After identifying themselves, they had led him to a table in the Lobster Pot Café and he had followed without protest, still wearing his rubber waders. His yellow slicker hung across the back of his chair. He gazed straight into the eyes of his questioners and long minutes seemed to pass before he blinked. The last time Sigrid had seen that sort of unblinking gaze was in the eyes of a man who had killed and then sodomized the bodies of three small boys.

There seemed to be a momentary pause between the end of each question and the beginning of his response, almost like the two-second delay when a question is bounced off a satellite to someone being televised halfway around the world. Earle answered them willingly enough, but thats pacy stare and the hesitation before his response made Sigrid suspect he might be on drugs.

Earle expressed neither surprise nor resentment at being sought out by the police and only minimal curiosity that they should be interested in Red Snow.

"Hell of a way to die," he told them, his fingers tapping the rubber waders. "Messing around with C-4."

"Is that what it was?"

"That's what Fred said. I never messed with that stuff. M-4's and Uzis, even hand grenades, okay, but-"

"Fred? Fred Hamilton? When did he tell you that?"

Victor Earle turned his pale-eyed stare upon Sigrid. "In France. One of those resorts on the Mediterranean."

"Where is Hamilton now? Still in Europe?"

Earle continued to gaze at her. "Yeah, he's still there."

His moustache twitched up and down and it took a moment to realize that he was laughing. There was no sound and no change in the expression in his eyes, just that jerk of brown handlebars andt he flash of teeth beneath.

"He loaded his needle with the wrong stuff one night and woke up dead the next morning." [

"When?"

"Seventy-one. April, I think it was."

"What about the girl that was with him?"

"Brooks Ann?" He shrugged. "Who knows? She split. She was walking the streets for rent money and one night she didn't come back. Probably went home with one of the Johns."

"Did you ever hear of any others getting out alive from that burning lodge?" asked Sigrid,

"Nah."

As the interview continued, they learned that Victor Earle did not watch television or read the papers, so he claimed to know nothing about the Maintenon bombing or John Sutton's death. In fact, he seemed not to know who Sutton was.

"McClellan? Nah. I was never at McClellan."

Alan Knight showed him the group photo taken of the McClellan SDS group and asked him whom he recognized. Hep icked out Fred Hamilton, a couple of the women, and Tris Yorke, but not Sutton. Even when they pointed to him, Earle shook his head.

Then they spread out the photographs taken at the hotel over the past weekend. Knight had remembered to bring along Sigrid's magnifying glass for studying the tiny faces in the background.

Absentmindedly rubbing his bald head, Earle moved the glass methodically across the pictures. A surprising number of cardplayers and hotel workers were to be seen in the background and the two officers pointed to those of main interest: Haines Froelick, Vassily Ivanovich, Molly Baldwin, and, of course Ted Flythe. He admitted knowing none of them.

"Who are those geeks?" he asked, pointing to a view of the Bontemps Room Sunday afternoon.

The photographer had taken it in an attempt to get Flythe's profile without her target noticing, so Flythe was well to the right of the picture. On the left, Madame Ronay seemed to be instructing the remaining busboys and Mr. George,t he head steward. Every face was in sharp detail.

Sigrid explained who they were.

Earle's pale blue eyes gazed vacantly into her face. "This George guy. He works for her?"

"They all do. It's her hotel," Knight said impatiently. "Do you recognize them? Have you seen this George before?"

Another pause.

"Nah.

Before they started the rainy drive back to town, Sigrid telephoned headquarters and left a message for Eberstadt or Peters to start checking Mr. George's background.

28

SIGRID had never before realized how many reflective surfaces she passed every day, nor how often she saw herself subliminally. Not just mirrors, but windows, glass partitions, doors, polished vinyl or metal. Each time came as a fresh shock. She rather liked her new haircut, the way it looked and felt, but those unexpected reminders of it were disconcerting. Even more, she wished her co-workers didn't feel compelled to stare and comment. It was bad enough feeling the silent looks that followed her through the halls when they returned to headquarters Tuesday afternoon. Things were no better in what should have been the sanctuary of her office.

Alan Knight was beginning to act as if he had cut her hair himself; and when Elaine Albee came in to report that Jill Gill thought no one had followed Pernell Johnson through the staff door

Sunday, Sigrid cut through her startled compliments and crisply asked if anyone could alibi Ivanovich between ten-forty-five and eleven o'clock.

"Not yet. Lieutenant. Everybody went home Sunday night and I'm having trouble locating some of the witnesses."

"Wouldn't it be simplest to ask Ivanovich himself and go from there? Or is it too complicated?"

"You're better than those knives they sell on late-night television," Knight scolded when Albee escaped. "You can slice through steel easy as butter."

"Since you have all the data on Ivanovich, why don't you go help lighten her task?" Sigrid asked irritably.

"All she wanted to do was make nice about your hair."

"Then let me reciprocate," Sigrid said sardonically. "Albee asked me about your wife yesterday morning."

Alan Knight perked up. "She did? What did you tell her?"

"I said I thought you two were separated."

He got up and ambled toward the

Sigrid worked undisturbed for another half hour until Jim Lowry tapped on her open door. He'd spent the previous afternoon up in Harlem talking to Pernell Johnson's aunt, a tougher interview than usual. Quincy Johnson had been devastated.

"They're taking his body back to Florida today," said Lowry. "That's what the grandmother wants. You know. Lieutenant, every time a kid gets killed, his family will tell you what a Boy Scout he was; and then later his friends and neighbors will tell you what he was really like. This time it sounds true. Everybody says he was hard-working and clean-no drugs, not even beer or cigarettes-church on Sunday, respectful of his aunt. I'd stake my career that if Pernell Johnson knew something about that bomb, he didn't even know he knew it."

"So that he might have made and oor. "Now that was real sisterly of you," he drawled.

innocent remark that panicked the killer?"

"Something like that."

For a moment, Sigrid was silent, remembering the slender youth in his white linen pants and short green jacket. "I spoke to him, you know. On Saturday. He told me about putting out the fire and about his duties that night. I wish I'd pushed him more."

Sigrid glanced up and saw that Lowry was looking at her oddly. Quickly she said, "What did the desk clerk and bellman say about Baldwin 's story? Can they confirm it?"

"Not really. They think she came downstairs sometime after Madame Ronay showed up looking for her and that she did go down the hall that leads to her office, but they don't know if she stayed there. No one noticed when she left again."

"Too bad."

"What about you? Anything new on Fred Hamilton?"