Murder at Ford's Theatre - Margaret Truman [102]
“I’ll tell Harry you were concerned about him,” she said.
“Yeah, do that. Tell him I—tell him to eat right and get some exercise. Thanks for calling, Susan.”
“Hey, Rick, I thought this was your day off,” a detective said as Klayman sat at his desk.
“It is, but I’ve got things I want to catch up on.”
“What’a you think about finding the Marshall body?”
“I’m glad they did.”
“Opens it up again, huh?”
“Yeah, it does.”
“Could it figure to be the same guy as the Zarinski case?”
“Could be. Too early to tell. Both victims young women, interns, same general physical characteristics, both killed by blows to the head. If it is the same guy, he’s gotten sloppy. First time around, he takes the trouble to dump the victim in the river. This time, he leaves her in the alley where he killed her.”
“Yeah, well, whoever did it is long gone, Rick. It’s too cold, man, too cold.”
Klayman worked at his desk until eight, when he went to the lobby, withdrew cash from the ATM, and was on his way out the door when Mo Johnson arrived.
“What are you doing here, man?”
“Catching up on stuff.”
“It’s your day off.”
“I know. Yours, too.”
Johnson grinned as though being there when he wasn’t required to be was embarrassing. “That’s what I’m doing, too, catching up on things. Where are you going?”
“Out to American University. I want to talk to Joe Cole again.”
“I’ll tag along.”
“Great.”
They found Cole in his room studying for an exam.
“Glad you nailed the guy who killed Nadia,” he said. “What a sick-o.”
“He hasn’t been convicted yet,” Johnson said, perusing posters of rock stars on the walls intermingled with magazine pages of pretty young girls in bikinis.
“But he will be. Right?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Klayman said. “There’s not a lot of evidence against him.”
“I heard on the news you found his shoes in the alley.”
“You should listen more closely,” Johnson said. “They found a shoe print, that’s all.”
“That matches him, right?”
“Let’s talk again, Joe, about the Labor Day weekend. You say you were with Nadia on Saturday night, had dinner, made love back at her place, and she kicked you out after telling you she’d had better lovers. Correct?”
“That’s right. Hey, are you asking me the same questions because you think I had something to do with her murder?”
“Nice pictures,” Johnson said. “You like brunettes, huh?”
“What? Oh, I don’t know. I never thought about it.”
“Most young guys like blondes,” Johnson said. “All these pinups are brunette.”
“So what?”
“Just making a comment, that’s all. Feel like taking a ride, Joe?”
“A ride? To where?”
“The restaurant, Spezie, the one you said you took Nadia to Saturday night.” Klayman pulled a color photo of Nadia from his pocket and flashed it at Cole. “Let’s see if they remember you from that Saturday night.”
Cole forced a dismissive laugh. “Nobody’ll be at the restaurant this morning.”
“Sure they will, Joe,” Johnson said. “Tough business, owning and working in a restaurant. Long hours. I have an uncle owns a ribs joint in Baltimore. Spends his life there.”
“I have to study.”
“Only take a half hour, Joe,” Klayman said. “You don’t want to disappoint us.”
“Don’t you have to have a warrant or something?”
“A warrant? To take a pleasant ride with somebody? Hell, no. Come on, you’re wasting time. Let’s go.”
Spezie’s manager, and most of his staff, were at the restaurant when the detectives and Cole arrived. Klayman showed them Nadia’s picture and asked whether they remembered seeing the young man with them, and the girl in the picture, Saturday