They came down the stairs and went out into the icy night, the beams of their strong flashlights sweeping over windows, streaking across blinds. This went on another fifteen minutes, and when they knocked on the door to come back inside, they led me into. the kitchen, McElwayne blowing on his cold, red hands. Butler had something important on her mind.
“Are you aware there’s a bent place in the jamb of the kitchen door?” she asked.
“No,” I said, startled.
She unlocked the door near the table by the window, where I usually ate when I was with friends or alone. Raw, freezing air rushed in as I moved close to her to see what she was talking about. She shone her light on a smalf indented impression in the strike plate and edge of the wooden frame where it appeared someone had tried to pry open the door.
“It could have been there for a while and you haven’t noticed,” she said. “We didn’t check when your alarm went off on Tuesday because it was the zone for the garage door.”
“My alarm went off on Tuesday?” I said in amazement. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“I’m going out to the car,” McElwayne said to his part-
ner as he walked out of the kitchen, still rubbing his hands.
“Be right back.”
“I was working day shift,” she explained to me. “It appears your housekeeper accidentally set it off.”
I couldn’t understand why Marie would have set off the alarm in the, garage, unless she’d gone out that way for some reason and had ignored the warning beep for too long.
“She was pretty shook up,” Butler went on. “Apparently couldn’t remember the code until we were already here.”
“What time was this?” I asked.
“Around eleven hundred hours.”
Marino wouldn’t have heard the call come over the radio because at eleven o’clock he was in the morgue with me. I thought of the alarm not being set when I got home that night, of the soiled towels and dirt on the rug. I wondered why Marie hadn’t left a note for me saying what had happened.
“We had no reason to check this door,” Butler said. “So I can’t say whether the pry mark was here on Tuesday or not.”
“Even if it wasn’t,” I said, “obviously someone tried to get in at some point.”
“Unit three-twenty,” Butler said. “Ten-five to a precinct B and E detective.”
“Unit seven-ninety-two,” came the response.
“Can you respond, reference B’ and E attempt?” she said, giving out my address.
“Ten-four. Take me about fifteen minutes.”
Butler set her radio Upright on the kitchen table and studied the lock a little more. Cold gusting air blew a stack of napkins on the floor and sent pages of a newspaper fluttering. `
“He’s coming out of Meadow and Cary,” she told me, as if it were something I ought to know. “That’s where the precinct is.”
She shut the door.
“They’re not part of the detective division anymore,” she went on, watching for my reaction. “So they got moved, are part of uniform operations now. I guess this was about a month ago,” she added as I began to suspect where the conversation was headed.
“I guess B and E detectives are under Deputy Chief Bray now,” I said.
She hesitated, then replied with an ironic smile, “Isn’t everybody?”
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” I asked.
“That would be nice. I don’t want to put you out:’
I got a bag of coffee from the freezer. Butler, sat down and started filling out an offense report while I got out mugs and cream and sugar, and dispatchers and cops jumped in and out in ten-codes on the air. The doorbell rang and I let the B&E detective in. I didn’t know him. It seemed I didn’t know anyone anymore since Bray had taken people away from jobs they had learned so well.
‘This the door right here?” the detective was asking Butler.
“Yeah. Hey, Johnny, you got a pen that works better than this?”
A headache began boxing with my brain.
“You got one that works at all?”
I couldn’t believe what was going on.