Bad Business

58

I took a slice of green pepper and mushroom pizza and bit off the triangular point.

"So what do you know?" I said.

"Nothing you can use in court," Hawk said.

"Nothing to prove in court," I said. "I just need to know."

"They're a couple," Hawk said. "They have dinner together. They go to the movies together. They take evening strolls together. They go food shopping together."

"Doesn't mean they're intimate," I said.

"People see you and Susan together," Hawk said, "they know you intimate. They see me and you together they know we not."

"And thank God for that," I said. "But I see your point."

"Couples be different together than friends," Hawk said.

"They ever affectionate in public?" I said.

"Nope."

"But you're sure?"

"Yep."

Hawk stood up and went to the refrigerator and got us two more beers. The plastic grocery bag was still on the floor beside his chair.

"What's in the bag," I said.

Hawk smiled widely. "Hopin' you'd ask," he said.

"I fought it as long as I could," I said.

"So today," Hawk said, "I'm staying dry in a doorway across the street, and the two lovebirds come out with an umbrella, which confirm my suspicion that they gay."

"Real men don't use umbrellas."

"Exactly," Hawk said. "And I see that they going just down the block to a fancy restaurant. So I drift on down there and look through the window and they just sitting down. I watch for a minute and the waiter give them each a big dinner menu. He take a drink order and when he leaves they start reading their menus. So I think to myself they gonna be an hour, more likely two, which give me time to look around."

"So you hotfooted it back to their place," I said.

"Ah don't `hotfoot,' " Hawk said. "Ah moved rapidly but with grace to their place and entered."

"Any trouble getting in?"

"Haw!"

"So you found something," I said.

"I did."

"And it was a plastic grocery bag," I said.

"That's what I found to put it in," Hawk said.

"Resourceful," I said.

Hawk put down the pizza slice he had in one hand, and the bottle of beer he had in the other. He picked up his plastic grocery bag and took out a leather-covered scrapbook. He placed it gently on my desk and leaned back and revisited the pizza and beer.

"Found it in the bottom drawer of Lance's bureau," Hawk said. "Under his shirts. Nice shirts. Too small, though."

"You were thinking about stealing his shirts?"

"Sure. But they too small for either of us."

"Good of you to think of me," I said.

I opened the scrapbook. On the first page was a newspaper clipping from the Kansas City Star for March 10, 1991. It described the murder of a Kansas City couple. The next page was the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for January 1992, a prominent doctor found murdered in his car in a parking lot in Belleville, Illinois. And so it went. Nine murders in all, full press coverage, neatly clipped and pasted into the scrapbook. Murder number 8 was Trent Rowley. Number 9 was Gavin.

"Lance is a creepy guy," I said.

"But a very nice dresser," Hawk said.

"He finds this missing he'll scoot," I said.

"Probably ain't the first thing he checks when he comes home," Hawk said.

"When he does look he'll be gone," I said.

"Turn it over to Quirk?" Hawk said.

"Doesn't prove he did the murders, only that they interested him."

"Still be enough for them to bring him in, wouldn't it? Fingerprint him. Maybe find out who the hell he is?" Hawk said.

"Or maybe they don't and all they got is the scrapbook, and no judge will admit it as evidence, since it was the result of an illegal search by a notorious felon. And they have to turn him loose."

"Notorious felon?"

"Well known," I said.

"And proud," Hawk said.

"You find a gun?"

"No."

"You toss O'Mara's place?"

"Yep."

"You didn't have time to pull everything apart."

"Nope."

"So we know all this about him," I said. "And we don't know who he is."

"You figure he done them killings in each city that he's got clippings from?" Hawk said.

"Yeah. We can give Quirk a list of the murders, let him see what he can find out. But it'll take time."

"Might be able to lift some prints off the cover too," Hawk said.

"Might," I said. "But I don't want to give it to them yet."

"Because you want to hit him with it."

"Sometime," I said. "If I need to."

"We could go over to the house they share, right now," Hawk said. "And return the scrapbook and ask them about it, and see what happens."

"If we were lucky Lance might take offense," I said.

"And go for his gun," Hawk said. "And we wouldn't have to look for it no more."

"Tempting," I said. "But not yet. Stay on Lance awhile longer. I want to see what Marty Siegel digs up. There's a connection here someplace, and I want to know what it is."

"After a while," Hawk said, "you sort of forget why you got hired, don't you?"

"I still haven't found out who killed Trent Rowley."

"And if you did, and it was some stranger, had nothing to do with all this, would you quit?" Hawk said.

I smiled.

"I'm a curious guy," I said.

"You surely are," Hawk said.

"Don't lose Lance. Even if you have to let him know you're there, don't lose him."

"Remember to whom you are speaking," Hawk said.

"And keep in mind that Lance has probably killed nine people."

Hawk grinned.

"I got him there," Hawk said.

"I'm sure you do."