Rachel Alexander 04 - Lady Vanishes

yet?“
    „Not yet. That thing’s been out in the weather for two weeks. Whatever wasn’t washed off was rubbed off by other people’s hands. Doesn’t look too promising, but then again, we shouldn’t need it now, should we, now that you solved the case for us.”
    “How’s that?”
    “Cute, Rach, cute. Like it slipped your mind, the guy you dropped off here.”
    “Oh. Him. How’s that going?”
    “He confessed.”
    “Hey, great. How’d you get it out of him?”
    “The usual—hot lights, rubber hoses, beatings, and of course the stun gun.Agoudian’s good at what he does.“
    „Nothing out of the ordinary?”
    “Completely routine, but I tell you, this one’s an amateur, a real crybaby. Wet his damn pants before five minutes elapsed. Literally. Anyway, we couldn’t have gotten where we are without you, kid.”
    “Well, it wasn’t really me. Dashiell got real interested in his pants, so I figured he had the dog, and the rest just fell into place. But it was Agoudian who got him to confess. He only owned up to taking the dog when I had him.”
    “None of that denial here. He opened his mouth, he didn’t shut up until it was all on the table, good stuff, rich with detail.”
    “That’s good. A relief.”
    “You bet. Always nice when you can close a case. It makes the captain happy. So, you recovered the dog at his place?”
    “I did.”
    “Everything okay on that end?”
    “Fine. She’s okay. I have her here, Marty. I’m bushed. I thought I’d keep her here tonight, take her back to Harbor View in the morning. That okay?”
    “Yeah, Rach. We know where she was. And we know where she’ll be. Besides, he wrote it all down and signed it. , We got him on video, too.”
    “You need his keys?” I asked. “I have them here. I can drop them off in the morning. In case someone wants to go out to Brooklyn, get him a dry pair of pants.”
    “There’s nothing in the budget for that, Rach. His old man can get him some clean pants. Or he can get them himself, come tomorrow.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “He confessed, all right. We were running out of fucking videotape. He was ready to take responsibility for World War II by the time we finally shut him up.”
    I didn’t say anything. I had a strong feeling he wasn’t finished.
    “He started out, it looked pretty good. He had a few of the details down pat, stuff he shouldn’t have known, about how the bicycle was obtained, for example.”
    “I may have inadvertently—”
    “But the more into it he got—” I could picture him shaking his head. “He was real wound up, Rach, talking a mile a minute, sweating so much his shirt was as wet as his pants. Agoudian, he can be pretty loud when he has to, he’s in his face, asking him how he could have hit the old man with the bike, someone he knew since he was a little kid, and you know what he says? He says, I hit him from behind. I did it so I wouldn’t have to see his face. Couldn’t have done it the other way, he tells Agoudian, like this makes him sensitive, this makes it okay he killed Dietrich, because he hit him in the back, not the front. What this makes him is not guilty, Rachel. What it makes him is nutty as a fruitcake.”
    I took a deep breath.
    “His father’s a shrink,” I said.
    “Yeah, so it figures, right?”
    “Seems to go that way.”
    “Well, he shouldn’t be running around loose, in my opinion.”
    “But he will be? You’re letting him loose?”
    “One o’clock. Right after lunch. In case you want to meet him, give him back his keys in person. On the other hand, he might not be too happy to see you, considering. Even after cooling off overnight. Maybe you ought to leave them for him at Harbor View. He might be annoyed with you, bringing an innocent man to the precinct, accusing him of some horrific crimes, only one of which he’s guilty of.”
    “Is that why you’re keeping him overnight, to ‘cool off?’ ”
    He didn’t say anything right away.
    Neither did I.
    “The guys are pissed about what he did, about the nature of the crime, taking the dog away from those poor souls at Harbor View. The dog disappears, wouldn’t they figure any one of them might be next? Must have been a tough time there. So we figured a night of our best hospitality, a couple of our gourmet meals under his belt, he might think twice in the future.”
    I looked up at the bulletin board, the list of people who’d be disappointed once they read the will, thinking, if not