“Oh, this is perfect,” Mr. Moore moaned. “The case has fallen to pieces, and now Marcus thinks he’s H. G. Wells. Well, when you build your little time machine, Marcus, we’ll all pile in and-”
“No. Wait, John.” Miss Howard’s green eyes had gotten their usual glitter back, and she sat up. “He’s right. She must have slipped up somewhere in the past-it’s just that no one was looking for it, at the time. If we hold off on the Linares case for now, and dig around in some of these other deaths-then we can come at her from a blind side.”
“After all, Moore,” the Doctor agreed, “look at the new leads we have obtained. We now know where the woman comes from. That is crucial, and must be explored-for all such killers manifest some sort of aberrant behavior early in life. And we are nearly certain of the crime she committed before the Linares kidnapping. It was dismissed as a natural occurrence at the time, but if we interview the doctors involved, and review the matter in light of what we now know, we have a very good chance of changing that interpretation.”
Mr. Moore had been listening to all this carefully, and I could see he wanted to keep arguing; but something seemed to come into his head. “Sara-did you say that her hometown’s near Saratoga?”
Miss Howard’s face screwed up at the disconnected nature of the question. “Stillwater? Yes, it’s about fifteen miles southeast of the Springs, more or less. Right on the river. Why, John?”
Mr. Moore thought about it for a second, then held up a finger. “I’ve got a friend. He used to work in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. But he grew up near Saratoga. A few years back he had to leave New York, and he’s now working in the D.A.’s office up there. Ballston Spa’s still the county seat, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Miss Howard answered with a nod.
“Well,” Mr. Moore went on, “if this Hatch woman did cross any legal lines up there, Kreizler-then Rupert Picton is the man for us to talk to. A born prosecutor, loves to dig up dirt.”
“There, you see, John?” The Doctor lifted his glass. “How difficult was that? And let’s not forget-we have established a link between the woman and the Vanderbilts at the time of the last murder. It must be investigated.”
At the mention of the great family’s name, Mr. Moore’s face turned evilly gleeful, like a boy with a box of matches. “Yes, and I want in on that one,” he said. “Cornell Vanderbilt, that pious, pompous old-I want to be there when we tell him his day maid spent her off-hours kidnapping kids and suffocating them!”
“Let’s not flat-out jump to conclusions, gentlemen,” Lucius said. “We have just one possible homicide, at this point, along with two definite kidnappings.”
“Oh, I know that and you know that, Lucius,” Mr. Moore said. “But Vanderbilt doesn’t. I want to tweak his nose, that-”
“You’ve made your point, John,” the Doctor interrupted, “and you shall be there when Vanderbilt is interviewed. One final question remains.” Starting his normal pacing of the floor-a signal, somehow, that we’d beaten back the moment of doubt and were going to proceed with the job-the Doctor took to shaking his chalk in his free hand. “We know that Libby Hatch-as I think we should now refer to her-almost certainly will reach a fatal crisis with Ana Linares. I also believe, after hearing Stevie and Marcus’s story about the condition of her husband, that she is slowly killing him with morphine, in such a way that his death will be viewed as a result of his own degeneracy-thus gaining her the kind of sympathy and admiration she seems, from all accounts, to crave. There are collateral benefits to his demise, as well-inheritance of both his pension and what I suspect is his house, not to mention the removal of any obstruction to her activities with Knox. The pressing question is, how can we forestall these events? If we continue to conceal ourselves from her, she will believe we are beaten. If, on the other hand, we make her aware that we are investigating her past-”
“Then she won’t feel safe to murder again,” Miss Howard finished. “At least, not until we have left her alone.”
“Are you talking about a direct statement to her, Doctor?” Lucius said. “I’ve got to remind you of what John said about the Dusters: if she knows we’re after her, she’ll tell Knox to turn them loose on us.”
“Which is why you shall make the declaration, Detective Sergeant. You and Marcus. And not in our name-in that of your department. We may in fact be prevented from making this an official inquiry, but there’s no reason why she should know that, is there? You need not present any warrants or indictments, only the simple statement that the department is aware of her past actions and will be watching her future movements. If you create the impression that you are speaking in an official capacity, she will pass that impression on to Knox. The Hudson Dusters, while violent, are neither ambitious nor suicidal. One very much doubts that they will jeopardize either their freedom, their access to cocaine, or their status as romantic Bohemian idols for anyone’s sake, including that of Knox’s paramour du jour.”
Marcus looked to his brother. “He’s got a point.”
“Far more than a point,” the Doctor answered, collecting the newspapers and hospital documents and holding them up. “We now have her past. Or pieces of it, at any rate. That is what we have been missing-some hint of what lies behind the current behavior, some ‘way in,’ as Sara puts it. Until now we have been crippled, primarily by the lack of any guidance from my own profession, which, like the rest of our society, suffers from a myopia which prevents us from seeing that a woman, a mother, can be capable of such crimes. And so we have moved haltingly, unsteadily, trying to know things about this particular woman that each of us, in some recess of our own minds, wishes was unknowable and untrue. Oh, we may have had her physical image, and evidence of her most recent destructive behavior, but how much could we truly read into that? Now, however, we have specific details of her past-keys. And we must not hesitate before using them.”
“Except, perhaps, Doctor”-Miss Howard suddenly rose and looked my way-“to take a moment to acknowledge the person whose bravery got us here.”
She held her wineglass up-to me. I shifted uneasily as the others then turned. Discouragement was gone from their faces and had been replaced by confidence, readiness-and smiles. One by one, they each held up their glasses and bottles; and I don’t mind saying, it made me nervous as hell.
But I was smiling a little, too.
“To Stevie,” Miss Howard went on. “Who’s done what none of us could have done,” she continued, “because he’s lived what none of us have lived.”
The rest of them all said, “To Stevie!” together, took big sips of their drinks, and then came at me in a wave.
I just looked at Mike and then out the window, as uncomfortable and as pleased as I can ever remember being.
“Okay, okay,” I said, shielding myself with my hands from their displays of affection and appreciation. “We got work to do, remember…”