“You’re lucky John Fiske hasn’t slapped you with a lawsuit yet. He still might.”
“Maybe he should,” was McKenna’s surprising reply. “I probably would if I were him.”
“I’ll be sure and tell him that,” Chandler said slowly.
McKenna’s gaze darted all over the place for a couple of minutes, seemingly absorbing every detail like a sheet of Polaroid, before he glanced back at Chandler. “What are you, anyway, his mentor?”
“Didn’t know the man until a couple days ago.”
“You make friends a lot faster than I do, then.” McKenna inclined his head at Chandler. “Mind if I look around?”
“Go ahead. Try not to touch anything that doesn’t look like it’s got a pound of print dust on it.”
McKenna nodded and stepped carefully around the living room. He noted the mark on the floor.
“Fiske going after his purported attacker?”
“That’s right. Only I didn’t know he was purported.”
“He is until we have a corroborating account. At least that’s how I work.”
Chandler unwrapped a piece of gum and popped it in his mouth, slowly chewing over both the agent’s words and the gum.
“Sara Evans reported to me that she also saw a man flee from the building and that Fiske was chasing him. Is that good enough for you?”
“That’s convenient corroboration. Fiske is one lucky guy. He should run out right now and play the lottery while he’s so hot.”
“I wouldn’t call losing your brother being lucky.”
McKenna stopped walking and looked at the pantry door, which was ajar and covered with print dust. “I guess it depends on how you look at it, doesn’t it?”
“What the hell do you have against him? You don’t even know the guy.”
McKenna’s eyes flashed at him. “That’s right, Detective Chandler, and you know what? Neither do you.”
Chandler wanted to say something back but couldn’t think of anything. In a way the man was right. This thought was interrupted by one of his men.
“Detective Chandler, we found something I think you might want to see.”
Chandler took the sheaf of papers from the tech and looked down at it. McKenna joined him.
“Looks like an insurance policy,” McKenna said.
“We found it on one of the shelves in the pantry. No food in there. Guy used it for storage. Tax returns, bills and stuff like that are in there too.”
“Half a million bucks worth of life insurance,” Chandler muttered. He flipped rapidly through the pages, passing by the legalese until he got to the end, where more specific information was set forth.
“Michael Fiske was the insured.”
McKenna’s finger suddenly stabbed at the bottom of the page. Chandler paled a little as he read the line the man had so energetically indicated. “And John is the primary beneficiary.”
The two men looked at each other. “Would you like to take a walk and hear a theory of mine?” McKenna asked.
Chandler wasn’t sure exactly what to do.
“It won’t take long,” McKenna added. “In fact, some of it you’re probably thinking right now, I would imagine.”
Chandler finally shrugged. “You got five minutes.”
The two men walked out onto the sidewalk in front of the row house. McKenna took a moment to light up a cigarette and then offered one to Chandler. The detective held out his pack of gum. “I can be overweight or I can smoke. I like to eat, so there we are.”
They strolled along the dark street as McKenna began talking. “I found out that Fiske doesn’t have an alibi for the probable time his brother was murdered.”
“Might be something in his favor. If he killed his brother, he would’ve worked hard to establish one.”
“I disagree for a couple of reasons. First, he probably never thought he would become a suspect.”
“With a half-million-dollar life insurance policy?”
“He might have thought we wouldn’t find out. We go down a different trail and that’s it. He waits awhile and then collects his money.”
“I don’t know about that. What’s your second point?”
“If he had some perfect alibi — which there is no such thing if you’re guilty — then a hole would come up in it somewhere, sometime, somehow. So why bother? He was a cop and now a lawyer. He knows all about alibis. He says he doesn’t have one and then he doesn’t have to worry about it blowing up in his face. And then he counts on everybody reaching the conclusion you just did, namely, that if he’s guilty he would’ve concocted a good one.”