy two stools down from me makes an agitated harumph. I take him in, a soft middle-aged man in a Harley jacket, a thick mustache and beard; he says, ”You mind?” I shrug, and he climbs up onto the counter, balances awkwardly on his knees to change the channel.

My phone is s.h.i.+vering.

Culverson.

”Hey, Detective.”

”How you feeling, Henry?”

”Yeah,” I say. ”I'm all right.”

The Pakistanis on the TV are gone, replaced by a pitchman, grinning obscenely before a pyramid of canned food.

Culverson runs through what he's got so far. Theodore Gompers, in his office with his bottle, heard a shot fired at around 2:15, but by his own admission he was pretty drunk, and it took him several minutes to set out in search of the noise, and then several minutes more to locate the narrow storeroom, where he found Naomi's body and called the police at 2:26.

”What about the rest of the staff?”

”It was just Gompers in there when it happened. He's got three other employees at present, and they were all out, enjoying a long lunch at the Barley House.”

”Bad luck.”

”Yeah.”