Mills was uncharacteristically official about getting Bruner’s account records.
“We’d need some kind of order,” he said. “They have the same legal protection as real bank records would. We can’t just-”
“How long would it take to get them?”
Mills sighed. “About an hour.”
But Bruner’s account was no different from his passbook, as orderly as his room had been. Connolly scanned the even columns, month after month of regular deposits, with no significant withdrawals. When he compared them to the payroll records, he found himself staring at an unrevealing window into Bruner’s life. Once he deducted the subsidized rent from his salary, he was left with the account deposit and the same amount of pocket money each time.
“Look at this,” he said to Mills. “Did he have any expenses?”
“Well, Karl was close with a dollar. He never grabbed a check if he could help it.”
“But this goes all the way back to ‘forty-four. At the most, a ten-dollar variance here and there.”
“Clothes, probably,” Mills said.
“What about his car? That can get pretty extravagant these days.”
“He fiddled that.”
“How fiddled?”
“Whenever he needed gas, he’d sign up for escort duty-you know, taking the scientists around-and he’d top up from the motor pool supply. Repairs, same thing. He was like that. What exactly are you looking for, anyway?”
“Three two-hundred-dollar withdrawals in the last six months.”
Mills whistled. “You’re kidding. Where did Karl get that kind of money?”
“That’s what I want to know. According to these, he saved everything. So where did he get the extra money? He hasn’t touched this account in over a year.”
“Maybe he had it from before.”
“Maybe. Then why not bank it?”
“The Europeans are funny that way. Some of them don’t trust banks at all. They just stash the money or put it into gold or something they can carry. You know, refugee stuff. Maybe he brought something over with him and then sold it.”
“No. Why do that and turn around and buy something else?”
“What did he buy?”
“Turquoise jewelry.”
“Karl?”
“That’s what I thought.”
Mills was quiet for a minute. “Then he must have been trying to hide it.”
“How do you mean?”
“Keep it off the books. Put it somewhere you couldn’t trace it. You know, sew it in your jacket lining to cross the border, that kind of stuff.”
“You’ve been seeing too many movies,” Connolly said.
“Maybe, but they did it. They weren’t allowed to take anything out. Professor Weber’s wife had her earrings ripped out on the train.”
Connolly winced. Another European story.
“Okay, but where did he get it? He didn’t deposit it, but somebody must have taken it out. Tell you what, let’s have a look at all the records.”
“Are you kidding? Do you know how many people we have up here?”
“Over four thousand. But not all of them have accounts, and we can eliminate the crews and the enlisted men-in fact, anyone making less than two thousand dollars a year. They wouldn’t have that kind of money lying around. That ought to bring it down to a few hundred at most.”
“This will take weeks.”
“Then the sooner you get started, the better.”
“I get started?”
“We both get started. Six hundred bucks shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
“Assuming it’s someone with an account. Assuming they took the money out. Assuming it’s someone up here.”
“Assuming all that.”
“I didn’t know we were assuming it was someone on the Hill,” Mills said pointedly.
“We’re not. We’re looking for six hundred dollars, and this is somewhere to start. You can eliminate all the women, too.”
Mills looked up at him. “So that’s where you’re going. You think Karl would do that?”
“What would have happened to him if he’d been exposed as homosexual?”
“He’d have been discharged.”
“So he’d want to keep it very quiet then, wouldn’t he? Anyone like him would. He’d understand that. He knew what that felt like. What if he wasn’t the only one up here who needed to keep things quiet? What if he thought that might be-well, an opportunity. Is that so farfetched?”
Mills nodded. “Not very nice, but not farfetched, I guess. So you think Karl was putting the bite on someone?”
“Let’s just say he sounds capable of it. For all I know, the money was a present. Maybe he had a boyfriend. Maybe there’s no connection at all. But we have a general who’d rather not know, a director who doesn’t want to know, and a police force that wouldn’t know if you showed them ‘cause they’re too busy pretending everyone’s Buster Crabbe. So we’d better start somewhere. You want to get the records?”
“You’re going to need Oppie’s okay on this. Getting Karl’s account is one thing, but my friend Eddie over there isn’t going to turn the whole goddamn project over. That’s pretty personal stuff you’re talking about. People aren’t going to like us sniffing around their money. Hell, I don’t like it.”
“Don’t tell them, then. You don’t make enough to be so touchy,” Connolly said, smiling.
“I just mean it’s personal, that’s all.”
Suddenly the windows shook as the sound of a blast came up from the west.
“What the hell was that?”
“Kisty’s group. Explosives. They use some of the lower canyons around the plateau for testing.” He grinned as another blast sounded in the distance. “You get used to it.”
“How do you keep bombs a secret when you keep shooting them off?”
“These are just the triggers. And how do you test them if you don’t explode them? They used to do it at night, but everybody complained. No sleep as far away as Santa Fe, or so they said. I don’t know who we think we’re fooling.”
“All of the people all of the time.”
“Yeah.” Another explosion went off as Mills turned to go. “Now for the quiet life of a bank examiner.”
The records, when they finally arrived with Oppie’s warning to keep the audit secret, proved more absorbing than Connolly expected. He had imagined tracing tedious columns of numbers, but instead the whole complexity of daily life at Los Alamos seemed to lie there undeciphered, spread across their desks like messages in code. To understand the savings, he needed Mills to explain the expenses. Paychecks were cashed at the commissary, supplies purchased at the PX. Some expenses were fixed: rents pegged to annual salaries-$29 a month at $2100, $34 at $3400, etc.; utilities to space-$9.65 for a three-room McKee. But beyond that, there was the sheer variety of financial lives-the thrifty savers, the spenders borrowing down, the hoarders who must have kept their cash, since none of it appeared in the books. He wondered why auditors were considered boring. Maybe they were simply hypnotized by the stories behind their numbers. He was surprised, though, to see how low the amounts were. They might be making history on the Hill, but no one was making much money. Two hundred dollars should leap off the page. But so far it hadn’t.
The problem with the decoding process, for all its fascination, was that it could take weeks. They needed a smaller test group, like scientists who worked down the table of elements to narrow the possibilities. It was Mills who came up with the morning tagging system, and for the next few days they followed the same routine. Connolly would telephone Holliday to see if the police were any further along, exchanging disappointment over coffee, then sit down with Mills for the quick first pass. Files with regular deposits were immediately put on the return pile. Variations under a hundred dollars were given a quick glance, then returned as well. Anything else was tagged for the afternoon, when they could piece together the file with more care, no longer as overwhelmed by the size of the pile to come. Now it was the exception pile that grew instead, so that they were working out of alphabetical sequence, the names often not even noticed as they looked at the number patterns. A choice few, where the numbers seemed puzzling, went on to the small pile for further investigation. But the Hill’s privacy, thought Connolly, was safe. The names were meaningless to him.
It was only when he examined Emma’s husband’s account that he felt Mills might have been right-this was personal. He felt prurient, like a burglar going through drawers. There was nothing odd about the account-erratic deposits, but marginal amounts-yet he stared at the paper as if he were staring into the marriage itself. Did Emma handle the money? Or did he dole out allowances? Why no deposit one month-a celebration dinner? A weekend in Albuquerque? Did they fight? Did she use up her clothes coupons or wait until she had enough for a splurge? But the paper, typed numbers on army buff, in the end told him nothing. He touched it as if he could coax it to reveal something, but the numbers were simply numbers and the lives were somewhere else. The audit suddenly seemed foolish. What did he expect any of these accounts to reveal? He was looking at the financial life of the Hill, but the people were as unknown as ever. The numbers kept their secrets. Why expect a connection to Bruner anywhere? Here was a file to which he could attach a face, and it told him nothing that mattered. How often did they sleep together? What was it like? Why, for that matter, should he care?
“Got something?” Mills said, looking up.
“No,” Connolly said. “My mind was just drifting.” He put the file on the stack of discards before Mills could see the name and lit a cigarette. “You know, maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way.”
“I told you that two days ago.”
“No, I mean, it’s not what’s in here that’s interesting, it’s what isn’t here.”
Mills looked at him oddly.
Connolly smiled. “I guess I’m not making much sense.”
“No, I was just thinking. Bruner used to say that. ‘It’s what isn’t here.’ Just like that. I remember him saying it.”
Connolly stared at him, disconcerted. They couldn’t possibly have been talking about the same thing. What had Bruner meant?
“When?” he asked.
Mills thought for a minute. “Well, that’s the funny thing. It was just like this, when he was going through the files.”
“These?”
“No, security clearance. Karl liked to go through the files. Of course, it was part of his job, but he said it was a great way to get to know people. So he’d go over them. And when I’d say, ‘You must know everything in there,’ he’d say, ‘It’s what isn’t here.’ Just the way you did.”
Connolly was silent. “Where do you keep them?” he said finally.
“In a safe over in T-1. Oh, no.”
“But he removed them. So there must be a log?”
Mills nodded.
“Let’s see who he checked out over the past six months-no, nine months.”
“Why not a year, just to play it safe?”
“Okay.”
“I was being funny.”
“Be convenient if we found something that matched up with one of our exception files here, wouldn’t it?” Connolly said, patting them.
“A miracle.”
“Anyway, it’s something.”
“Mike, it’s a phrase. It was just something to say. This isn’t getting us anywhere.”
“Maybe. But he was interested in them. The least we can do is look at what interested him. Maybe it’ll tell us something about him.”
“Want me to get a forklift or bring them over one by one?”
“How about just the log for now? Let’s see if he wanted to get to know anybody real well.”
But Bruner had often been assigned to do vetting-he was one of several security officers who interviewed new employees and did updates on the others-so his initials were all over the log. Even using the same process of elimination they’d fixed on for the bank accounts, they were facing a long list.
“Let’s focus on the repeats,” Connolly said. “Anyone he was particularly interested in. There has to be something.” He looked up to find Mills staring at him. “What?”
“Nothing,” Mills said, looking away. “What if he didn’t log them out?”
“Could he do that?”
“He was security. He was supposed to take files. Nobody’s going to check on him.”
Connolly considered for a minute. “No, that’s not like him.”
“How do you know? You never knew him.”
“I live in his room. He’d log out.”
“In other words, he’d commit a criminal act, but he’d never break the rules.”
“You’d be surprised. I’ve known guys run somebody through with a knife and then wipe it clean because they’re naturally neat.”
“He wasn’t like that,” Mills said quietly, scraping his chair as he stood up.
“Something bothering you?”
“Let’s get some air. I can’t think straight, and I know you’re not.”
Surprised, Connolly followed him out, waiting until they were on the dusty street before he said anything. Mills leaned against a rough utility pole, the bald spot on his head shining in the afternoon light.
“So?”
“Look, I’m just a lawyer, not some hot-shot reporter. Maybe this is just going too fast for me. First I’m thinking you don’t know what you’re looking for. Now you already know what you want to find. Is there something I’m missing here?”
“Relax. You’re ahead of me.”
“Am I? A few days ago, Karl was the victim. Then he’s queer and now he’s blackmailing somebody. And you’re all hot to get the story. It’s not-right. Look, I worked with this guy. He wasn’t my favorite drinking buddy, but he was all right. What are we trying to prove, anyway? That there’s a murderer walking around up here?” He gestured toward the street, the usual mix of trucks and jeeps churning dust, technicians walking between buildings.
“Stranger things have happened.”
“I don’t believe it. The police don’t believe it. So what makes you so sure?”
“Not a goddamn thing. But there’s something wrong with the police story. They’ve got Karl wrong.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s careless. Did he strike you as the kind of guy who’d go in for pickups? In workboots?”
Mills looked at him, puzzled. “Why workboots?”
“Police found prints. That seem right to you? Wouldn’t you say he was more the fastidious type?”
“I guess.” Mills frowned, then looked away toward the old school buildings as if he’d pick some answer out of the air. “I might have said that once. Now? I don’t know.” He shrugged. “All that time, and it turns out I didn’t know the first thing about him. All that time. He was someone else all along.”
“Tell me about him, then. Help me with this, Mills-don’t fold on me. I need to know what he was like.”
“I thought you’d already decided that.”
“Does it make sense to you that someone who survived two prison camps would be careless with strangers?”
“Well, you know what they say-a stiff prick has a mind of its own.”
Connolly ignored him. “Does it make sense?”
“No, but none of it does. Okay, so he wasn’t the pickup type. He didn’t seem to be. But he was there. He wasn’t alone. So who was it?”
“I think he met somebody.”
Mills stared at him again. “You mean somebody from up here.”
“Maybe.”
“Then why go to Santa Fe?”
“I don’t know.” Connolly thought for a minute. “You said he liked surveillance detail. Was he covering someone that day?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Sure. It was his day off. You can check the sign-up sheet. I remember because we were shorthanded that weekend and I asked him, but he begged off.”
“What happens when you’re shorthanded?”
Mills shrugged.
“They go without cover?”
“Not the priority list. Oppenheimer, Fermi-there’s a group that always have a bodyguard or they don’t leave the project. The others, we do spot covers. The whole point is that they don’t know when they’re covered, so they have to assume they are. It works all right. Nobody’s been kidnapped yet.”
“Congratulations.”
“Or had any trouble. They’re not the kind. They go on hikes, you know? Picnics. Family stuff. Once in a while a dinner at La Fonda. You don’t seriously think it was one of the scientists.”
“Why not? That would explain the money. They’re the only ones here making more than six grand a year. Two hundred bucks would be a big piece of change for anyone else.”
“No,” Mills said, shaking his head. “It’s ridiculous. They’re professors. Pointy-heads. Half the time they’re up there somewhere in the clouds anyway, not down here with the rest of us. They’re not-” He searched for a word. “Violent. I mean, that’s the last thing they are.”
Connolly smiled. “They’re making a bomb.”
“They’re not, though. They’re solving a problem. That’s how they see it.”
“That’s some trick,” Connolly said. “Okay, so they don’t go around knocking people over the head. But we don’t know why he was hit. People do some unlikely things when they’re upset. You admit at least that it’s possible he had a friend up here?”
“Anything’s possible.”
“He met somebody. Why not a friend?”
“Then we’re back where we started. Why go to Santa Fe?”
“Maybe they were discreet. Maybe they liked to meet off the Hill.”
Mills shook his head. “God, I hate this. Pretty soon you’ll have me thinking just like you do, walking around here thinking ‘Is he one?’ Suspecting everybody. This isn’t New York, you know.”
“Don’t go small-town on me now,” Connolly said. “You’re a big boy.”
“But this is a small town-that’s just what it is. Do you know how much trouble we’ve had since the project started? None. A few kids sneaking through the fence. A little hanky-panky in the women’s dormitory. A fight now and then over in the hutments. That’s it. It sounds crazy, but this is the nicest place I’ve ever lived.”
“Except it has one dead guy in it.”
“Who was killed forty miles away. But that doesn’t feel right to you, so now we’ve got a killer on the loose up here. And we’re going to catch him by going through his bankbook. Aw,” Mills said, waving his hand in disgust, “we’re not thinking straight.”
“You can’t get away from the money. Where did he get the money?”
“If his friend is so rich, why was he wearing boots?”
“You got me. Maybe they’re not connected.”
Mills looked up to answer him and then stopped, his attention drawn away. They had walked back toward the Tech Area and now stood beside the fence, sidestepping a jeep. A girl in heels, her white badge flapping against her sweater, brushed past the MP guard, her face covered in tears. Outside the gate, she squinted into the late afternoon sun, then, blinded by the light, walked unsteadily past them, nearly knocking into Mills as she went.
“What was that?” Mills said.
“Trouble in paradise,” Connolly said lightly. “The boss yelled. The boyfriend took a hike. Maybe it’s-”
“No, look,” Mills said, stopping him with a hand on his shoulder. “Something’s happened.”
Suddenly the street began to fill with people coming out of the buildings, then standing around aimlessly, unsure what to do, as if an explosion had gone off inside. Some of the women hugged each other. Others began to move in haphazard groups toward the open area in front of the Admin Building, anxious and listless at the same time.
Mills went up to the guard. “What’s going on?”
“It’s the President-Roosevelt’s dead,” he said, not looking at them.
Nobody said a word. Connolly felt winded, caught by an unexpected punch. He was surprised by how much he minded. Only the war was supposed to end, not the foundation of things. Now what? He imagined himself back in Washington-bells tolling, people stupefied in their maze of offices, the humming of gossip about a new order that was beginning before its time. Most of the people he knew there had come to Washington for Roosevelt, measuring their lives by his successes. They never expected to know anything else. Now the others would begin scurrying to make the town over-it wasn’t too soon, even now. For the first time since he’d come to Los Alamos, Connolly missed it, that nervous feeling of being at the center of things, where telephones rang and everything mattered. He felt suddenly marooned on a cool, bright plateau, looking at an inconsequential crime while the rest of the world skipped a beat.
They joined the others drifting toward the Admin Building, drawn home like children after dark. It was only when he saw Oppenheimer appear on the steps that he realized why they had come. There was a different White House here, and the plain army-green building was as central and reassuring as the one across from Lafayette Square. There were no loudspeakers and Oppenheimer barely raised his voice, so that Connolly missed most of what he said. There would be a service on Sunday. He knew everyone must be shocked. He knew they would carry on the President’s ideals. The words faded even as he spoke them. But no one looked anywhere else. His face visibly troubled, Oppenheimer held them all with the force of his caring. In Washington there had been the rakish glint of Roosevelt’s eyes, his generous celebration of worldliness, but here the center was held by Oppie’s almost luminous intelligence. It was his town. When something went wrong-the water supply, a death in the larger family-they didn’t have to hear what he said. It was enough to have him here.
Connolly looked around the crowd of his new town. Scientists in jeans. Nurses and WACs and young typists with vivid red nails. MPs. Fresh-faced graduate students in sweater vests and ties-you could almost see them raising their hands in class, eager to impress. Some were openly weeping, but most people simply stood there, sober after a party. And then Oppenheimer was finished, coming down the few steps to join the crowd, and people began drifting back, not wanting to burden him further.
Connolly couldn’t stop watching him, and Oppenheimer, glancing up, caught his stare and looked puzzled for a moment, until he placed him. He was walking toward them, and Connolly felt oddly pleased to be singled out, then embarrassed when he saw that Oppie had been headed for Professor Weber all along.
“Well, Hans,” he said, placing a hand on his shoulder, “a sad day.”
Weber, always in motion, now seemed to bubble over. “Terrible, terrible. A gift to the Nazis. A gift.”
Oppenheimer looked at his watch. “It’s already tomorrow there. Friday the thirteenth. Dr. Goebbels won’t even have to consult his astrologer. For once, a clear sign, eh?”
“But Robert, the music. What should we do? Should we cancel this evening? It seems not respectful.”
“No, by all means let’s have the music,” Oppenheimer said softly. “Let the Nazis look at their entrails-we’ll take our signs from the music.”
Weber nodded. Oppenheimer, in a gesture of remembering his manners, turned to include Connolly. “You know Mr. Connolly?”
“Yes, forgive me. I didn’t see you. We met at the dancing.”
“How are you getting on?” Oppenheimer said.
“All right, I guess.”
“Good. You must invite him to your evening, Hans.” Then, to Connolly, “All work and no play-it can be a disease here. They’re really quite good.”
“But I have invited him. Yes? You remember? So come.”
“I’m planning on it. If there’s room.”
“Oh, there’s always room,” Oppenheimer said. “And the cakes are even better than the music.”
“Vays mir,” Weber said, putting his hand to his head. “Johanna. You’ll excuse me, please?” But he went off before anyone could answer.
Oppenheimer lit a cigarette and sucked the smoke deeply, like opium. “He likes to help. Schnecken. Seed cake. I think the music is an excuse. How are you getting on?”
“Slowly. Thanks for running interference on the files.”
“I hope they’re worth it. They say bad things run in threes-maybe you’ll find something yet.”
“Would that make three? Has something else happened?”
“No, I’m anticipating. It’s been just the opposite. Today Otto Frisch finished the critical assembly experiments with metallic U-235.” He paused, looking at Connolly. “You haven’t the faintest idea what I’m talking about, have you? Well, so much the better. I probably shouldn’t be talking about it in any case. Suffice it to say, it’s a significant step-best news in a week. And now this. No doubt there’s some philosophical message in it all, but I’m damned if I see it.”
“Did you know him well?”
“The President? No, not very well. I’ve met him, of course, but I can’t say I knew him. He was charming. But that’s beside the point.”
“Which is?”
“It was his project. He okayed it. Now it’s anybody’s guess-”
“Truman opposed it?”
“He doesn’t know about it.”
“What?”
Oppenheimer smiled. “You know, I’m constantly surprised at security’s being surprised when something secret is kept secret. No, he doesn’t know. Nobody there knew except Roosevelt and the committee. And I expect he’ll be furious when Stimson tells him what he didn’t know.”
“Touchy, anyway,” Connolly agreed. “But he’s not going to pull the plug at this point.”
“How well do you really know Washington? This project has cost nearly two billion dollars.” He watched Connolly’s eyes widen. “None of the men you sent to Washington to spend your money knows a thing about it.”
“That’s a lot of money to hide,” Connolly said, thinking about his own paltry search.
“Only Roosevelt could have ordered it,” Oppenheimer said. “It had to come from the top. Still does.”
“So you’re off to Washington, hat in hand?”
“No,” Oppenheimer said, “nothing that drastic. General Groves will take care of it-he knows his way around those land mines better than anybody. But it’s-” He hesitated, grinding out his cigarette. “A complication. We were always racing against time, and now it’s worse. It’s a bad time to get a new boss.”
“It always is.”
“This is a particularly bad time.”
“Can I ask you a question? What if it doesn’t work?”
“I never ask myself that. It will.”
“Because it has to?”
“Because the science is there. It will work. The question now is what happens after that. The generals will want to own it. We’ll need a whole new kind of civilian control. Otherwise, all our work here-” He looked away, rehearsing some talk with himself. “Otherwise, it will be a tragedy. Roosevelt saw that. Now we have-who? Some politician nobody ever heard of. How can he be expected to make such a decision? For all I know, he’ll think it’s just a giant hand grenade.” He stopped, catching himself. “Well, let’s hope for the best,” he said, looking back at Connolly. “A little music for the soul. Seven o’clock. Weber’s on Bathtub Row-just ask anyone. By the way, I hope you’re not looking too closely at my bank account. It feels like someone’s going through my laundry.”
When Connolly got back to the office, there was a message to call Holliday.
“I have something for you,” he said, not even bothering to mention Roosevelt. Most people on the Hill had taken an unofficial holiday and left early. “We found out where your boy went that night. Or at least where his car went.”
“You found the bar?”
“He wasn’t drinking. He went to church.”
“Church?”
“San Isidro, out on the Cerrillos Road. A Mex place.”
“What would he be doing in church? He was a Jew.”
“I didn’t say he was praying. I just said his car was parked there. An alley next to the church. Not a parking lot, exactly, but people park there.”
“What’s around?”
“Houses. A gas station. No bars. Quiet.”
“And one of the neighbors saw him?”
“No. Actually, one of my men. You were right, put out the word and you always haul something in. The night of the killing, he was driving past on his way to some complaint and noticed the car there. Didn’t think anything of it until I put out the description of the car.”
“What made him notice it?”
“A ’forty-two Buick? In a Mexican neighborhood?”
“But he didn’t stop?”
“There’s nothing illegal about parking there. Figured it must be somebody visiting.”
“The church was open?”
“Not for mass. They don’t lock churches around here. This one pulls in a tourist now and then. They’ve got an old reredos there that’s supposed to be something special.”
“At that time of night? What time was it, anyway?”
“Nine maybe, more or less. He’s a little fuzzy about that. If you ask me, he was taking his own sweet time about answering the complaint and didn’t want to say so.”
“Where’s the church in relation to where Bruner was found?”
“Well, it’s out a ways, but you go straight down Cerrillos over the bridge and you’re on the Alameda.”
“So it’s the first park?”
“In that direction, yes.”
“Okay. So he saw Bruner?”
“No, just the car. He thought it was funny, a car like that, but like I said, he figured it was somebody visiting. You know, some Anglo with a girlfriend down there.”
“Is there a lot of that?”
“All over the world.”
“Very funny. So if he didn’t see him, we don’t know for sure he was actually there.”
“Oh, we know. We found his blood.”
He imagined Holliday’s face as he said it, the jaws clamping shut in satisfaction. He listened to the silence for a minute. “Want to tell me about it?”
“There’s a patch of ground near the church, right under where the tile sticks out. Seems it never rains there, so we got some dry ground with some blood on it.”
“And it’s Burner’s.”
“O negative. I figure it’s a safe assumption.”
“So Bruner gets hit next to some Spanish church and his body winds up in the park and his car disappears.”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“I wish I could say any of it made sense.”
“Well, I wish you could too. And while you’re at it, try making some sense of his pants now. Kinda changes things, don’t you think? Doesn’t fit, that kind of activity at a church. Would they do that there? Then driving him all over with his pants down. No sense to it. Could be we’re sniffing around the wrong tree here. You know, maybe he wasn’t that way at all.”
“It was your idea.”
“Well, I’ve been known to be wrong. Once or twice.”
“Then how do you explain the pants?”
“I can’t. Yet. I’m just saying it’s a hell of a place to have sex.”
“Well, for that matter, it’s a hell of a place to kill somebody. But why move him?”
“The thought that occurred to me was that they didn’t want him found so easy. He’d stick out like a sore thumb at the church, but he could have been days in the park. Well, one.”
“Then why not just take him out to the country and bury him?”
“Well, if you get a better idea, let me know.”
“You talk to the neighbors?”
“Sure. Nada. Amazing how the Spanish mind their business when the police come around. I never knew a people for going to bed so early.”
“But why move him? That’s what I don’t get.”
“I don’t know. But I tell you one thing, it sure wasn’t out of respect for the church.”