Part 26 (1/2)

'We know who killed her.'

'Chance?' He nodded. 'I thought his alibi looked pretty good.'

'Oh, it's gilt-edged. It's bottled in bond. So what? He still could have done it. The people he says he was with are people who would lie for him.'

'You think they were lying?'

'No, but I wouldn't swear they weren't. Anyway, he could have hired it. We already talked about that.'

'Right.'

'If he did it he's clear. We're not going to be able to put a dent in that alibi. If he hired it we're not gonna find out who he hired. Unless we get lucky. That happens sometimes, you know. Things fall in your lap. One guy says something in a gin joint and somebody with a grudge pa.s.ses it on, and all of a sudden we know something we didn't know before. But even if that happens, we'll be a long way from putting a case together. Meanwhile, we don't figure to kill ourselves over it.'

What he was saying was no surprise but there was something deadening about the words. I picked up my ginger ale and looked at it.

He said, 'Half the job is knowing the odds. Working the cases where you got a chance, letting the others flap in the breeze. You know the murder rate in this town?'

'I know it keeps going higher.'

'Tell me about it. It's up every year. All crimes are up every year, except we're starting to get a statistical drop in some of the less serious ones because people aren't bothering to report them. Like my sister's burglary. You got mugged coming home and all that happened was he took your money? Well, s.h.i.+t, why make a federal case out of it, right? Be grateful you're alive. Go home and say a prayer of thanks.'

'With Kim Dakkinen - '

'Screw Kim Dakkinen,' he said. 'Some dumb little b.i.t.c.h comes fifteen hundred miles to peddle her a.s.s and give the money to a n.i.g.g.e.r pimp, who cares if somebody chopped her up? I mean why didn't she stay in f.u.c.king Minnesota?'

'Wisconsin.'

'I meant Wisconsin. Most of 'em come from Minnesota.'

'I know.'

'The murder rate used to be around a thousand a year. Three a day in the five boroughs. That always seemed high.'

'High enough.'

'It's just about double that now.' He leaned forward. 'But that's nothing, Matt. Most homicides are husband-wife things, or two friends drinking together and one of 'em shoots the other and doesn't even remember it the next day. That rate never changes. It's the same as it always was. What's changed are stranger murders, where the killer and the victim don't know each other. That's the rate that shows you how dangerous it is to live somewhere. If you just take the stranger murders, if you throw out the other cases and put the stranger murders on a graph, the line goes up like a rocket.'

'There was a guy in Queens yesterday with a bow and arrow,' I said, 'and the guy next door shot him with a.38.'

'I read about that. Something about a dog s.h.i.+tting on the wrong lawn?'

'Something like that.'

'Well, that wouldn't be on the chart. That's two guys who knew each other.'

'Right.'

'But it's all part of the same thing. People keep killing each other. They don't even stop and think, they just go ahead and do it. You been off the force what, a couple years now? I'll tell you this much. It's a lot worse than you remember.'

'I believe you.'