Rachel Alexander 02 - The Dog who knew too much

the line of civilians, there at any hour of the day or night to report the kind of minor irritations that build up in a city like New York, things that drive people to the brink of insanity, or over it I reminded myself where I was and what was at stake here.
    “How? What happened?” I asked him, as if we were talking about some stranger and not a man I’d gone to bed with, my voice sounding as if it were coming from far away, or from the other side of a closed door.
    Marty took my hands.
    “A couple of the detectives want to talk to you. I came back in so that I could do this.” He squeezed my hands. “So like I said, he was carrying a card with your name on it, Rachel. Looks like you were pretty important to him.”
    I felt my face flush, but the rest of me was as cold as a corpse. I had come out without a coat, and my hair was still wet, I thought as I felt myself shiver, my fingers like icicles in Marty’s hands.
    “Rachel?” he said. He stood, slipped off his jacket, and put it around my shoulders.
    “How, Marty? Help me out here, will you?”
    “ ME says broken neck, unofficially, of course, pending autopsy. They’re working on him now.”
    “When did it happen?”
    “Mid to late afternoon. Best guess? Weather conditions weren’t unusual, so by the deceased’s temperature, he figures four to five, give or take.”
    I winced, thinking of the medical examiner slipping the thermometer next to Paul’s eyeball. Keep your mind here, I told myself.
    “Who’s on?” I asked him. “Who do you want me to talk to?”
    “Talk to me,” he said.
    “He was Lisa Jacobs’s sweetheart,” I told him, “until a few months before her death, her suicide. I met with him in connection with the case, to try to find out what I needed to know about Lisa, for her parents.”
    Marty nodded.
    “So that I could help them to understand what had happened, I mean, why what had happened had happened, so that I could give that information to her parents.”
    “And?”
    “He wasn’t very forthcoming when I first went to see him. He just seemed angry. Turned some of that on me.”
    “So you tried another approach? Something less threatening, more friendly .”
    “Swimming,” I said, feeling my throat closing.
    “Swimming?”
    “He was a swim coach. I went over to the gym where he worked, the Club on Varick Street , and went swimming.”
    “And?”
    “And then he was more forthcoming. He opened up,” I said, swallowing hard, “about their relationship. I guess that’s why—“
    “He had your name in his pocket, over his heart?”
    I nodded. “How did it happen, Marty?”
    “Looks like a mugging. The sort where you not only take the individual’s credit cards and cash, you also inflict as much damage as possible, given the constraints of time and place. Sometimes the mugger gets scared off in time, and the victim lives. No such luck this time.”
    “Was there anything else on him, Marty, besides the card ?“
    “Handkerchief, key ring, driver’s license, small change, nothing much.”
    “Show me.”
    “His belongings? What for?”
    “Please, Marty. This has to do with my case. It’s really important .“
    “I don’t—”
    “You don’t think I —”
    “Rachel—”
    “So show me.”
    A moment later I was looking through a plastic bag at Paul Wilcox’s handkerchief, driver’s license, two quarters, a dime and two pennies, and a key ring with eight keys on it, three of them Lisa’s, three of them for Bank Street T’ai Chi, one for downstairs, two for upstairs, though nobody ever locked the bottom lock.
    “That’s it?” I asked.
    “Just what you see,” he said.
    “Rachel, you know anything about this man’s life, any enemies he might have had?”
    “No,” I said. “No friends either. We only spoke about Lisa, about his feelings for Lisa.”
    “If you think of anything—”
    “Right,” I said. “Can I go now?”
    “Rachel—”
    “What? You don’t want me to leave town?”
    “I want you out of this.”
    I nodded.
    “Unless you think of something he said, anything he said that might—”
    “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I’ll call you first thing. I’ll beep you. Whatever.”
    “Or Matthew. He and Dave are in charge of this. They might want to talk to you, but I’ll talk to them for now.”
    “Thanks, Marty.”
    “Sure thing, kid.”
    I started to go, but Marty took my arm and stopped me.
    “Hey, I meant to tell you, Rach . You were right on the money about Elwood’s