Eight Million Ways To Die

he said. "It doesn't look to me like something you can take to the bank. Who knows when Hendryx wrote this? Maybe after the booze and the pills started working, and who can say where she was coming from?"

Behind us, two men in plainclothes were putting a young white kid in the holding cage. A desk away, a sullen black woman was answering questions. I picked up the top photo on the stack and looked at Kim Dakkinen's butchered body. Durkin switched on the razor and finished shaving.

"What I don't understand," he said, "is what you think you got.

You think she had a boyfriend and the boyfriend gave her the ring.

Okay. You also figured she had a boyfriend and he gave her the fur jacket, and you traced that and it looks as though you were right, but the jacket won't lead to the boyfriend because he kept his name out of it. If you can't trace him with a jacket that we've got, how can you trace him with a ring that all we know about it is it's missing? You see what I mean?"

"I see what you mean."

"That Sherlock Holmes thing, the dog that didn't bark, well what you got is a ring that isn't there, and what does it prove?"

"It's gone."

"Right."

"Where'd it go?"

"Same place a bathtub ring goes. Down the fucking drain. How do I know where it went?"

"It disappeared."

"So? Either it walked away or someone took it."

"Who?"

"How do I know who?"

"Let's say she wore it to the hotel where she was killed."

"You can't know that."

"Let's just say so, all right?"

"Okay, run with it."

"Who took it? Some cop yank it off her finger?"

"No," he said. "Nobody'd do that. There's people who'll take cash if it's loose, we both know that, but a ring off a murder victim's finger?"

He shook his head. "Besides, nobody was alone with her. It's something nobody'd do with somebody else watching."

"How about the maid? The one who discovered the body?"

"Jesus, no way. I questioned the poor woman. She took one look at the body and started screaming and she'd still be screaming now if she had the breath left. You couldn'ta got her close enough to Dakkinen to touch her with a mop handle."

"Who took the ring?"

"Assuming she wore it there—"

"Right."

"So the killer took it."

"Why?"

"Maybe he's queer for jewelry. Maybe green's his favorite color."

"Keep going."

"Maybe it's valuable. You got a guy who goes around killing people, his morals aren't the best. He might not draw the line at stealing."

"He left a few hundred dollars in her purse, Joe."

"Maybe he didn't have time to go through her bag."

"He had time to take a shower, for Christ's sake. He had time to go through her bag. In fact, we don't know that he didn't go through her bag. We just know he didn't take the money."

"So?"

"But he took the ring. He had time to take hold of her bloody hand and tug it off her finger."

"Maybe it came off easy. Maybe it wasn't a snug fit."

"Why'd he take it?"

"He wanted it for his sister."

"Got any better reasons?"

"No," he said. "No, goddamn it, I don't have any better reasons.

What are you getting at? He took it because it could be traced to him?"

"Why not?"

"Then why didn't he take the fur? We fucking know a boyfriend bought her the fur. Maybe he didn't use his name, but how can he be sure of what he let slip and what the salesman remembers? He took towels, for Christ's sake, so he wouldn't leave a fucking pubic hair behind, but he left the fur. And now you say he took the ring. Where did this ring come from besides left field? Why have I got to hear about this ring tonight when I never heard of it once in the past two and a half weeks?"

I didn't say anything. He picked up his cigarettes, offered me one. I shook my head. He took one for himself and lit it. He took a drag, blew out a column of smoke, then ran a hand over his head, smoothing down the dark hair that already lay flat upon his scalp.

He said, "Could be there was some engraving. People do that with rings, engraving on the inside. To Kim from Freddie, some shit like that.

You think that's it?"

"I don't know."

"You got a theory?"

I remembered what Danny Boy Bell had said. If the boyfriend commanded such muscle, was so well connected, how come he hadn't shown her off? And if it was someone else with the muscle and the connections and the insufficient words to the wise, how did that someone else fit in with the boyfriend?

Who was this accountant type who paid for her mink, and why wasn't I getting a smell of him from anywhere else?

And why did the killer take the ring?

I reached into my pocket. My fingers touched the gun, felt its cool metal, slipped beneath it to find the little cube of broken green glass that had started all of this. I took it from my pocket and looked at it, and Durkin asked me what it was.

"Green glass," I said.

"Like the ring."

I nodded. He took the piece of glass from me, held it to the light, dropped it back in my palm. "We don't know she wore the ring to the hotel," he reminded me. "We just said so for the sake of argument."

"I know."

"Maybe she left it at the apartment. Maybe someone took it from there."

"Who?"