“None of it makes sense,” he muttered, looking at the monitor. On it was a frozen image of a man who certainly looked like Terry Maitland, caught laughing about something as he stood in the autograph line with his department head, Roundhill.
“Pardon?” asked the hotel dick who had shown him the footage.
“Nothing.”
“Can I show you anything else?”
“No, but thanks.” This had been a fool’s errand. The Channel 81 tape of the lecture had pretty much rendered the security footage moot, anyway, because it was Terry during the Q-and-A. No one could doubt it.
Except in one corner of his mind, Ralph still did. The way Terry had stood to ask his question, as if he’d known that a camera would be on him . . . it was just so goddam perfect. Was it possible that the whole thing was a set-up? An amazing but ultimately explicable act of legerdemain? Ralph didn’t see how it could be, but he didn’t know how David Copperfield had walked through the Great Wall of China, and Ralph had seen that on TV. If it was so, Terry Maitland wasn’t just a murderer, he was a murderer who was laughing at them.
“Detective, just a heads-up,” said the hotel dick. “I’ve got a note from Harley Bright—he’s the boss—saying all the stuff you just looked at is supposed to be saved for a lawyer named Howard Gold.”
“I don’t care what you do with it,” Ralph said. “Mail it off to Sarah Palin in Whistledick, Alaska, for all I care. I’m going home.” Yes. Good idea. Go home, sit in his backyard with Jeannie, split a six with her—four for him, two for her. And try not to go crazy thinking about this goddam paradox.
The dick walked him to the door of the security office. “News says you got the guy who killed that kid.”
“News says a lot of things. Thank you for your time, sir.”
“Always a pleasure to help the police.”
If only you had, Ralph thought.
He halted on the far side of the lobby, hand out to push the revolving door, struck by a thought. There was one other place he should check, as long as he was here. According to Terry, Debbie Grant had booked for the women’s room as soon as Coben’s lecture ended, and she had been gone a long time. I went down to the newsstand with Ev and Billy, Terry had said. She met us there.
The newsstand, it turned out, was a kind of auxiliary gift shop. An overly made-up woman with graying hair was behind the counter, rearranging bits of inexpensive jewelry. Ralph showed her his ID and asked her if she had been working the previous Tuesday afternoon.
“Honey,” she said, “I work here every day, unless I’m sick. I don’t get anything extra from the books and magazines, but when it comes to this jewelry and the souvenir coffee cups, I’m on commission.”
“Would you remember this man? He was here last Tuesday with a bunch of English teachers, for a lecture.” He showed her Terry’s picture.
“Sure, I remember him. He asked about the Flint County book. First one to do that in Jesus knows how long. I didn’t stock it, the darn thing was here when I started running this place back in 2010. I should take it down, I guess, but replace it with what? Anything way above or way below eye-level doesn’t move, you find that out quick running a place like this. At least the stuff down low is cheap. That top shelf is your expensive stuff with photographs and glossy pages.”
“What book are we talking about, Ms.—” He looked at her name-tag. “Ms. Levelle?”
“That one,” she said, pointing. “A Pictorial History of Flint County, Douree County, and Canning Township. Jawbreaker title, huh?”
He turned and saw two racks of reading material next to a shelf of souvenir cups and plates. One rack held magazines; the other held a mixture of paperback and current hardcover fiction. On the top shelf of the latter were half a dozen larger volumes, what Jeannie would have called coffee table books. They were shrink-wrapped so that browsers couldn’t smudge the pages or dog-ear the corners. Ralph walked over and looked up at them. Terry, who had a good three inches on him, wouldn’t have had to look up, or stand on tiptoe to take one of them down.
He started to reach for the book she’d mentioned, then changed his mind. He turned back to Ms. Levelle. “Tell me what you remember.”
“What, about that guy? Nothing much to tell. The gift shop got way busy after the lecture broke, I remember that, but I only got a trickle of custom. You know why, don’t you?”
Ralph shook his head, trying to be patient. There was something here, all right, and he thought—hoped—he knew what it was.