“Is that supposed to comfort me?
He ain’t Superman, Milo.
Good. ‘Cause I ain’t got no kryptonite.” He stood there thinking and swinging the bag. The woman across the street looked up. Our eyes met. She returned to her paper.
“If the guy walked around,” said Milo, “maybe he touched stuff. After the apartment was printed. Now you and I just mauled it. … Asking for new prints is gonna be fun.”
“I doubt he left any. That careful, he is.”
“I’ll ask anyway.” He began trudging down the stairs. Stopped midway. “If this is a message, who’s it aimed at? Not the public. Unlike the body and the note, there was no way he could be sure it would be found.”
“At this point,” I said, “he’s talking to himself. Doing anything he can to enhance the kick, evoke memories of the kill. He may very well want to return to the scene of the murder but views that as too dangerous, so breaking into Mate’s home, directly or by surrogate, would be the next-best thing.”
I thought of something Richard Doss had told me … dancing on Mate’s grave.
“Broken stethoscope,” I said. “If I’m right about his taking the black bag, the message is clear:’I get the real tools, you get broken garbage.'”
We resumed our descent. At the bottom of the stairs, Milo said, “The idea of a confederate gets me thinking. About Attorney Haiselden, who should be in town but isn’t. Because who spent more time with Mate? Who’d be more familiar with the apartment, maybe even have a key? The guy’s behavior is wrong, Alex. Here we are, Mate’s cold for a week, Haiselden should be throwing press conferences. But not a peep out of him. Just the opposite—he rabbits. Collecting coins from laundromats? Gimme a break, this asshole’s hiding from something. Zoghbie said representing Mate was the only thing Haiselden did as a lawyer. That says overinvolve-ment. Mate was Haiselden’s ticket to celebrity. Maybe Haiselden got hooked on it, wanted more, no more second fiddle. He watches Mate I.V. enough travelers, figures it qualifies him as a death doc. Hell, maybe Haiselden’s one of those guys who went to law school because he couldn’t get into med school.”
“Interesting,” I said. “Something else I pulled off the computer fits that. Newspaper account of a press conference Haiselden did call after one of the trials. He said Mate deserved the Nobel Prize, then he added that as Mate’s lawyer, he deserved part of the money.”
His free hand balled. “I’ve been delegating finding him to Korn and Demetri, but now I’m handling it personally. Going over to his house, right now. South West-wood. I can drop you at the station or you can come along.”
I looked at my watch. Nearly five. It had been a long day. “I’ll call Robin and come along.”
We crossed the street to the unmarked. Milo locked the evidence bag in the trunk, circled to the driver’s side, stopped. Glancing to his left.
The Hispanic woman hadn’t moved. Milo turned. Her head flipped away, quick as a shuffled card, and I knew she’d been watching us.
Eyes back on the newspaper. Concentrating. The paper waved. No breeze, her hands had tightened. Her bag was a macrame sack that she’d placed on the grass.
Milo studied her. She ignored him. Licked her lips. Buried her nose deeper in newsprint.
He began to turn away from her, and her eyes flicked—just for a second—toward Mate’s apartment.
He said, “Hold on.”
I followed him as he strode toward her. Her hands were clenching the paper, causing it to shimmy. She folded her lips inward and drew the newsprint closer to her face. I got near enough to read the date. Yesterday’s paper. The classifieds. Employment opportunities …
Milo said, “Ma’am?”
The woman looked up. Her lips unfolded. Thin purplish lips, chapped and puckered, bleached white around the edges. The rest of her complexion was nutmeg brown. Bags under the eyes.
She was somewhere between fifty and sixty, short and heavy with a plump face and big, gorgeous black eyes. She wore a navy polyester bomber jacket over a blue-and-white flowered dress that reached to midcalf. The dress material looked flimsy, riding up her stocky frame, adhering to bulges. Thick ankles swelled over the top seams of old but clean Nike running shoes. White socks rolled low exposed chafed shins. Her nails were square-cut. Her black hair was threaded with gray and braided past her waist. Her skin was slack around neck, jaw and chipmunk cheeks, but stretched tight over a wide brow. No makeup, no jewelry. A rural look.