Small Town

“You’re right, it’s stupid, but I was just as happy a couple of hours ago when I had the sandwich for lunch. They should both have records of the delivery.”

“They should.”

“While I was eating the pizza,” he said, “my agent called. She’s working on a deal, she wanted to discuss strategy. She can confirm that we were on the phone for ten minutes, maybe closer to fifteen.”

“And this was when?”

“Say ten-thirty.”

“That leaves plenty of time for you to get in a cab and kill three women in a whorehouse. If I’m going to show anything to Frick and Frack, I’d like to show ’em enough to cover you past midnight.”

“I was online,” he said.

“What, the computer? They can take those things apart and find out what you had for breakfast, but—”

“No,” he said, “I was online, Maury. This was after I got off the phone with Roz.”

“Your agent.”

“Right. Something she said, it doesn’t matter, but I wanted to check something on Amazon. I logged on, I checked my e-mail, and I went to their website.”

“How can we prove this?”

“I have a dedicated phone line for the computer. It’s a local call to AOL when you log on. Won’t there be a record?”

“Very good.”

“And I wound up buying a couple of books from Amazon. I always do, it’s impossible to visit the site without remembering some book you think you have to have, especially in the middle of the night. A couple of clicks and it’s in the mail two days later.”

“They’d have a record of a purchase.”

“They send you an e-mail confirming it, with time and date on it. I downloaded that, it’s on my hard drive.”

Winters went over and opened the door.

“You’ll confirm all this,” the lawyer told the two detectives, “in about a minute and a half, give or take. You’ll pull the LUDS and that should be enough, but you can go as far as you want. Put one of your computer people on it, talk to the pizza place, the deli.”

“We had to check him out,” Arthur Pender said.

“And you checked, and he’s out. But as far as I’m concerned, you boys are on to something.”

They looked at him.

“Fairchild and the three last night,” Winters said. “They’re as linked as they ever were. The same boy finds all the bodies, that was too good a coincidence twenty minutes ago and it’s no different now.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning Ernest Hemingway here didn’t do either of them. You just cleared him on one, you should go ahead and clear him on the other.”

“Not our case,” Hurley said.

“So why not talk to your friends at the Sixth, tell them talk to the geniuses in the DA’s office.”

“Yeah, right. I’m sure they’d love to hear from us.”

“How could you not tell them? You just looked at this gentleman in connection with a homicide and cleared him a hundred percent. You don’t think that’s information they ought to have?”

“I suppose we could make a call.”

“Of course you could,” Winters said. “Thanks for coming, fellows. You’ve been very helpful.”

Winters stayed and chatted with him after the two detectives had left. After the lawyer’s departure, Creighton called his agent.

“Talk about highs and lows,” he said. “I started out thinking I was going to be charged with three murders. Next minute Maury’s talking about getting the original charges dropped.”

“Really?”

“But he told me privately that’s not going to happen. The DA’s not going to withdraw an indictment just because I’ve been cleared in a case that may or may not be related to the original crime I’m charged with. They’ve still got the same evidence they had before. She still picked me up at the Kettle and I still went home with her.”

“And she’s still dead.”

“The poor woman. You know, I’ve been angry at her all along, for getting me into this mess in the first place. Like it’s her fault. But all she wanted was to get laid, and she wound up dead, and how is any of that her fault?”

“You’re not angry with her anymore.”

“No, and I can’t understand why I was in the first place.”

“You were afraid, sweetie.”

“And now I’m not, because I’m beginning to see daylight. This won’t get charges dropped, according to Maury, but what it should do is create a little doubt in the minds of Reade and Slaughter.”

“The arresting officers?”

“Right. Even if they’re still completely convinced I did it, they’ll want to cover their asses in case it becomes clear I didn’t. Which means they might look a little harder for witnesses who might steer them in the direction of another suspect.”

“That would be wonderful. The only thing...”

“What?”

“This is going to sound like St. Augustine. ‘Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.’ ”

“You lost me.”

“Look, you and I both know you didn’t do this thing, right? And we know you’re going to be cleared.”

“It’s beginning to look that way.”

“Well, that’s the important thing, in fact it’s the only thing that matters, but all things being equal...”

“What?”

“I’d just as soon it doesn’t all clear up today or tomorrow,” she said. “Or even next week or next month. God, that sounds terrible, doesn’t it?”

“It might, except I think I see where you’re going.”