Hit List - Lawrence Block [126]
“So that’s basically it,” he said, “and one reason I stayed there in Jacksonville was I wanted to figure out why I did it before I came back and told you about it.”
“And?”
“And I still haven’t figured it out. I could have stayed there for a month and I don’t think I would have worked it out.”
“You must have some idea.”
“Well, I was frustrated,” he said. “That was a part of it. How many months have we had Roger to worry about? This was supposed to smoke him out, and it did, I even got a fairly close look at him, but then he slipped away. Either he got wind of what was going on or the man who killed Maggie gave him the slip, but either way I’d missed my chance at Roger.”
“And you just had to kill somebody.”
He thought about it, shook his head. “No,” he said. “It had to be this guy.”
“Why?”
“This is crazy. I was mad at him, Dot.”
“Because he killed your girlfriend.”
“It doesn’t make any sense, does it? He pulled the trigger, except it wouldn’t have been a trigger, because he wouldn’t have used a gun, not if he was making it look like an accident. How did he do it, do you happen to know?”
“Drowning.”
“Drowning? In a fifth-floor loft in lower Manhattan?”
“In her bathtub.”
“And it looked like an accident?”
“It didn’t look much like anything else. Either she passed out or she slipped and lost her footing, hit her head on the edge of the tub on the way down. Went under the surface and took a deep breath anyhow.”
“Water in the lungs?”
“So they said.”
“He drowned her,” he said, “the dirty son of a bitch. At least she was unconscious when it happened.”
“Maybe.”
“How could he do it if he didn’t knock her out first?”
“It’s too late to ask him,” she said, “but if he knocks her out first then he has to undress her and put her in the tub, and he might leave marks that wouldn’t be consistent with the scene he’s trying to set.”
“What else could he do?”
“How would you do it, Keller?”
He frowned, thinking it through. “Hold a gun on her,” he said. “Or a knife, whatever. Make her get undressed and draw a tub, make her get in the tub.”
“And then hold her head under?”
“The easy way,” he said, “is to pick up her feet. Lift them up and the head goes under.”
“And if the person struggles?”
“It doesn’t do any good,” he said. “He might splash a little water around, that’s all.”
“Wrong pronoun.”
“Well,” he said.
“I remember a few years ago,” she said. “A job you did, but don’t ask me where. A man drowned.”
“Salt Lake City,” he said.
“That how you did it? Hold a gun on him?”
“He was in the tub when I got there. He’d dozed off. I had a gun, I went in there to shoot him, but there he was, taking a nap in the tub.”
“So you picked up his feet?”
“I’d heard about it,” he said, “or maybe I read it somewhere, I don’t remember. I wanted to see if it would work.”
“And it did?”
“Nothing to it,” he said. “He woke up, but he couldn’t do anything. He was a big strong guy, too. I wiped up the water that got splashed out of the tub. I guess he would have done the same thing on Crosby Street, took a towel and wiped the floor.”
“He left the tub running.”
“And what, it overflowed? You couldn’t tell there was a struggle, not if the tub overflowed.”
“And?”
“And what else would it do?” He thought about it. “Well, it would make it look as though it happened while the tub was filling. She slipped getting into the tub, knocked herself out, and drowned before she could wake up.”
“Or drugs. She got in the tub while it was filling and passed out from the drugs she’d taken.”
“What drugs?”
“She was an artist, right? Lived in SoHo?”
“NoHo.”
“Huh?”
“SoHo is south of Houston,” he explained. “That’s where the name comes from. Where she lived is a couple blocks north of Houston, so they call it NoHo.”
“Thanks for the geography lesson, Keller. Look, she just went out to a bar, picked up some stud and partied with him. I’d say there’s a fair chance she provided herself with a little chemical assistance along the way. But it doesn’t matter. We’re getting off-track here. Where’d the water go?”
“The water?”
“The water. Where’d it go?”
“All