She was parking her blue Schwinn bicycle as I left the office. In a Western-style red shirt and Levi cut-offs, she appeared older than she had at her stepfather’s house. Or maybe it was the hair, which she’d managed to turn into a pageboy. The heavy glasses worked against all of it. She was still the lonely kid who loved The Great Gatsby.
“Hi, Mr. McCain.”
“Hi, Nina.”
“My stepfather’d kill me if he knew I was here.”
“I think you’re probably right about that one.”
She approached me with the awkward grace of a leery animal. “I heard what you and my stepfather were talking about. He and my mother really got into it after you left. Then she found out he had a gun in the house.”
“Let’s talk inside. You like a Pepsi?”
“That’d be great. It’s so hot.”
“C’mon in. It’s cooler there.”
The first thing she did inside was look at my books. She passed quickly over the law tomes and went to the small bookcase where I kept novels. “We sort of have the same taste. Hemingway and Carson McCullers and Steinbeck and Fitzgerald and Malamud and Algren. But who’re these writers, Jim Thompson and Charles Williams?”
“They write crime fiction.”
“Is it any good?”
“Some of the best writing in America, but the critics are too snobby to review it. They think it’s trash.”
“Some of the covers are pretty wild.” She was examining a copy of All the Way by Charles Williams.
“The covers are usually a lot wilder than the books themselves.”
After getting her seated and pushing a Pepsi into her hand, I sat down behind my desk and got a smoke going. “You were telling me that your stepfather has a gun in the house. Doesn’t he usually?”
“No. Never. My mother’s little brother was killed when he found her dad’s pistol and accidentally shot himself. My mother absolutely won’t tolerate a gun in the house.”
“Not even a hunting rifle?”
“Huh-uh. She made Ralph promise that before they got married. And my mother’s never let him forget it, either.”
“Did he say why he thinks he needs a gun?”
She sipped her Pepsi. Her face still gleamed from the sweaty ride over here. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “He’s afraid of something. I’ve never seen him like this. You know how he is. I’m not putting him down-not exactly, anyway. There’re a lot worse stepfathers than Ralph.”
“That isn’t a great declaration of love.”
“Oh, I don’t love him. I’m not even sure my mother loves him. But most of the time he’s all right. My mother’s very pretty. I think that after his first wife left him, he decided to pay her back by finding the best-looking woman he could and then kind of flaunting her. My mother always laughs when she tells me about how he used to drag her to all these places just so his ex-wife would see them. But that’s how he is. He usually gets his way whether my mom’s comfortable with it or not. But the reason I came over here to talk to you was because after they got into this big fight about the gun she found in his suit coat pocket, I heard him say, ‘Honey, I’m scared. I need to protect myself.’ Boy, if you know anything about Ralph, him saying that he’s scared is really something. He always acts like he’s not afraid of anything or anybody. You know?”
“Did he say what he was scared of?”
“No. She asked him a bunch of times, but he said he couldn’t tell her. He said it was better that she didn’t know. Then he went out to the garage. That’s his haven when he wants to escape. She almost never goes out there, but today she did. And they started arguing again. I was upstairs reading with the radio on, and I could still hear them.”
“Could you hear what they were saying?”
“Not really. But their voices were real angry. I’m sure it was about the gun and what he’d said about being scared. I mean, if you tell somebody you’re scared, shouldn’t you tell them why you’re scared?”
“You’d think so.”
“My mom said that this all started this morning when Ralph heard about Roy Davenport. Ralph left the house for a while and then came back. That’s when she found the gun in his pocket.”
I guess the thought had been in my mind before. But either it had been vague and fleeting, or it had been in parts that I hadn’t fitted together. Lou Bennett and his enforcer Roy Davenport. If Bennett wanted to kill his son’s lover in a fire, who would he have turned to? Roy Davenport, of course. I hadn’t yet figured out how David Raines was involved, but his mood this morning revealed not just anger but fear.
“Is Ralph still home?”
“No. He took off before I did. My mom was so mad at him, she didn’t even say good-bye. But he said it, two or three times. She wouldn’t answer him. Guns really get to her.”
“Will you be mad at me if I ask you why you came to my office to tell me this?”
Behind the glasses the eyes closed, and she took a deep breath. When the brown eyes opened again, she said: “I guess I sorta lied about Ralph.”
“You mean about the gun?”
“Oh, no. No, I mean the part about him being okay. He’s not okay. He’s an a-hole. He bullies my mom and he bullies me. He even bullies our pets.”
“So you came here because you thought he might be in some trouble and you wanted me to find out if it’s true.”
“I don’t sound very nice, do I?” She pushed the glasses back on her fine straight nose. “It’s just-the other night, he hit my mom. Pretty hard, too. I saw him do it. He’d never really hit her like that before. I can’t get it out of my mind.”
One thing I’d gotten real tired of long ago in my law practice, men who hit women. “What night was that?”
“The night Mr. Bennett was killed.”
“Did you hear him talk about Bennett dying?”
“My mother talked to him about it. We were all sitting in the living room watching TV, and during commercials she asked him about it-you know how you do when commercials come on-but he’d just sort of grunt at her or give her real short answers. My mother kept looking at me like I wonder what’s wrong with him. Usually when something like this happens, he goes on all night. He always says we should build more prisons. He doesn’t think enough people are in prison. He thinks you should be in prison.”
I laughed. “I heard him say that FDR belonged in prison, too. I’d say that’s pretty good company. How about the phone? Did you hear him talking to anybody about it on the phone?”
“No. But Roy Davenport called for him when he was gone. I got the call. This was the same afternoon.”
“Did he leave a message?”
“Just that Ralph should call him back.”
“Did your mother ever mention Davenport?”
“Oh, yes. He scared her. Somebody told her a couple of years ago that he carried a gun. That was all it took.”
“Did she argue with Ralph about it?”
“Several times. She always said she wouldn’t have him in our home, even though Ralph and he and Mr. Bennett played golf together and had poker night once a week.”
“Did Ralph say where he was going when he left?”
“No. And most of the time he does. He wants her to know where he is and he wants to know where she is. That’s why he calls home so often during the day. He doesn’t trust her. She’s still really pretty. She keeps saying that someday I’ll look like her, but I doubt it.” Pain in the last sentence and a frown. “They had a ninth-grade dance at the end of school this year. Nobody asked me. I asked one boy, but he turned me down. I think my mom took it harder than I did. Ralph said it was because I was quote a bookworm unquote. You know what he said?”
“What?”
“He actually said boys don’t like girls who read books. He told me to ask the cheerleaders if any of them were big readers. He dared me to. I would’ve been mad, but it was so stupid. Can you see me going up to a cheerleader and asking her if she likes to read?” She had an endearing little laugh and very bright white teeth.
“You mean you didn’t do it?”
“Oh, sure. That was the very first thing I did at school the next day. At lunch I sat at the cheerleaders’ table and took a poll.”
“Well, I’d hope so. At least you know good advice when you hear it.”
“You’re funny. Thanks. Now I don’t feel so bad coming here. I’m just trying to get back at Ralph for bullying my mom, but I heard you asking him questions and I thought maybe I could help you.”
“You’ve helped me a lot.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She pushed up from the chair. She was a kid and a gangly one and a sweet one, and best of all she was a bookworm, reserved for boys who-despite Ralph’s admonition-would cherish her for that. Among many, many other virtues.
“Our cat picked up fleas, so I have to go to the vet to get him a new collar. He’s driving the whole house crazy. We’re scratching all the time. Ralph hates pets anyway. So there’s another thing they can fight about.”
She leaned across the desk, her hand out. We shook. “Thank you, Mr. McCain.”
“My pleasure. While we were talking I wrote my home phone on the back of this card. I’d keep it in your pocket so Ralph doesn’t find it.”
“Oh, God, that’s all I’d need, is for him to find out that I came here.”
“See you later, bookworm.”
She favored me with that sweet laugh again.
Roy Davenport had been killed in his garage around six A.M. He didn’t usually leave the house until nine A.M. Even Cliffie wondered what had brought him out so early. He had been shot three times in the chest with a handgun. Ballistic information was forthcoming.
Pauline had slept through the shooting. She was awakened at seven o’clock or thereabouts when she heard the dog whining outside. She went to the window (my friend Molly Weaver told me this on the phone) and saw the dog standing outside the garage, whimpering. She sensed something wrong and grabbed her robe and hurried to the garage for a look. She found that Davenport had fallen between his car and hers. He was dead. She went in and called the police. When the cops got there, they found she’d polished off the better part of a pint bottle of Jim Beam. She was fighting her fears and her drunkenness. She had to force herself to speak past the booze so they could understand her. She demanded police protection until she could leave town, which she insisted would be before sundown. She told them she’d be going to her parents’ home in Missouri. She said she’d be taking the Greyhound. Cliffie said absolutely not, that if she tried to leave she’d find herself in jail. They ended with a compromise. She’d agree to stay for three days and then she’d be free to travel. She’d reside at the Harcourt Arms hotel downtown.
The desk clerk at the Harcourt was a Shriner. I knew this because he was wearing his fez. He was also wearing sleeve garters and a bow tie. His calendar apparently ran out of pages sometime in the early 1930s. He’d been writing in a large notebook when I approached the desk. When he heard me, he looked up. Judging by the cold hard stare he gave me, I might have been Jack the Ripper.
“I have a son in the military, McCain. I just want you to know that. And the missus and I are very proud of him.”
“You mean the rally the other night. If you think about it, we’re on the side of your son. There’s no reason to be in this war. And Johnson’s going to keep expanding it and more and more of our soldiers are going to die.”
He wanted to respond, but the black phone on his desk rang. He answered and started giving information about rates and availabilities. The Harcourt was second-rate, but a good second-rate. The lobby was clean and bright with solid if inexpensive couches and chairs and plants and flowers that had been well taken care of. The walls were decorated with framed black-and-white photographs of downtown Black River Falls over the years.
The three men reading newspapers and magazines weren’t the old sad duffers you saw in most second-rate hotels. They were middleaged in good clothes. They were most likely salesmen of various types.
While I waited for the desk clerk to get off the phone, two more men came in. They each toted a suitcase, they each smoked cigars, they each exuded the kind of back-slapping good will that could drive me out of a room in less than two minutes. They, too, were wearing their fezzes.
When he got off the phone, the clerk saw his two new customers. He smiled at them and said, “Just a minute, boys.”
He was done arguing with me. He had work to do. “What do you need, McCain?”
I asked what room Pauline was staying in. He checked and told me and then he turned to his friends. He let me get all the way to the elevator before he started talking about me. I got whispered about a lot in this town. Sometimes I wanted to kill somebody, I got so tired of it. But where would I start, when so many people had it in for me? As the elevator reached the first floor from the fourth, I looked back at the desk. The clerk was leaning over and nodding in my direction as he spoke. The two customers were staring at me and shaking their heads. It was probably a mercy that I couldn’t hear what was being said.
The narrow hall was a fault of various eras. The wallpaper and the carpeting were as dusty as ones you’d find in a hot-sheet hotel. The paintings were garish and lurid even though they were nature scenes. Probably local art. The odors were oldest of all. There were windows at either end of the hall, closed now for the air conditioning. But decades of smoking, drinking, screwing, and being sick in various ways tattooed the air forever. In the thirties, a man masquerading as a doctor had butchered a woman up here by giving her what he called an abortion. There was such outrage that a mob stormed the police station and overpowered the night officers. They got all the way back to the cells before two Highway Patrol cars pulled up. They went in with sawed-off shotguns and said they’d kill anybody who didn’t leave the building immediately. Funny how persuasive a sawed-off can be.
Before I knocked, I leaned against the door. Voices. Pauline’s I recognized, not the man’s. I’d brought my gun. Somebody was killing people. I had no doubt they wouldn’t mind adding me to the list.
The voices halted with my first knock. After a pause, Pauline said: “Who is it?”
“McCain.”
The man cursed.
“I can’t talk to you now. You need to come back.”
“When?”
“Later.”
“We need to talk now. You could be in a lot of danger.”
The man’s whisper was violent. Instructions.
“I’m fine. I just want to go back to sleep. You woke me up.”
“You must talk in your sleep.”
“What?”
“I said you must talk in your sleep. I heard you talking in there just a minute ago.”
More whispered instructions.
“That was the TV. You need to come back later.” She had begun pleading now.
“All right. But we really need to talk.”
I walked away. I made my steps decisive. I was walking away, I was walking down the stairs, I was leaving the hotel.
I went back immediately and flattened myself against the west side of the door.
They started talking again, this time without the whispers. The male voice was familiar now. So was the word he used three times. “Letter.”
This went on for ten minutes. I heard somebody coming up the stairs. I eased on over to the room next to Pauline’s and bent over as if I was letting myself in. The fat salesman with the two big leather bags was out of breath. The cigarette tucked into the left corner of his mouth didn’t help his breathing. He just nodded as he started to pass me. He couldn’t wave with his hands full, and speaking was a bitch with a smoke dangling from your lips.
He was apparently so eager to get into his room that he didn’t check back on me. He got the door open, dragged the suitcases inside and vanished.
I took up my previous position.
A few minutes later, Pauline’s door opened, and I moved. I shoved him so hard and so fast that he stumbled back three or four feet before his legs folded and he landed on the floor. I kicked the door shut behind me.
“You bastard,” David Raines said.
“This is getting so crazy. I don’t live like this. I just want to go home and see my folks is all.” Pauline’s voice had risen a few octaves and was splashed with tears of hysteria. It was also sloppy with liquor. Her slurring got worse by the minute.
She wore a man’s blue dress shirt that reached to the hem of her blue shorts. She had a glass of whiskey in her hand, no doubt poured from the bottle of Old Granddad on top of the bureau.
Raines got to his feet. The white golf shirt and tan slacks suggested a fun day on the links. But his eyes suggested the opposite. He couldn’t decide whether to be mad or scared.
“Don’t answer any of his questions, Pauline.”
“I wish you’d both get out of here. I wish Cliffie would leave me alone. I wish I could get on a bus and go home. I didn’t have nothing to do with any of this. Not one thing.” She said all this while waggling her drink at us. I was surprised it didn’t fly out of her hand, especially since her eyes had started closing every thirty seconds or so.
Raines’ contempt was like an attacking animal. “You just screwed your brains out and got drunk and got fatter, isn’t that right, Pauline? You didn’t know about any of this. That’s why you were always sneaking around when Davenport and I were talking. You knew damned well what was going on. And you wanted to cash in on it. Roy would get the final payment and then he’d take you to Europe. That was the plan, right?”
“Don’t tell me no more lies, David. You’re just trying to hurt my feelings since I don’t know where the letter is.” She was much drunker than I’d realized. She was slurring her words and putting a hand on the back of a chair for balance.
He walked over to the bureau, picked up the other glass. As he poured himself a shot, he said, “He was going to dump you. Kill you if necessary. He had it all planned out.”
“I don’t believe you.” Which sounded like “I don’ b’lief ya.”
The contempt was back. “I could give a damn what you believe or don’t believe. Remember the night you wanted me to go to bed with you? You think I’d let a pig like you anywhere near me?”
The alcohol seemed to protect her from the insult. She just took a deep drink from her glass and shrugged. But then she had her vengeance, as if that last drink had given her courage: “You want to know about the letter, McCain? I’ll tell you about the letter.”
“Shut up!” He started toward her, but I grabbed a handful of shirt and yanked him back. Before he could swing on me, I had my gun out. Her threat and the appearance of my weapon made everything much more serious.
I looked at her. I remembered the night she’d followed me in the yellow VW. She’d mentioned the letter but gave the impression she didn’t know what was in it. I also remembered feeling that she hadn’t told me everything. Now, with any luck, she’d tell me what she knew.
First I had to deal with Raines.”Get over there and sit down, Raines. And shut up.”
“Teach you to insult me, you pig,” Pauline said. “And for your information, I wasn’t trying to get you into bed. I was trying to get you to lay down before you puked all over the new carpeting the way you did that other night.”
Such a lovely couple. “Tell me about the letter, Pauline. Now.”
“I need a drink first.” She held up her glass. It was only about a quarter full. For most people that would have been fine. For an alcoholic, it was running dangerously low. She teetered her way to the bureau, clanked herself some more of the magic elixir, and then wobbled over and sat on the edge of the emerald-green armchair. She gaped at me and said, “What was I sayin’, McCain?”
“The letter.”
“You’re going to believe this bitch? She’s so drunk, she can’t even remember what she was talking about.”
“Shut up, Raines. Now go ahead, Pauline.”
“Did he just call me a bitch?”
“No. You just misheard him. Now tell me about the letter.”
“They were blackmailing him.”
I’d done enough interrogations of drunken clients to know that you had to be patient. “First tell me who ‘they’ are.”
“They?”
“You said, ‘They were blackmailing him.’”
“Hell, yes, they were.”
“Tell me who ‘they’ are.”
She jabbed her glass in the general direction of Raines. “Him and Roy.”
“And who were they blackmailing?”
“You’re s’posed to be a lawyer and smart’n all. Haven’t you figured it out by now?”
“I think I have, but I need you to tell me.”
“Lou; who else d’ya think? They was blackmailin’ Lou.”
“She’s lying.”
“Why were they blackmailing him, Pauline?”
“Why d’ya think? ’Cause he paid to have that fire set.”
“Karen Shanlon?”
“Yeah, that crippled girl.”
“Who did Lou pay to set it?”
She was at the stage where she had to close one eye to focus. “Him. And Roy.”
“You said Raines and Roy were blackmailing him. And they set the fire, too?”
“She’s drunk. Everything she’s saying is a lie.”
“They made him write this letter, see.” She jerked backward, almost going over. I covered the distance between us in two seconds, then eased her back into the chair. She instantly poured about half the bourbon down her throat. It would be lights out very soon. Maybe that’s what she was trying to do.
“You said they made him write a letter. What kind of a letter?”
She raised her head. Her eyes were gazing on a far distant world only she could see. She belched hard enough to snap her head back. Then she smiled with great grand ridiculous glory. She was working her way back to infancy.
I needed to resolve one thing for sure. I leaned down and took the drink from her hand. It took her a while to realize it was gone. “Hey, where’s my drink?”
“I’ll give it back to you after you answer two more questions.”
“B’shish. It’s my drink.”
My face was only inches from hers. She smelled pretty bad. She looked worse.
“You said that Roy and Raines set the fire. Is that true?”
“Huh?”
I took her chin, tilted her face up to mine. “You said that Roy and Raines set the fire. Is that true?”
“Aw, shuurre. They talked ’bout it out to our house.”
“And you said they were blackmailing Lou. Is that also true?”
“I wan’ my drink back.”
“Just answer my question and I’ll give you your drink.”
“Huh?”
“You said that Roy and Raines were blackmailing Lou. Is that true?”
“Yeah. They sure were. Now gimme my drink.”
I gave her the drink back.
“She has to prove all this,” Raines said. “You’ll have a lot of luck with her on the stand. Make sure she isn’t wearing a bra and that she’s drunk. You’ll win for sure.” Raines had collected himself. He was Raines again, no longer frantic. Smug and cold now and enjoying himself.
I walked over to the phone. You didn’t need a switchboard here. I dialed. Marjorie Kincaid answered. “Morning, Marj. Is Bill Tomlin there, by any chance?”
“I think so. Let me check. Hold on, Sam.”
Tomlin was the uniformed cop I talked to at Lou Bennett’s estate the morning he was murdered. He wasn’t exactly up to FBI standards, but he wasn’t stupid and he was wary enough of Cliffie’s decisions to be honest.
I heard him pick up and Marjorie click off. “Can you do me a favor, Bill?”
“This is going to get me in trouble, isn’t it, McCain?”
“Yeah, but I know you’ve been taking those courses every summer at the police academy about how to handle investigations.”
“Oh, no. The chief’s moved his nephew up. He’s the new lead detective. You need to talk to him.”
Cliffie’s nephew made Cliffie sound like Adlai Stevenson. Not an easy thing to do.
I gave him the name of the hotel and the room number. “I just want you to come over here. I want to walk you through some things. That way, at least somebody in the police department’ll really know what’s going on. You can leave then, and I’ll call Cliffie and ask him to come over.”
Raines started to get up from the couch. I’d set my gun on the small phone table. I picked it up again and this time aimed right at his head. He scowled and sat back down.
“I dunno, McCain.”
“Protect and serve.”
He laughed without humor. “Protecting my butt and trying to serve my family something better than Spam. That’s what that means.”
“That’s a good one. But I’d really appreciate you coming over here. You’re our only hope.”
“Who’s ‘our’?”
“Truth, justice, and the American way.”
“Isn’t that from a comic book? I think it’s Superman.”
“I always liked Batman better.”
“Yeah, me, too. Batman and the Green Hornet.” He sighed. “I’ll need fifteen minutes to wrap something up here.”
“I really appreciate this, Bill.”
By the time I hung up, Pauline was unconscious, sprawled in the chair, her drink spilled, the glass on the floor. She snored like a buzz saw.
“What a hog,” Raines said. “She’s disgusting. I could never figure out why Roy wanted her around.”
“How much did Fire Chief DePaul get paid?”
“I’m not answering any more of your stupid questions.”
I hadn’t expected him to answer. I walked over to the window and looked out on the town. This high up, you could see the sides and backs of the oldest buildings, most of which bore faded business names and advertisements dating back to the 1880s and 1890s. You could see the embedded tracks of the first horse-pulled trolley. You could see the hitching posts in front of a few businesses and taverns. Time overwhelmed me sometimes, how one era appeared bright and fevered, only to dim with another new era suddenly there, bright and fevered, in this long, unending continuum. And the people walking the streets down there would be gone forever, along with their styles and songs and passions great and small, gone forever as if they never existed, even the graveyards in which they were buried disintegrating eventually. I was thinking of my dad and how he’d be gone soon and how I would ache to talk to him in the years ahead. And it would be worse for my mother. She was the one I really had to worry about.
“It won’t do you any good to bring some hillbilly cop up here, McCain,” Raines said to my back. “As I said, I won’t be answering any questions.”
I walked back to the center of the room. “That’s fine. You’re entitled to a lawyer. But I’ll tell Cliffie everything I know, and I hope he’ll take you to the station.”
“He’d never go up against a Bennett.”
“You’re not a Bennett. And Lou’s power died with him.”
“What if I tell Cliffie that this hillbilly cop was up here first?”
“I’d just tell him the truth. He wasn’t in when I called, so I asked for Bill.”
“That’s a lie. You didn’t ask if Cliffie was in.”
I smiled. “Well, as you said, can you prove it?”
Five minutes later, Bill Tomlin was there. Raines gave him a smirk. He looked at me and rolled his eyes. Bill’s khaki uniform was a bit tight, admittedly, thanks to the weight he’d been putting on lately, but he was not stupid.
“Raines here needs to be questioned. He’ll want a lawyer, but I wouldn’t let him go till Cliffie has gotten answers.”
“Don’t call him Cliffie in front of me, okay, McCain? He was nice enough to give me a job and I’m not even a relative.”
“I’m sorry, Tomlin. Pauline over there-”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Drunk and passed out.”
“This room smells like a bar. So anyway, why should the chief be interested in Raines?”
“Don’t believe a word this asshole says,” Raines said from the couch.
“Just let him finish. Then I’ll talk to you. So why should the chief be interested in him?”
“If Pauline is telling the truth, Raines and Davenport set the fire that killed Karen Shanlon. You remember that one?”
“Yeah. The wife knew her from church. She was a nice woman.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with it, Sergeant. He’s lying, and so is that drunken whore over there.”
“They apparently did it on orders from Lou Bennett. His son was still in love with Karen. Lou didn’t think she was good enough to wear the Bennett nametag. And he was afraid that someday Bryce would divorce his wife and marry Karen.”
“The lady in that chair over there told you all this?”
“Lady?” Raines laughed. “Are you blind, Tomlin? Look at her. She’s an old bag of a slut if I’ve ever seen one.”
“And there’s a letter,” I said. “Somehow it ties into the blackmail scheme they were running on Bennett.”
“But weren’t they all in it together? That doesn’t make much sense.”
“You’re damned right it doesn’t, Sergeant! McCain doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“I don’t understand it yet either, Tomlin, but somehow they ended up with Bennett paying them extortion money. That’s why Raines needs to be held for questioning. There’s a lot to go into.”
“There sure as hell is. So, who killed Bennett and Davenport?”
“I’d like to say Raines. But I think all we can nail him with is murdering Karen Shanlon.”
“And that leaves us with who, then?”
“Somebody who plans to kill everybody who was involved in the fire. Somebody who cared about Karen enough to pay everybody back. I think Raines here is the next victim on the list.”
“So that’s everybody?”
“One more. DePaul.”
“The fire chief?”
“Lou paid him off. Or maybe he had something on him. DePaul wrote an assessment report claiming the fire was accidental. That means he falsified a legal document.”
“The chief and DePaul are good friends.”
“I didn’t say this would be easy, Tomlin. But I’m pretty sure you’re interested in the truth. So you’ll help me. You’ll keep this thing on track.”
“I want to call my lawyer.”
“As soon as we’re done here, Mr. Raines.”
“Say everything you’ve just said is true, McCain. Or most of it, anyway. You have any idea who killed Bennett and Davenport?”
“You can’t stop me from calling my lawyer.”
“I have an idea, but it’s not solid enough to talk about yet.”
There was more. By the time we finished, Raines had slung himself horizontally on the couch and had covered his eyes with the back of his hand. When you just laid out the facts cold and hard, the case sounded pretty damned convincing, especially if Pauline could be turned into a sober and articulate witness.
“I’m sorry I had to drag you into this, Bill. If we stick to our story-”
Bill Tomlin said, “Aw, hell. Let’s not try to fool the chief. I owe him my loyalty. I’ll call him now and bring him over.”
“Well, I did ask for him, but he wasn’t in.”
“That’s a lie. That’s a damned lie,” Raines said without moving the back of his hand from his face. He sounded wasted. He’d spent his anger. He was likely thinking about life in prison.
Tomlin said, “You can call your lawyer now, Mr. Raines.”
He pulled his hand back, tilted his head toward us and said, “Maybe I better call my wife first.” The glamour boy had run out of glamour.