“There’s no one?”

“A sister in England. Married to a poet, would you believe it?”

Beam smiled. “She should be safe, then. And the Justice Killer will likely confine his activities to New York. Of course, there’s no guarantee. This killer doesn’t necessarily run true to form.”

“I think we’re well prepared for anything he might attempt,” Talbotson said.

Dudman looked at Beam as if to say, There! See! “I appreciate your concern, Detective Beam, but I do feel that all necessary precautions have been taken.” He shifted his weight in his chair, not standing, but clearly signaling that Beam’s time would be more productively spent elsewhere.

Beam remained seated. “Why did you find Aimes innocent?”

Dudman looked as if he might make a tent of his fingers, then laced them together and squeezed hard enough to whiten his knuckles. “Reasonable doubt. We were pledged to follow the letter of the law.”

“Was it the letter of the law that got Aimes off?”

“Of course. Most of us thought he killed Genelle Dixon, but we weren’t absolutely sure. Believe me, we didn’t like him. And we didn’t like what we felt compelled to do.”

“All of you?”

“As a matter of record, yes. As foreperson, and considering the gravity of what we were deliberating, I felt it incumbent upon us to talk everything out until our verdict was unanimous.”

“Spreading around the guilt?”

“That was an unkind thing to say, Detective Beam, but accurate. Only it was more like spreading around the remorse we knew would follow. But perhaps less remorse than if it turned out we’d convicted an innocent man. It does happen.”

“Just often enough,” Beam admitted. He stood up from the chair, which hissed its relief and regret, and offered his hand across the desk.

Dudman stood and shook hands. “I hope you never get in the position we on the jury were in,” he said. “Are you going to interview the other jurors?”

“Yes. You were the first.”

“They must be very afraid. Give them my best. Tell them…”

Beam waited. Dudman hadn’t released his hand.

“Tell them I still think we did the right thing,” Dudman said.

“Right thing?”

“Only thing.” Dudman released Beam’s hand but remained standing. “Chris’ll walk you out.”

When Beam and Chris were at the office door, Dudman said, “You do understand, don’t you, Detective Beam?”

“I do,” Beam assured him. “I’ve had to do the only thing a few times myself.”

Dudman seemed relieved as he sat down and the two much larger men left his office.

Chris rode the elevator down with Beam and walked with him through the lobby and out to the sunny sidewalk. Beam considered warning him about the Justice Killer’s cold-bloodedness and capabilities, then decided it wasn’t necessary. Talbotson, like Beam, was a professional. He might know more about cold-blooded killers than Beam, even if they weren’t the serial kind.

“Take care of yourself and Dudman,” he said, shaking hands with Chris.

He thought Talbotson would assure him he would. Instead the younger man surprised him by saying, “I’ve published a few poems myself.”

Beam almost told him that was about the only way to get them published, then decided Talbotson wouldn’t think it was funny. He was nothing if not the serious type. “What about?”

“The things I’ve seen, what people can do to each other.”

“Good poems, I’ll bet,” Beam said, and patted the man’s bulky shoulder as they parted.

Back by his car, he unfolded the sheet of paper he’d brought and checked the other Aimes trial jurors’ last known addresses. His plan had been to save time and work his way uptown. Right now he was south. Not far from the Village.

From Nola Lima.

What people can do to each other.

34

“Cool enough for you?” he asked.

“For now,” Nell said. She took a sip of cold Budweiser from the can. Terry Adams, the air-conditioner repairman, had finally gotten back to her on her cell phone number, and told her he could work her into his schedule. The problem was it had to be this afternoon. Could Nell have the super let him in? He understood why she wouldn’t want somebody she’d never met left alone in her apartment to repair her air conditioner. Could she get a friend or relative to be there while he worked? Maybe the super would stay. Terry wouldn’t be insulted, he said; he didn’t want to be responsible if, after he left, something seemed to be broken or missing.

Nell didn’t have a friend or relative who’d sit in her sweltering apartment and watch this guy work. And her building’s super wasn’t even on the premises most of the time. She’d been considering reporting him to Missing Persons. She was driving when she got Terry’s call, on her way to interview another of the Palmetto case jurors. She really didn’t want to go. The juror would be like the last three, deficient in any fresh knowledge of the Justice Killer investigation, and already sufficiently frightened by what they did know. If JK’s goal was to scare hell out of the city, he was doing a good job.

“I’ll meet you there in half an hour and let you in,” she said to Terry.

“That’ll work. I’ll probably need only a couple of hours at most.”

So here sat Nell on her living room sofa, observing her window air conditioner being operated on instead of pursuing a serial killer.

Terry had the unit on a blue tarp he’d spread on the floor so as not to dirty the carpet. He wasn’t the repairman of TV sitcoms, overweight with low-slung work pants. He was slim and muscular, wearing a tight black T-shirt, jeans and moccasins. His hair was a curly brown and slightly mussed above a high forehead and symmetrical features. He had brown eyes with laugh crinkles at their corners, and was clean shaven, with a chiseled jaw and cleft chin. Quite the package. It figured he was an actor as well as an air conditioner repairman—or was it the other way around?

She’d given him a can of beer, too, and watched as he put down a crescent wrench for a moment and took a sip, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand. Nell found herself wishing she were wearing something other than her shapeless blue skirt and blazer and thick-soled black cop shoes. She knew she had nicely turned ankles, but not in these clod-hoppers.

She scooted to the corner of the sofa, so she could see over Terry’s shoulder, and crossed her legs. “How’s it look?”

He didn’t glance back at her. The hair at the nape of his neck was curling and wet with perspiration in a way she liked. She was sweating herself.

“Not bad,” he said, exchanging beer can for wrench. “This brass tube”—he tapped a curved, rusty tube with the wrench—“is leaking coolant, needs to be replaced. You got a couple of leaky connections, too.”

“I didn’t notice anything dripping.”

“The coolant evaporated before it ran over. But your filter needs changing. Condensation was building in your drip pan and running down the outside of the building.”

“Sounds serious.” Nell had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

He turned and smiled at her. The way his lips curled made him look kind of sardonic, like a fifties movie matinee idol who could rape his way through a movie and everybody liked it. “It isn’t. I’ll only be here about an hour.”

He’d set up a paint-splattered old box fan he no doubt used to cool himself on the job, but he’d angled it to blow not on him but on Nell. It hummed steadily, with a faint clinking sound, sending a slight breeze over her.

“Want me to turn that to a higher speed?” he asked, pointing at the fan with his wrench.

“It’s fine the way it is, thanks. Are you really an actor?”

“Don’t I seem like one?”