Lightning

5

The second hanging victim turned up in West Riverhead.

The 101st Precinct caught the squeal early on the morning of October 14. This was not the rosiest precinct in the world, but none of the cops up there had ever seen a body hanging from a lamppost before. They had seen all sorts of things up there, but never anything like this. They were amazed and astonished. It took a lot to amaze and astonish the cops of the One-Oh-One.

West Riverhead was just a short walk over the Thomas Avenue Bridge, which separated it from Isola. Half a million people lived on the far side of that bridge in a jagged landscape as barren as the moon’s. Forty-two percent of those people were on the city’s welfare rolls, and of those who were capable of holding jobs, only 28 percent were actually employed. Six thousand abandoned buildings, heatless and without electricity, lined the garbage-strewn streets. An estimated 17,000 drug addicts found shelter in those buildings when they were not marauding the streets in competition with packs of wild dogs. The statistics for West Riverhead were overwhelming — 26,347 new cases of tuberculosis reported this past year; 3,412 cases of malnutrition; 6,502 cases of venereal disease. For every hundred babies born in West Riverhead, three died while still in infancy. For those who survived, there was a life ahead of grinding poverty, helpless anger, and hopeless frustration. It was places like West Riverhead that caused the Russians to gloat over how far superior for the masses was the Communist system. Compared to West Riverhead, the 87th Precinct territory was a dairy farm in Wisconsin.

But Carella and Hawes were up here now because a smart detective on the 101st Squad remembered reading something about a girl hanging from a lamppost in the Eight-Seven, and he promptly called downtown to inform the detectives that they had another one, nobody being eager to step on the toes of somebody already investigating a case, and anyway who the hell needed a hanging victim in West Riverhead where there was enough crime up here to keep the cops busy twenty-eight hours a day? Exotic? Terrific. Who needed exotic? Better to let the Eight-Seven pick up the pieces.

Carella and Hawes got there at a little past seven in the morning.

The Homicide team had already come and gone. In this city, any crime, big or small, felony or misdemeanor, was left to the precinct that caught the initial squeal — unless another precinct had already caught the squeal on an obviously related crime. With a murder, the Homicide Division carefully watched over the shoulders of the investigating precinct detectives, lending their expertise where necessary, but the case technically belonged to the responding officers, with Homicide serving as a sort of clearinghouse. Carella and Hawes were the fortunate responding officers on another bright October day that could easily have broken the heart.

A detective named Charlie Broughan was still at the scene; Carella had worked with him before on a gang-related series of murders. There were an estimated 9,000 teenage street-gang members within the confines of the 101st. Maybe that’s why Charlie Broughan looked so tired all the time. Or maybe working the Graveyard Shift up here was worse than working it anyplace else in the city. Broughan looked even wearier than he had the last time Carella saw him, a big beefy cop with a thatch of unruly brown hair and a two days’ growth of beard stubble on his face. He was wearing a pale blue windbreaker, dark blue slacks, and loafers. He recognized Carella at once, came over to him, shook hands with him, and then shook hands with Hawes.

“Sorry to bother you with this shit,” he said, “but I guess by the regs it’s yours.”

“It’s ours, all right,” Carella said, and looked up at the body.

“The last one was a girl, too, huh?” Broughan said.

“Yeah,” Carella said.

“We didn’t cut her down yet, the M.E. and everybody’s still waitin’. Didn’t know how you wanted to handle this.”

“Mobile Crime here yet?” Hawes asked.

“Yeah,” Broughan said. “Well, they were a minute ago. They probably went out for some coffee.”

“We want to save the knot,” Carella said. “Anywhere midway up the rope’ll be fine.”

“I’ll tell the Emergency boys,” Broughan said.

Carella was glad there was no one there to comment on the color of the girl’s panties, which happened to be a blue as electric as the sky spreading wide and clear above the lamppost. He watched as Broughan walked over to the emergency van. The emergency cops took their time getting out their ladder, net, and bolt cutter. It was too early in the morning to work up a sweat.

“Who found her?” Carella asked Broughan.

“Got a call from an honest citizen,” Broughan said, “which up here is a miracle. On his way to work — he lives about eight blocks over, in an area that ain’t burned out yet — was driving by and spotted her hanging there. Actually called us, can you believe it?”

“What time was this?” Hawes asked.

“Clocked it in at six-oh-four. I thought the shift was about to end, I was already typing up my reports. Bang, we got somebody hanging from a lamppost.” He reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out an evidence envelope. “You’ll want this,” he said. “Found it under the lamppost.”

“What is it?”

“The girl’s wallet, I guess. I didn’t open it, didn’t want to smear anything. But I don’t know any men who carry red wallets, do you?”

The emergency cops were cutting her down. She dropped suddenly, her skirt ballooning out over her long legs as she fell. The net sagged with her dead weight. The emergency cops lowered the net to the ground.

“Wasn’t taking any chances on anybody seeing him do the job, was he?” Broughan said. “Ain’t nothing in these buildings but rats, dog shit, and cockroaches.”

The assistant M.E. walked over, looking bored.

Five minutes later, he expressed his opinion that the girl was dead, and that the probable cause was fracture of the cervical vertebrae.

Her name was Nancy Annunziato.

A card in her wallet identified her as a student at Calm’s Point College, one of the city’s five tuition-free colleges. C.P.C. was away over at the other end of the city, across the Calm’s Point Bridge and the River Dix, at least an hour by car from Riverhead, an hour and a half if you took the subway. The detectives did not think anybody in his right mind would have carried a dead body on the subway, however bizarre the system had become over the years, however inured its riders had become to peculiar happenings underground. But assuming the girl had been killed elsewhere (as had supposedly been the case with Marcia Schaffer) and further assuming that the body had then been transported here to this lovely garden spot of the city, the murderer had come a hell of a long way in an attempt to cover his tracks. Why, then, had he left behind a wallet with the girl’s identification in it?

The call to Manhattan, Kansas, informing Marcia Schaffer’s father of her death, had been painful enough, but Carella had not had to look him in the eye when he gave him the news. This one would be more difficult. According to the I.D. card in her wallet, the girl had lived in Calm’s Point, not far from the school, and presumably with her parents. This one would be face-to-face. This one would hurt both ways. He was glad Hawes would be with him, and not a jackass like Genero. Genero had once asked the wife of a murder victim if she had already arranged for a funeral plot: “It’s always best to think of such things far in advance,” Genero had told her. He later told Carella that his mother had already purchased funeral plots for herself and his father. “With lifetime maintenance,” he’d said. Carella had wondered whose lifetime?

They got caught in rush-hour traffic on the way to Calm’s Point, and the ride took them an hour and fifteen minutes. They did not know how bad the confrontation would be until they arrived at the house and discovered that Mr. Annunziato had suffered a heart attack only yesterday and was at the moment in the Intensive Care Unit at Saint Anthony’s Hospital, some six blocks away. The neighborhood was largely Italian, a bustling ghetto that reminded Carella of the one in which he’d been born and raised. The street cries, the shouted greetings, even the clapboard two-story houses with their fig trees, all brought a rush of memory that was somehow as painful as the task that lay before him. There were no babies crying on this tree-shaded street; you never heard a baby crying in an Italian neighborhood. Whenever an Italian baby showed the slightest sign of bursting into tears, there was always a mother, an aunt, a cousin or a grandmother there to pick him up and console him. Mrs. Annunziato looked like Carella’s Aunt Amelia; the resemblance only made his job more difficult.

She had thought at first that they were there to investigate the automobile accident. Her husband had been driving a car when he’d had his heart attack, and he’d smashed into another car when he lost control of the vehicle. This was how she happened to tell them, the moment they identified themselves, that he was now in intensive care, with a mild concussion in addition to the heart attack. They now had to tell her that her daughter was dead.

Hawes busied himself looking at his shoes.

Carella broke the news to Mrs. Annunziato, partially in English, partially in Italian. She listened carefully and disbelievingly. She asked for details; she was certain they were making a mistake. They showed her the dead girl’s wallet. She identified it positively. They were reluctant to show her the Polaroids taken at the scene; they did not want to risk yet another heart attack. She finally burst into tears, rushing into the house to get her mother, who came out not a moment later — a short, gray-haired Italian woman dressed entirely in black, she herself crying as she pressed the detectives for yet more details. The women stood hugging each other and weeping on the sidewalk in front of the house. A crowd had gathered. An ice cream truck’s bells tinkled in the bright October stillness of the tree-shaded street.

“Signore,” Carella said, “scusami, ma ci sono molti domande...”

“Sì, capisco,” Mrs. Annunziato said. “Parla Inglese, per piacere.”

“Grazie,” Carella said, “il mio Italiano non è il migliore. I have to ask these questions if we’re to find who did this to your daughter, lei capisce, signore?”

The grandmother nodded. She was embracing Mrs. Annunziato, clinging to her, patting her, squeezing her, comforting her.

“When did you see her last?” Carella asked. “L’ultima volta che...”

“La notte scorsa,” the grandmother said.

“Last night,” Mrs. Annunziato said.

“A che ora?” Carella asked. “What time was that?”

“Alle sei,” the grandmother said.

“Six o’clock,” Mrs. Annunziato said. “She just come home from the school. She was practice.”

“Scusi?” Carella said. “Practice?”

“Sì, era una corridora,” the grandmother said.

“Corridora?” Carella said, not understanding the word.

“A runner,” Mrs. Annunziato said. “She was on the team, cognesce? Come si chiama? La squadra di pista, capisce? La pista... how do you say? The track. She was on the track team.”

There were two packets from the Police Laboratory waiting for them when they got back to the squadroom. It was still only eleven in the morning. Both men had been working the Graveyard Shift when the call had come from the 101st. They were supposed to be relieved at a quarter to 8:00, but it was now eleven, and the lab report was on Carella’s desk, and another dead girl was awaiting autopsy in the morgue at Mercy General. In the new-penny brilliance of the squadroom, burnished October sunlight streaming through grill-covered windows opened wide to the street outside, they broke open the seal on the first packet. Meyer Meyer was sitting at his own desk, typing, his hairpiece rakishly askew on top of his head. Hawes kept looking across the room to stare at the wig. Meyer pretended he didn’t know he was being observed.

The first packet contained a report on the rope section and the hangman’s knot recovered at the scene, together with a report on the photographs of the knot fastening the other end of the rope to the lamppost. The rope was fashioned of a fiber called sisal, a product of the agave plant, which grew in the Indies and in some parts of Africa. Sisal rope was not quite as strong as Manila rope, which came from the abaca plant in the Philippines. A Manila rope with a one-and-a-half-inch diameter could lift a weight of 2,650 pounds. But sisal was a widely used substitute for the stronger rope, and Marcia Schaffer had weighed only a hundred and twenty-four pounds. The rope used in the hanging was the most common type: a three-strand rope that could not support as much weight as a four-strand, and nowhere near as much weight as a so-called cable-laid rope. Again, Marcia Schaffer had weighed only a hundred and twenty-four pounds.

The technician writing the report went to great lengths explaining that the fibers on the rope clearly indicated in which direction a rope had been pulled. In a legal hanging, or in a true hanging suicide, a person dropped downward when the support was pulled or kicked from under his feet. This downward motion caused the fibers of the rope to rise in a direction opposite to the fall. Conversely, if a person had been hauled up by rope over some sort of substructure like a tree branch, or in this case, the arm of a lamppost, the fibers rose in a direction opposite to the pulling or lifting motion. As regarded the direction of fibers in general, the technician quoted a rule to the effect that drop down resulted in fibers up, and pull up caused fibers down.

Carella and Hawes shrugged; this was all old stuff to them.

The technician went on to explain that if the fiber direction on any given rope seemed at first glance to support a finding of “true hanging” this might not necessarily be valid since the murderer might have first manually lifted an already dead body and only later manipulated the noose around its neck. This was enormously difficult to do, however, since a corpse was heavy and limp and clumsy to maneuver. Besides, the arm of the lamppost in this case was some twenty-five feet above the street. Given the height of the lamppost arm, then; given as well the downward direction of the rope fibers, the technician could only conclude that the killer had fastened the noose around the neck of the corpse, thrown the rope over the lamppost arm, and then hauled the body up, tying the loose end of the rope around the supporting post some five feet above the base.

The technician went on to report that the knot removed from behind the dead girl’s neck was a true hangman’s knot, the sort used in legal hanging executions. In essence, it was a variation of a slip knot, sometimes called a running knot—

Both detectives turned to look at each other when they came to the word “running”...

— fashioned for the executioner’s purposes into a noose with eight or nine turns of rope above it. In this case, there were nine turns.

The technician had not expected to find any latent prints on either the rope or the knot, and he was not disappointed. He had, however, recovered fibers that when examined under the microscope were discovered not to be sisal fibers, and which he had ascertained were fibers consisting of 55 percent wool and 45 percent polyester. In addition, he had found particles of human epidermis clinging to the coarse rope of the knot, and he had identified these as unpigmented skin, or, in short, skin from a white man.

The photograph of the knot tied around the lamppost — actually, the technician pointed out (intending no pun), it was not a knot but instead a hitch, commonly used to tie a rope to a ring, a post, or a spar. The hitch, then, that had fastened the end of the rope to the lamppost was called a half hitch. In the technician’s opinion, the killer had chosen this particular hitch because it could be tied easily and swiftly, even — as in this case — when two half hitches were used in concert. It was not as strong or as safe as a timber hitch, for example, but taking into consideration the fact that the killer had 124 pounds of dead weight dangling from the other end of the rope, speed and facility must have been a prime consideration. The technician concluded the report by mentioning that the half hitch was a knot familiar to virtually every sailor or fisherman on the face of the earth.

The second sealed packet contained a report on the robe (and its contents) found in the dead girl’s apartment.

Upon examination of sample fibers, the robe proved to be 100 percent wool, as claimed on the label. The size, as further indicated on the label, was a large — made to fit men who wore a U.S. 42. Carella wore a 42. Hawes wore a 44. A considerable quantity of hair had been vacuumed from the robe, and this had been compared with hair samples taken from the head, eyebrows, eyelashes, and genital area of Marcia Schaffer’s corpse. Some of the hairs on the robe matched Marcia Schaffer’s head hair. Some of them matched the pubic-area hair samples. One of them matched an eyelash. The other hairs on the robe were foreign — what the lab assistant in his report called wild hairs.

All of the wild hairs had dry roots, as opposed to living roots, which indicated they had fallen out and not been pulled away by force. All of the hairs had a medullary index — defined in the report as the relation between medullary diameter and whole-hair diameter — of less than 0.5, which indicated they were either human hair or monkey hair. But the air network in the medulla of these hairs was fine-grained, and the cells invisible without treatment in water; the cortex resembled a thick muff, and the pigment was fine-grained; there were thin, unprotruding scales in the cuticle, covering each other to a greater degree than would be found in the hair of an animal. The technician had determined that these hairs were indeed human, and since they measured 0.07 centimeters in diameter, that they were hairs from an adult human.

These same hairs, when measured under the micrometer eyepiece, were all shorter than eight centimeters, which indicated they had come either from a scalp or from a beard. The medullary index of the hairs, however, was 0.132, which seemed to indicate they were hairs from a man’s scalp, as opposed to a woman’s, whose medullary index would have been 0.148. Moreover, the ovoid shapes and the peripheral concentration of the pigment in the cortex of the hair indicated that the man was a white man.

Some of the other recovered hairs were curly and coarse, with knobby roots that indicated they had come from a man’s genital area, a surmise strengthened by the fact that the medullary index was established as 0.153. Hairs from a woman’s genitalia, although also curly and coarse, normally had a fine root and a medullary index of 0.114. The orange-red color of the pigment in the shaft of all the hairs — male or female, head, eyebrows, eyelashes or genital — together with the amount of granules present, established in support of visual findings that Marcia Schaffer and the man whose robe was found in her apartment were both blondes. Moreover, they were natural blondes; not a trace of any chemical dye or bleach was found on any of the hairs. A microscopic examination of the tips of the adult male head hairs revealed clean-cut surfaces that indicated the man who owned the robe had had a haircut not forty-eight hours before the hairs were deposited on the robe.

Reading all this about hair, Hawes seemed even more fascinated by Meyer’s toupee. He kept looking up from the report to where Meyer sat hunched over the typewriter, and he kept wondering whether a microscopic examination of all those hairs sitting on Meyer’s heretofore barren scalp would prove them to be human or animal. Meyer kept ignoring him. Meyer was thinking Hawes was trying to figure out something clever to say.

The laboratory report went on to state that the package of Marlboro cigarettes had been tested negatively for controlled substances. The cigarettes were just what they purported to be: tobacco marketed by Philip Morris Inc. The lighter was indeed a Dunhill and not one of its many knockoffs.

There were good latent fingerprints on both the lighter and the cigarette package.

A cross-check with the Identification Section had produced no criminal record for the man who’d left his prints on both articles. But he had been fingerprinted when he enlisted in the Navy during the Vietnam War. His name was Martin J. Benson, and his last known address was 93204 Pacific Coast Highway, just outside of Santa Monica, California.

Carella and Hawes divided between them the telephone directories for all five sections of the city. Hawes hit pay dirt with the Isola phone book. A Martin J. Benson was listed as living at 106 South Boulder. They were heading out of the squadroom when Hawes turned and asked Meyer, “Did you know that horse hair has a medullary index of seven point six?” — something he made up on the spot, and something Meyer did not find comical.

Boulder Street had been named at a time when the Dutch were still in possession of the city, long before construction work had reduced to rubble the huge igneous outcropping that had served as inspiration for the unimaginative appellation.

Naming the street had created a bit of a problem for the practical Dutch in that their native land was not particularly renowned for its mountainous terrain. Rolsteen in the Dutch language translated as “a rock that has rolled down from the top of a mountain.” This particular rock, firmly rooted in the earth as it was, did not seem to have rolled down from any mountain, especially since there were no mountains in this part of the city — or in any part of the city, for that matter. On the other hand, the word kei in Dutch meant “a piece of rock or stone on the ground,” which this rock certainly was. This rock, in fact, seemed to be growing right out of the ground. Kei also meant “paving stone” or “cobblestone,” which seemed like a better word than rolsteen since the Dutch planned to pave the street around the rock with cobbles. So they had opted for Keistraat rather than Rolsteenstraat, which had been a good choice in that kei also meant, in the idiom, “being very good at something,” and the Dutch had certainly been very good at paving a street around a boulder and naming it Keistraat. The British had simply, and again unimaginatively, translated the name from the Dutch, and Boulder Street it had become and still was, although there was no evidence of so much as a pebble on the street nowadays.

The street, perhaps because its boundaries had been defined long ago when the massive boulder actually existed, ran for two consecutive blocks east to west and then ended abruptly. Lining those two blocks was some of the choicest real estate in the city, many of the buildings dating back to Dutch times, all of them restored and in excellent condition. Neither Carella nor Hawes knew anyone who could afford to live on Boulder Street. But this was where the former sailor Martin J. Benson lived, and it did not escape their attention that it was only ten blocks from Ramsey University.

Martin J. Benson was not home when they got there at a little past noon. The superintendent, out front watering a dazzling display of chrysanthemums in huge wooden tubs near the curb, told them that he usually left for work at about 8:30. Mr. Benson, he informed them, worked at an advertising agency on Jefferson Avenue, uptown. Mr. Benson, he further informed them, was the Head of Creation. He made it sound as if Mr. Benson was God. The name of the advertising agency was Cole, Cooper, Loomis and Bache. The superintendent told them that the agency, under the supervision of Mr. Benson himself as Head of Creation, had invented the advertising campaign for Daffy Dots, a candy neither of the detectives had ever eaten or even heard of. They thanked him for his time, and headed uptown.

The receptionist at Cole, Cooper, Loomis and Bache was a dizzy blonde whose plastic desk plaque identified her as Dorothy Hudd — was she the Daffy Dot after which the candy had been named? She was wearing a pink sweater several sizes too small for her, and she seemed inordinately fond of her own breasts — if the attraction of her left hand to them was any indication of pride of ownership. Under guise of toying with a string of pearls that hung between both breasts (Hawes was becoming rather fond of them as well), her left hand nudged, explored, and covertly caressed the mounds on either side of it, causing Hawes to wonder what excesses of affection she might lavish upon them at the seashore, for example, when she was wearing nothing but a bikini. His mind boggled at the thought of what she might be like in bed, straddling him, those magnificent globes clutched in her hands. He did not mind dizzy blondes. He did not even mind dizzy brunettes.

Carella, happily married and presumably immune to such idle speculation, put away the shield he had just shown Dorothy, and asked her if Mr. Benson might have a moment to see them. Dorothy, toying with her multiple pearls, informed him that Mr. Benson was out to lunch just now and wasn’t expected back till 3:00. Carella politely asked where Mr. Benson might be lunching.

“Oh, gee, I don’t know,” Dorothy said.

“Would his secretary know?”

“I guess so,” Dorothy said, rolling her eyes, and toying, toying, toying with the pearls, a seemingly unconscious act that was driving Hawes to distraction. “But she’s out to lunch, too.”

“Is there any way you can find out where he is?” Carella said.

“Well, gee, let me go back and ask around,” Dorothy said, and swiveled her chair and her body out from behind the desk, and walked toward a door leading to the inner offices. She was wearing a tight black skirt that celebrated the return of the mini to America’s shores. Hawes was appreciative. The moment she disappeared from sight, he said, “I could eat her with a spoon.”

“Me, too,” Carella said, destroying the myth of blind married men.

Dorothy came back some five minutes later, smiling and taking her seat behind the desk again. Her left hand went immediately to the pearls around her neck. Hawes watched, fascinated.

“Mr. Perisello told me that Mr. Benson usually eats at a place called the Coach and Four,” Dorothy said, “but that’s only usually, and maybe he isn’t there today. Why don’t you just come back at three?” she said, and smiled up at Hawes. “Or anytime,” she added.

Carella thanked her and led Hawes out of the office.

“I’m in love,” Hawes said.

The Coach and Four was the kind of place neither Carella nor Hawes could afford on their detective 2nd/grade salaries of $33,070 a year. Designed and decorated by an American-born architect of Armenian extraction, it resembled what he thought an old English coaching inn must have looked like circa 1605, replete with hand-hewn timber posts and beams, leaded windows with handblown glass panes, wide-planked pegged floors (sagging here and there for authenticity), and a staff of buxom waitresses wearing dirndl skirts and scoop-necked peasant blouses that revealed rather more bosom than even Dorothy Hudd’s sweater had. Hawes was beginning to think this was his lucky day.

Carella asked the hostess — a willowy brunette wearing a long black gown and high heels that seemed decidedly anachronistic in this otherwise seventeenth-century English ambiance — where Mr. Benson might be sitting, and then took out a card, scribbled a note on the back of it, and asked the hostess if she would mind delivering it to his table. He watched as she crossed the room to a corner table where two men — one of them blond, the other bald — were engaged in animated conversation, no doubt discussing their latest brilliant advertising scheme. She handed the card to the blond. He looked at the front of it, printed with a Police Department seal and Carella’s name, rank, and telephone number at the Eight-Seven, and then turned the card over and read the note Carella had scrawled across the back of it. He asked the hostess something, and she pointed toward where Carella and Hawes were still standing near the reception desk, which resembled what the Armenian architect thought Dr. Johnson’s writing desk and inkstand looked like over there in Gough Square in Merrie Olde England. Benson rose immediately, excused himself to the bald man sitting at the table, and then strode across the room to where they were waiting.

“Mr. Benson?” Carella asked.

“What is this?” Benson said. “I’m in the middle of lunch.”

He was, Carella guessed, some six feet two inches tall, easily as tall as Hawes, with the same broad shoulders and barrel chest, eyes the color of slate, hair as golden as wheat. He was wearing a suit Carella was willing to bet was tailor-made, the tie a Countess Mara, the shirt monogrammed over the left breast, the initials MJB peeping out from behind the hand-stitched lapel of the suit jacket. French cuffs showed below the jacket sleeves, where they were fastened with small, gold, diamond-studded links. A pinky ring on his left hand flashed a diamond rather larger than those on the cufflinks. Carella guessed that Heads of Creation were pulling down quite a bit of bread with their Daffy Dots campaigns.

“If you’d like to finish your lunch, we’ll wait,” he said.

“No, let’s get it over with now,” Benson said, and looked around for a spot where they might talk privately. He settled on the bar, an oaken structure with a lead top, the length of it overhung with glasses dangling by their stems. They pulled out three stools near the end of the bar, where an old brass cash register rested on the lead top. Hawes and Carella sat on either side of Benson. Benson immediately ordered a Beefeater martini, straight up and very cold.

“So?” he said.

“So do you know anybody named Marcia Schaffer?” Carella asked, getting straight to the point.

“So that’s it,” Benson said, and nodded.

“That’s it,” Hawes said.

“What about her?” Benson asked.

“Do you know her?”

“Yes. I knew her.”

“Knew her?”

The detectives were alternating their questions now, causing Benson to turn from one to the other of them.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Benson said. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Yes, I knew her. Past tense.”

“How far in the past?” Carella asked.

“I haven’t seen her in more than a month.”

“Want to elaborate on that?” Hawes said flatly.

Benson turned to him. “Maybe I’d better call my lawyer,” he said.

“No, maybe you’d better sit right where you are,” Carella said.

Benson moved back his stool, so that he could see both detectives without having to turn from one to the other.

“Elaborate how?” he asked Hawes.

“Mr. Benson,” Hawes said, “do you own a blue, hundred-percent-wool robe with white piping on the cuffs and collar?”

“Yes. Who’s kidding who? You found my robe in Marcia’s apartment, which is why you’re here, okay? So let’s cut the crap.”

“Do you own a gold Dunhill lighter?”

“Yes, it was in the pocket of the robe, okay? That doesn’t mean I killed her.”

“Who said you killed her?” Hawes asked.

“Did anybody say you killed her?” Carella asked.

“I’m assuming you’re here because...”

“Mr. Benson, when did you leave that robe in Miss Schaffer’s apartment?” Hawes asked.

“I told you. More than a month ago.”

“When, exactly?” Carella asked.

“Labor Day, it must have been. We spent the weekend together. In the city. The city’s a perfect place to spend any holiday. Everyone’s gone, you’ve got the whole place to...”

“You spent the Labor Day weekend in her apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Took clothes when you went there?”

“Yes. Well, only what I needed for...”

“Including the robe?”

“Yes. I guess I forgot to pack it when I left.”

“Forgot the robe and your lighter?”

“Yes.”

“Haven’t missed the lighter since Labor Day?”

“I have other lighters,” Benson said.

“You smoke Marlboros, do you?”

“I smoke Marlboros, yes.”

Carella took a small plastic calendar from his wallet, looked at it, and then said, “Labor Day was the fifth of September.”

“If you say so. You’re the one looking at the calendar.”

“I say so. And you haven’t seen her since, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“How’d you happen to meet her, Mr. Benson?” Hawes asked.

“At Ramsey U. I was doing a guest lecture on creative advertising. I ran into her at a reception later on.”

“And began dating her?”

“Yes. I’m single, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“How old are you, Mr. Benson?”

“Thirty-seven. There’s nothing wrong with that, either. Marcia was almost twenty-one. She’d have been twenty-one next month. I wasn’t robbing the cradle, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Did anyone say you were robbing the cradle?” Hawes asked.

“I have the feeling you both disapprove of my relationship with Marcia. Frankly, I don’t give a shit what you think. We had some good times together.”

“Then why’d you stop seeing her?”

“Who said I stopped seeing her?”

“You just told us that the last time you saw her was on Labor Day, September fifth.”

“That’s right.”

“Have you tried to contact her since?”

“No, but...”

“Telephone her? Write to her?”

“Why would I write to her? We both live in the same damn city!”

“But you didn’t phone her.”

“I may have, I don’t remember.”

“In any case, the last time you saw her was on September fifth.”

“How many times do I have to say it? Yes. Labor Day. September fifth, if that’s when it was.”

“That’s when it was.”

“So okay.”

Carella looked at Hawes.

“Mr. Benson,” he said, “did you have your hair cut on Saturday, September third?”

“No, I never have my hair cut on a Saturday.”

“When do you have it cut?”

“Tuesday afternoon. We have a staff meeting at two o’clock every Tuesday, and I usually go for a haircut at four.”

“You have you hair cut every Tuesday?”

“No, no. Every three weeks.”

“Then you did not have your hair cut on Saturday, September third?”

“I did not.”

“When’s the last time you had it cut?” Hawes asked.

“Last Tuesday,” Benson said.

“That would be October fourth,” Carella said, looking at the calendar.

“I suppose.”

“And three weeks before that would have been September thirteenth.”

“If that’s what the calendar says.”

“And three weeks before that would have been August twenty-third.”

“Where’s all this going, would you mind telling me? Do I need another haircut?”

“Mr. Benson, you said you left your robe in Miss Schaffer’s apartment on September fifth, the last time you saw her.”

“That’s right.”

“And you haven’t seen her since.”

“I haven’t.”

“You didn’t see her on September fifteenth, did you? Two days after you’d had a haircut?”

“I did not.”

“You didn’t see her on October sixth, did you? Again, two days after you’d had a haircut?”

“I didn’t see her on either of those days. The last time I saw her...”

“Yes, you told us. Labor Day.”

“Why are you lying to us?” Hawes asked gently.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Mr. Benson,” Carella said, “our laboratory report indicates that you had your hair cut forty-eight hours before it was deposited on that robe. You say you left the robe there on Labor Day, but you didn’t have your hair cut on September third, so either you left the robe there after an earlier haircut, or else you left it there after a later haircut, but you couldn’t have left it there on September fifth, which you say is the last time you saw Marcia Schaffer.”

“So why are you lying to us?” Hawes asked.

“Maybe I saw her after Labor Day,” Benson said. “What was that date you mentioned? The haircut before this last one?”

“You tell me,” Carella said.

“Whenever it was. The fourteenth, the fifteenth. Whenever.” He lifted his martini glass and took a quick swallow of it.

“But not this past week, huh? Not October sixth.”

“No, I’m sure of that.”

“You did not see Marcia Schaffer on October sixth, two days after you had your most recent haircut? You did not forget your robe in her apartment on October sixth?”

“I’m positive I didn’t.”

“Where were you on October sixth, Mr. Benson?”

“What day was that?”

“A Thursday. Thursday last week, Mr. Benson.”

“Well, I’m sure I was at work.”

“All day Thursday?”

“Yes, all day.”

“You didn’t see Miss Schaffer on Thursday night, did you?”

“No, I’m sure I didn’t.”

“How about Wednesday night?”

Benson sipped at his martini again.

“Did you see her on Wednesday night?” Hawes asked.

“The fifth of October?” Carella asked.

“Mr. Benson?” Hawes said.

“Did you see her that night?” Carella said.

“All right,” Benson said, and put down his glass. “All right, I saw her last Wednesday night, I was with her last Wednesday night. I went there right after work, we had dinner together and spent the... the rest of the night...”

The detectives said nothing. They waited.

“...in bed, I guess you’d say,” Benson said, and sighed.

“When did you leave the apartment?” Carella asked.

“The next morning. I went directly to work from there. Marcia was on her way to school.”

“This was Thursday morning, October sixth.”

“Yes.”

“Is that when you forgot the robe?”

“Yes.”

“What time was that, Mr. Benson?”

“I left the apartment at about eight-thirty.”

“And you’d had your hair cut at four o’clock on Tuesday afternoon.”

“Yes.”

“That’s a time span of about forty hours,” Carella said to Hawes.

“Close enough,” Hawes said, nodding.

“Where were you Thursday night at approximately seven o’clock?” Hawes asked.

“I thought nobody was saying I killed her,” Benson said.

“Nobody’s said it yet.”

“Then why do you want to know where I was Thursday night? That’s when she was killed, isn’t it? Thursday night?”

“That’s when she was killed.”

“So where were you Thursday night?” Carella asked.

“At seven o’clock, give or take,” Hawes said.

“I was having dinner with a friend of mine.”

“What friend?”

“A woman I know.”

“What’s her name?”

“Why do you have to drag her into this?”

“What’s her name, Mr. Benson?”

“She’s just a casual acquaintance, someone I met at the agency.”

“She works at the agency?”

“Yes.”

“What’s her name?” Hawes asked.

“I’d rather not say.”

Hawes and Carella looked at each other.

“How old is this one?” Hawes asked.

“It isn’t that. She’s not underage.”

“Then what is it?”

Benson shook his head.

“Was it only dinner last Thursday night?” Carella asked.

“It was more than dinner,” Benson said softly.

“You went to bed with her,” Hawes said.

“I went to bed with her.”

“Where?”

“My apartment.”

“On Boulder Street.”

“Yes, that’s where I live.”

“You had dinner with her at seven...”

“Yes.”

“And got back to the apartment at what time?”

“About nine.”

“And went to bed with her.”

“Yes.”

“What time did she leave the apartment?”

“At about one, a little later.”

“What’s her name, Mr. Benson?” Hawes asked.

“Look,” Benson said, and sighed.

The detectives waited.

“She’s married, okay?” Benson said.

“Okay,” Hawes said, “she’s married. What’s her name?”

“She’s married to a cop,” Benson said. “Look, I don’t want to get her in trouble, really. We’re talking about murder here.”

“You’re telling us?” Carella said.

“My point... the point is... This thing is getting a lot of attention. The one last night...”

“Oh, you know about the one last night?” Hawes asked.

“Yes, it was on television this morning. If a cop’s wife seems to be involved...”

“Involved how?” Carella asked. “Is she involved?”

“I’m talking about dragging her name into it. Suppose the newspapers found out? A cop’s wife? They’d have a field day with it.”

“We’ll keep it a secret,” Carella said. “What’s her name?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Where does her husband work?” Hawes asked. “This cop?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Where were you last night?” Hawes asked, and suddenly leaned into Benson.

“What?” Benson said.

“Last night, last night,” Hawes said. “When the hell was last night, Steve? You’ve got the calendar there.”

“What?” Carella said. He’d heard Hawes, he wasn’t asking what Hawes had said. He was simply surprised by the sudden anger in Hawes’s voice. So okay, Benson was bedding a cop’s wife. Not entirely unheard of in the annals of the department, witness Bert Kling’s recent divorce premised on exactly such a situation. So why the sudden anger?

“What?” he said again.

“Last night’s date,” Hawes said impatiently. “Give it to him.”

“October thirteenth,” Carella said.

“Where were you last night, October thirteenth?” Hawes asked.

“With... her,” Benson said.

“The cop’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“In bed again?”

“Yes.”

“You like to live dangerously, don’t you?” Hawes said, the same anger in his voice, his blue eyes flashing, his red hair looking as if it had suddenly caught fire. “What’s her name?”

“I don’t want to tell you that.”

“What’s her fucking name?” Hawes said, and grabbed Benson’s arm.

“Hey,” Carella said, “come on.”

“Her name,” Hawes said, tightening his grip on Benson’s arm.

“I can’t tell you that,” Benson said.

Carella sighed heavily. “Mr. Benson,” he said, “you realize...”

“Let go of my arm,” Benson said to Hawes.

“You realize, don’t you,” Carella said, “that Marcia Schaffer was killed last Thursday night...”

“Yes, damn it, I know that! Let go of my arm!” he said to Hawes again, and tried to yank it away. Hawes’s fingers remained clamped on it.

“And that your alibi for that night—”

“It isn’t an alibi!”

“...and for last night, when yet another person was...”

“I didn’t kill either of them!”

“The only one who can verify...”

“Her name is Robin Steele, damn it!” Benson said, and Hawes let go of his arm.