“What is your point, Mr. Sullivan?”
“Well, obviously the reporter got the victims’ names from the cops. In other words, from you.”
“It’s public information.”
“I don’t really give a shit about that. I just want to know how come you didn’t mention this victim, yours truly? You don’t even remember my name, do you?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t say that I do.”
“Figures. Some fucking asshole breaks into my condo and wipes me out, and other than smearing black powder everywhere – on a day when I was dressed in white cashmere, I might add – the cops don’t do a thing. I’m one of your fucking cases.”
“When was your condo broken into?”
“Don’t you remember? I’m the one who raised such a stink about my down vest. If it wasn’t for me, you guys would never have even heard of eiderdown! When I told the cop that among other things my vest had been taken and it had cost me five hundred bucks on sale, you know what he said?”
“I have no idea, sir.”
“He said, What’s it stuffed with, cocaine?’
And I said, ‘No, Sherlock. Eider duck down.’
And he looked around nervous as hell and dropped his hand close to his nine-mil. The dumb-shit really thought there was some other person in my place named Eider and I’d just yelled at this person to duck down, like I was going to pull a gun or something. At that point I just left and-”
Wesley switched off the tape recorder.
We sat in my kitchen. Lucy was working out at my club again.
“The B-and-E this Hilton Sullivan’s talking about was in fact reported by him on Saturday, December eleventh. Apparently, he’d been out of town, and when he returned to his condo that Saturday afternoon, he discovered that he’d been burglarized,” Wesley explained.
“Where is his condo located?”
I asked.
“Downtown on West Franklin, an old brick building with condos that start at a hundred grand. Sullivan lives on the first floor. The perpetrator got in through an unsecured window.”
“No alarm system?”
“No.”
“What was stolen?”
“Jewelry, money, and a twenty-two revolver. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Sullivan’s revolver is the one that was used to kill Eddie Heath, Susan, and Donahue. But I think we’re going to find that it is, because there’s no question that our guy did the Band-E.”
“Prints were recovered?”
“A number of them. The city had them, and you know how their backlog is. With all the homicides, B-and-Es aren’t a top priority. In this instance, the latents had been processed and were just sitting. Pete intercepted them right after Lucero got the call. Vander’s already run them through the system. He got a hit in exactly three seconds.”
“Waddell again.”
Wesley nodded.
“How far is Sullivan’s condo from Spring Street?”
“Within walking distance. I think we know where our guy escaped from.”
“You’re checking out recent releases?”
“Oh, sure. But we’re not going to find him in a stack of paper on somebody’s desk. The warden was too careful for that. Unfortunately, he’s also dead. I think he sent this inmate back out on the street, and the first thing he did was burglarize a condominium and probably find himself a set of wheels.”
“Why would Donahue free an inmate?”
“My theory is that the warden needed some dirty work done. So he selected an inmate to be his personal operative and set the animal loose. But Donahue made a slight tactical error. He picked the wrong guy, because the person who’s committing these killings is not going to be controlled by anyone. My suspicion, Kay, is that Donahue never intended for anyone to die, and when Jennifer Deighton turned up dead, he freaked.”
“He was probably the one who called my office and identified himself as John Deighton.”
“Could very well be. The point is that Donahue’s intention was to have Jennifer Deighton’s house ransacked because someone was looking for something perhaps communications from Waddell. But a simple burglary isn’t enough fun. The warden’s little pet likes to hurt people.”
I thought of the indentations in the carpet of Jennifer Deighton’s living room, the injuries to her neck, and the fingerprint recovered from her dining room chair.