“You know that for a fact?”
“Yes. But Pelley doesn’t have a warrant.”
“Come on. Do you think he’ll need one?”
In truth, Ralph did not. Alec Pelley had been a detective with the SP for over twenty years. He would have made a great many contacts during that time, and working for a successful criminal lawyer like Howard Gold, he would be sure to keep them current.
“Your idea to arrest him in public is now looking like a bad call,” Samuels said.
Ralph gave him a hard look. “It was one you went along with.”
“Not very enthusiastically,” Samuels said. “Let’s have the truth, since everyone else has gone home and it’s just us girls. With you it was close to home.”
“Damn straight,” Ralph said. “It still is. And since it’s just us girls, let me remind you that you did a little more than just go along. You’ve got an election coming up in the fall, and a dramatic high-profile arrest wouldn’t exactly hurt your chances.”
“That never entered my mind,” Samuels said.
“Fine. It never entered your mind, you just went with the flow, but if you think arresting him at the ballpark was just about my son, you need to take another look at those crime scene pictures, and think about Felicity Ackerman’s autopsy addendum. Guys like this never stop at one.”
Color began to mount in Samuels’s cheeks. “You think I haven’t? Christ, Ralph, I was the one who called him a fucking cannibal, on the record.”
Ralph slid a palm up his cheek. It rasped. “Arguing over who said what and who did what is pointless. The thing to remember is it doesn’t matter who gets to the security footage first. If it’s Pelley, he can’t just put it under his arm and carry it away, can he? Nor can he erase it.”
“That’s true,” Samuels said. “And it’s not apt to be conclusive, in any case. We may see a man in some of the footage who looks like Maitland—”
“Right. But proving it’s him, based on a few glimpses, would be a different kettle of fish. Especially when stacked up against our eyewits and the fingerprints.” Ralph stood and opened the door. “Maybe the footage isn’t the most important thing. I need to make a phone call. Should have made it already.”
Samuels followed him into the reception area. Sandy McGill was on the telephone. Ralph approached her and made a throat-cutting gesture. She hung up and looked at him expectantly.
“Everett Roundhill,” he said. “Chairman of the high school English department. Track him down and get him on the phone.”
“Tracking him down won’t be a problem, since I’ve already got his number,” Sandy said. “He’s called twice already, asking to speak to the lead investigator, and I basically told him to get in line.” She picked up a sheaf of WHILE YOU WERE OUT notes and waved them at him. “I was going to put these on your desk for tomorrow. I know it’s Sunday, but I’ve been telling people I’m pretty sure you’ll be in.”
Speaking very slowly, and looking at the floor instead of at the man beside him, Bill Samuels said, “Roundhill called. Twice. I don’t like that. I don’t like it at all.”
3
Ralph arrived home at quarter to eleven on that Saturday night. He hit the garage door opener, drove inside, then hit it again. The door rattled obediently back down on its tracks, at least one thing in the world that remained sane and normal. Push Button A and, assuming Battery Compartment B is loaded with relatively fresh Duracells, Garage Door C opens and closes.
He turned off the engine and just sat there in the dark, tapping the steering wheel with his wedding ring, remembering a rhyme from his raucous teenage years: Shave and a haircut . . . you bet! Sung by the whorehouse . . . quartet!
The door opened and Jeanette came out, wrapped in her housecoat. In the spill of light from the kitchen, he saw that she was wearing the bunny slippers he’d given her as a joke present on her last birthday. The real present had been a trip to Key West, just the two of them, and they’d had a great time, but now it was just a blurry remnant in his mind, the way all vacations were later on: things with no more substance than the aftertaste of candy floss. The joke slippers were the things that had lasted, pink slippers from the Dollar Store with their ridiculous little eyes and their comical floppy ears. Seeing her in them made his eyes sting. He felt as if he had aged twenty years since stepping into that clearing at Figgis Park and viewing the bloody ruin that had been a little boy who probably idolized Batman and Superman.