Thomas Perry - Sleeping Dogs

Lana hesitated, then caught up with her. “I don’t usually just pop in,” she said, and then gave a nervous, apologetic laugh.

“He’s not doing anything more important than this,” said Elizabeth.

“What have you got?” Richardson asked as they entered.

“We’re not sure,” said Elizabeth. “What I think we’ve got is several men trying to burn him out of a motel near O’Hare. I’m not sure who that would be. It’s Castiglione territory.”

“Maybe Paul Cambria’s men,” said Richardson. “I’ve been trying to sort out the one from yesterday. The night the cop and the two guys with machine guns got killed, Paul Cambria was at a public function in Gary, maybe a mile from the spot. The local cops think he might have been trying to establish an alibi.”

“A mile from the place where his men were going to shoot someone? An alibi should have some distance …”

“More likely, our friend was trying to get Paul Cambria. I’m not sure where the cop fits in.”

But Elizabeth was racing ahead. “And he missed. Or somebody saw him. Anyway, something went wrong, and they followed him to Chicago, or knew where he was going to stay, and …” she stopped.

“What’s wrong?” asked Richardson.

“The cop. You’re right. Sergeant Lempert. He doesn’t fit in, does he? Maybe he’s what went wrong.”

Richardson was getting excited now. “Maybe he’s the reason the Butcher’s Boy couldn’t get Cambria. Lempert saw him near Cambria doing something suspicious, and chased him.”

“For a mile? Alone?” asked Elizabeth.

“Followed him, then. Kept him under surveillance. Only he wasn’t the only one. But wait. The only reason the two soldiers with machine guns would kill Lempert is if he were with the Butcher’s Boy, and they couldn’t just wait until he left. Which means he must have actually arrested the Butcher’s Boy.”

Lana said, “I don’t follow—”

Elizabeth said, “I do, but I don’t buy it.”

Richardson spoke faster now as his scenario became clearer and more obvious. “The cop and the Butcher’s Boy are in the same store. A Xerox copying business, which probably means the Butcher’s Boy ducked in there to evade capture because there’s nothing else he could conceivably want in a place like that. The other two wouldn’t shoot a cop unless they had to. The only reason they would is if he was going to take the Butcher’s Boy away to someplace where they couldn’t reach him. And where’s that, except the police station?”

“But, then, how …” said Lana, and stopped.

“How what?”

“Well,” Elizabeth said quietly, “they usually handcuff a person with his hands behind his back. But what you’re saying is that the Butcher’s Boy got out of the handcuffs, took the policeman’s gun and shot somebody who couldn’t hit him first with a machine gun.”

“You’re right,” said Richardson. “I got carried away.”

Elizabeth nodded. “He can do that to you.”

“And we’re not even sure he was the one,” said Lana.

“But if he was,” Richardson said, “then you’ve got to take my hypothesis seriously. There’s no vendetta against Balacontano that could include Fratelli in Buffalo and Cambria in Gary.”

“I already take it seriously,” said Elizabeth.

“You do?”

“Sure. I was making a mistake. What I was doing was putting myself in his body, saying, ‘What would I do if—?’ and that’s the wrong approach. In the first place, we don’t have enough information that we can be sure is true, and so we can’t build a theory that’s based on it. In the second place, he wouldn’t do what I’d do. Or rather I wouldn’t do what he does: that’s a better way of saying it because it’s a proposition I can prove, and it means the same thing in the end. We don’t know what he feels, or if he has any sensations that we would recognize as feelings, so we can’t build a theory on that. All we can do is try to figure out what would be the smartest thing for him to do, because that’s pure logic, and catch him while he’s trying to do it.”

Elizabeth saw that Lana had slipped away, and turned to see where she had gone. She was outside in the hallway talking to a deliveryman.

“Is she any good?” asked Richardson.

“Didn’t you hire her?”

“Not really. The system hired her. She was in the pool of applicants and had the best school record. When she came in for an interview she was wearing clean clothes and showed no symptom of mental illness, so I would have had to make a written argument to hire anybody else.”

“Nicely put,” said Elizabeth. “I think she’s smart. Eventually she’s probably going to figure out that she’s wasting her time here and do a lateral transfer.”

Lana signed the man’s clipboard and came back with a wrapped package. “It’s for you, Elizabeth.”

“Thanks.” She put the package under her arm.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” asked Richardson.

“Weren’t we in the middle of something?”

“Open it.”

The other two watched while Elizabeth looked for a return address, then tore the brown paper off and opened the plain white box. Inside was a leather folder with gold leaf that said “?. V. Waring.” When she opened it, she saw the stationery with the heading “?. V. Waring” on it. “I didn’t order this,” she said.

“Maybe it’s a present,” said Lana.

“Is there a card?” asked Richardson.

“There’s an envelope for one, but nothing inside. See?”

“What a shame,” said Lana. “It’s beautiful.”

Richardson said his version of the same thing. “It cost a lot of money. English glove leather, engraved vellum. It adds up quick.”

“What am I going to do?” asked Elizabeth.

“What do you mean?”

“Somebody sends you an expensive present for no reason at all, and you don’t have any idea who did it …”

She noticed that Lana was at her desk talking into the telephone. Of course. The messenger. He would know who had paid for the delivery, or at least the name of the store. There must be paperwork because Lana had signed for it. At least her brain was working, even if Elizabeth’s wasn’t.

The phone on her desk rang and she snatched it up. “Waring.”

“Hi, Elizabeth.”

“Jack, I’ve been trying to call you about—”

“About the fire in the motel. I just heard all about it on the police radio.”

“Police radio? Where are you?”

“Gary. I’ve been talking to the cops at the copying store. I figured you might be looking for me and thought I’d better call you.”

Elizabeth’s mind strained in two directions at once. First things first. Find out what Jack knows. “Good. We’ve been trying to work it out. There’s something missing, so it still doesn’t make sense. This Sergeant Lempert—”

“He’s what I’m calling about,” said Hamp. “What I’m about to tell you doesn’t get written down on paper. It’s an impression, a kind of instinct. I don’t want to have to fly to Washington and try to prove it, okay?”

“If you say so.”

“Lempert was dirty. Watching the cops going over the scene a little while ago. I got the feeling they didn’t think much of him. It’s just a feeling, and I don’t have time to go into it real deep, but he was dirty.”

Elizabeth groaned.

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s just that it so obviously fits, and it’s the one thing that never crossed my mind. I mean it did, but I kept pushing it out because it didn’t lead anywhere. It didn’t take me to the next step. Except that what I was doing was assuming I was the one who got to say what the next step was. That’s stupid.” There was a pause, and now her voice betrayed annoyance. “If the police knew, why didn’t they tell anybody?”