Lucas ticked the points off:

"We had a guy who came out of the slums of Detroit with no educationand two years later, is setting up a Miami corporation to buy legitimate apartments which he uses to wash his drug money. That's a little too sophisticated.

"If it's too sophisticated, where did he figure out how to do it? How about a banker?

"What does the banker get out of it? How about dope, money, and women?

"What does Rodriguez get? How about financing, a way to wash his dope money, and legitimacy. He was asmart guy, even if he didn't have much education.

"What happens at the party? Who knows? But Spooner winds up killing Sandy Lansing, maybe accidentally. Alie'e witnesses the killing, so he has to kill her. He then evaporatesmaybe goes out the window, I don't know. In any case, he doesn't come up on our party list. He's not part of that crowd, he's just Lansing's boyfriend, and lot of people don't even knowher."

"Wait a minute," Rose Marie said. "There's a fairly big jump in there. All the other stuff is linked, but that's a pure jump"

"Let me finish," Lucas said.

"We identify Rodriguez as being at that party, because, unlike Spooner, he's known to be rich and single, and so he gets some attention from the other partygoers.

"When Al-Balah links Rodriguez and Lansing, weassume that since they were dealer-employee, that there'd been a falling-out. We thenassume that Derek Deal knew about them, because we knew Rodriguez was Lansings boss. We assume that Deal went to Rodriguez, tried to blackmail him, and got killed for his trouble. But when I took a photo of Rodriguez over to Brown's, nobody recognized him. And I remembered that, back when I first talked to Deal, he wasn't absolutely sure that Sandy Lansing was a dealer. Hethought she might be, but he didn'tknow . And that suggests to me that he didn't know who her boss was. He definitely knew who her boyfriend waswe confirmed that today, with the photo of Spooner. He went toSpooner, not Rodriguez, and he got killed.

"Of all the people who were at the party, the ones most likely to finger Spooner as being there were Lansing, who was dead, and Rodriguez, who couldn't, because that would drag the whole drug-apartment deal out into the open.

"So then I talk to Spooner. I try to intimidate him by suggesting that we're about to bust Rodriguez, and let him know that we're watching Rodriguez, that we're all over him.

"Spooner realizes that if wereally come down on Rodriguez, his goose is cookedRodriguez will try to stay clean as long as he can, but he's not gonna suck it up for first-degree murder. He'll talk to us, and one thing that will come out is that Spooner was at the party. And Spooner had some kind of relationship with Lansing. Sex, dope, something. He'd be as good a suspect as Rodriguez. But if Rodriguez commits suicide"

"Spooner knows we're watching Rodriguez, and probably suspects that includes tapping the phone. So he goes to Rodriguez's apartment and slips a note under the door.

Probably something unsigned, maybe even typed. It says something like, 'They're coming for youyou gotta get anything incriminating off your computer. Burn this note.' "

"And we find ashes in the sink at Rodriguez's apartment," Del said. "Though he could of flushed it."

"Nothing gets rid of paper like burning," Lucas said. He continued:

"So Spooner watches Rodriguez until he sees him leave for home, then hides out in the building where he can watch the entrance from the ramp. Rodriguez goes home, gets the note, thinks, 'Oh, man, if they get the computer, my goose is cooked.' He stops at CompUSA to get a Zip disk, because he plans to dump his files to the Zip disk, then either write over the hard drive or just take it out and throw it in the river. They're cheap enough.

"Spooner knows we're watching, so he can't just whack Rodriguez and walk out the Skyway or the ramp or the front door, which would be the logical way to get out, especially if you're in a little bit of a hurry. He has to sneak out. The basement door."

"How'd he know about that?" Del asked.

"Who knows? Maybe from hanging around with Rodriguez. Maybe he actually scouted the building the day before. Whatever the reason, if Rodriguez was murdered, the killersnuck out, as though he knew the place were being watched."

"How'd he kill him?" Rose Marie asked.

"Hit him with something flat and hard. Not a baseball bat, because the wound would be wrong. Maybe a two-by-four."

"Oooh. Sting the hands," Del said.

"He then hauls Rodriguez over to the railing, hangs him over, head down, and lets go. Rodriguez hits headfirst and he's gone," Lucas said.

"I'll tell you something," Rose Marie said. "Remember when those people were doing their swan dives over in the county government building? I saw a couple of those. They didn't go headfirstthey just let themselves fall, and generally landed flat. Rodriguez would have had to made a conscious decision todive to land headfirst. That doesn't feel right. Even people who want to die don't want their identities erased. Their faces broken up."

"I hadn't thought about that, but you're right," Lucas said. Del nodded.

They all sat and thought about it, Rose Marie swinging back and forth in her chair, and finally she asked, "Have you guys figured out the rest of it?"

"We've figured out that we'll never get him, if that's what you mean," Del said.

Lucas nodded. "We've publicly said, or let it be known, that we think there are two killers working: one who killed Lansing and Alie'e, and somebody who's killing in revenge for those murders. Therefore, the most likely candidate as the Rodriguez killer is that second man, especially since Rodriguez's name was leaked. Butwe know it can't be, because we were watching the guy who's probably the second man, and he was clear over on the other side of town. And the second man, even if it isn't Olson, also wouldn't have known how to lure Rodriguez back to his office, wouldn't have known that Rodriguez had a twenty-four-hour police escort, wouldn't have known about the phone taps. All of which would count about zilch with a jury."

"And we'd already pretty much pinned the Alie'e and Lansing killings on Rodriguez, and the details were leaking. Even the suicide fits It's too late to change our minds," Del said.

"If we did change our minds, and we bust Spooner, the defense would put Rodriguez on trial and they'd win," Rose Marie said. "You've got me two-thirds convinced it's Spooner, but if you were talking to a jury, it'd still be eighty-twenty for Rodriguez. All we've got as evidence on Spooner is this long chain of Lucas Davenport suppositions."

"Suppositories," Del amended.

"That's not totally true," Lucas said. "We can put him with both Lansing and Deal. Nobody could put Deal with Rodriguez. If we can put him at the party"

"It'd be weak but usable, if Rodriguez wasn't there as an alternative candidate," Rose Marie said. "You haven't even suggested why he'd kill Lansing. With Rodriguez, we could suppose it was some kind of criminal falling-out between wholesaler and retailer."

Another ten seconds passed in silence, then Rose Marie said, "So what do I tell Olson? He's coming in here in fifteen minutes, so I can give him the official word on Rodriguez and say that we're satisfied that Alie'e's killer is dead. What do I say now?"

"Bullshit him," Lucas said. "Tell him that there's some evidence that Rodriguez was the one, but we're continuing to examine other possibilities."

"He's gonna want some kind of closure," Rose Marie said.

"Fuck closure," Lucas said. "Nobody gets closure."

"With this bunch, nobody deserves it," Del muttered.

Lucas asked Del to check with the Homicide cops who were circulating Spooner's picture among the known partygoers. "I've got to do some paper," he said. "Maybe when you're up-to-date with Homicide, you could check with Marcy. Tell her I'll be over as soon as I can."