But will he? Marcy wondered. Will we? When they claim to have his fingerprints, and people who saw him abducting that little boy, and then coming out of Figgis Park covered in blood? Will we ever be free as long as the real killer stays uncaught?
“Marcy.” Terry was smiling at her. “Take it easy. You know what I tell the boys—one base at a time.”
“I want to ask you something,” Howie said. “Just a shot in the dark.”
“Ask away.”
“They claim to have all sorts of forensic evidence, although the DNA’s still pending—”
“That can’t come back a match,” Terry said. “It’s not possible.”
“I would have said that about the fingerprints,” Howie said.
“Maybe someone set him up,” Marcy blurted. “I know how paranoid that sounds, but . . .” She shrugged.
“But why?” Howie asked. “That’s the question. Can either of you think of someone who would go to such extraordinary lengths to do that?”
The Maitlands considered, one on each side of the scuffed Perspex, then shook their heads.
“Me, either,” Howie said. “Life rarely if ever imitates the novels of Robert Ludlum. Still, they’ve got evidence strong enough for them to have rushed into an arrest I’m sure they now regret. My fear is that, even if I can get you out of the machine, the shadow of the machine may remain.”
“I was thinking about that most of last night,” Terry said.
“I’m still thinking about it,” Marcy said.
Howie leaned forward, hands clasped. “It would help if we had some physical evidence to match theirs. The Channel 81 tape is fine, and when you add in your colleagues, it’s probably all we need, but I’m greedy. I want more.”
“Physical evidence from one of the busiest hotels in Cap City, and four days later?” Marcy asked, unaware that she was echoing Bill Samuels not long before. “That seems unlikely.”
Terry was looking off into space, brows drawn together. “Not entirely unlikely.”
“Terry?” Howie asked. “What are you thinking about?”
He looked around at them, smiling. “There might be something. There just might be.”
15
The Firepit was indeed open for brunch, so Ralph went there first. Two of the staff who had been working on the night of the murder were currently on duty: the hostess and a crewcut waiter who looked about old enough to buy a beer. The hostess was no help （“We were mobbed that night, Detective”）， and while the waiter vaguely remembered serving a large group of teachers, he was equivocal when Ralph showed him Terry’s picture from the previous year’s FCHS yearbook. He said that, yes, he “sorta” remembered a guy who looked like that, but he couldn’t swear it was the guy in the picture. He said he wasn’t even sure the guy had been with that bunch of teachers. “Hey, man, I might have just served him a Hot Wing Platter at the bar.”
So that was that.
Ralph’s luck at the Sheraton was at first no better. He was able to confirm that Maitland and William Quade had stayed in room 644 on Tuesday night, and the hotel manager was able to show him the bill, but it was Quade’s signature. He had used his MasterCard. The manager also told him that room 644 had been occupied every night since Maitland and Quade checked out, and had been cleaned every morning.
“And we offer turn-down service,” said the manager, adding insult to injury. “That means on most days the room was cleaned twice.”
Yes, Detective Anderson was welcome to review the security footage, and Ralph did it without any complaints about how Alec Pelley had already been allowed to do so. （Ralph was not a Cap City police officer, which meant diplomacy was the better part of valor.） The footage was in full color, and sharp—no elderly Zoney’s Go-Mart cameras for the Cap City Sheraton. He saw a man who looked like Terry in the lobby, in the gift shop, doing a quick Wednesday morning workout in the hotel’s fitness room, and outside the hotel ballroom, waiting in the autograph line. The stuff from the lobby and gift shop was iffy, but there could be little doubt—at least in his mind—that the guy signing in to use the exercise equipment and the guy waiting in line for an autograph was his son’s old coach. The one who’d taught Derek to bunt, thus changing his nickname from Swiffer to Push It.
In his mind, Ralph could hear his wife telling him that forensic evidence from Cap City was the missing piece, the Golden Ticket. If Terry was here, she’d said—meaning in Flint City, committing murder—then the double must have been there. It’s the only thing that makes sense.