Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [106]
A melancholic expression crossed his handsome face; she wondered whether he might shed tears.
“I’ll get right to the point,” she said. “I’d like to do a documentary about you.”
His plaintive expression broke, and he smiled. “I don’t know what to say,” he said. “Am I flattered that you would view me in that light? Of course. Am I somewhat shocked that you would even consider such a thing? Very much so. But my initial reaction aside, I want to hear more. I need to hear more.”
She spent the next fifteen minutes outlining her proposal for him—that she would write, produce, and direct a multipart documentary about how he rose above his childhood and subsequent incarceration to become a productive, law-abiding citizen. It would focus on the positive use to which he had put his forty years in the institution—becoming a skilled musician, a first-rate cook, a man whose intellectual curiosity led him to become a voracious reader, and who was working on a novel of his own.
He said nothing. He leaned back, flipping his ponytail over the back of the couch, and closed his eyes, the wineglass cupped in both hands. She took the moment to take note of his lean, conditioned body beneath his tight black T-shirt, the tan face, the serene expression on his chiseled face. Her eyes strayed across the room to where the initial pages of his novel sat on the desk.
The sudden feel of his hand on hers was startling, but she didn’t remove it. He squeezed harder, opened his eyes, turned to her and said, “I am extremely touched, Robbie, that you perceive me in such a positive way. I would be honored to be the subject of your documentary.”
She stood, went to the center of the room, and said, “Then let’s get started. I have an hour before I have to be back at the station. We can begin the interviewing process now. Game?”
He leaped from the couch, put his right hand on her waist, took her right hand in his left, and waltzed her around the room, humming “All The Things You Are” in her ear in three-quarter time. Their dance lasted a minute. He released her and said, “I hope my favorite and only niece isn’t offended at my impetuousness.”
She shook her head and smiled. “Not at all,” she said. “Now, can we begin?”
“By all means. Consider me yours.”
She left the apartment an hour later, a yellow legal pad filled with notes. And in the black vinyl folder containing the pad was a page from his novel, which she’d taken during his bathroom break.
• • •
Vargas-Swayze and Dungey returned to the precinct after their visit to the Wilcox home, and handed the letter they’d been given by Wilcox to an evidence technician on duty.
“The report came back on the first letter,” the tech told them. “It’s on your desk, Edith.”
There were no surprises. The letter had been filled with fingerprints, many of them smudged. But the final item piqued her curiosity, and she called the lab. “What does this note on the bottom of the report mean?” she asked a senior lab manager, who was working late that night. He was one of the least favorite people with whom she had to deal on a regular basis, a genetically nasty little man with a wicked eye twitch and a perpetual curl to his mouth.
“Well, what does it say?” he asked in a nasal, condescending voice.
“It says,” she said, successfully stifling her annoyance, “that one print, which matches others on the letter, seems to have been placed on the paper before the letter was typed. Before is underlined.”
“Yessss?”
“I don’t have time to play games,” she said. “I’m just a cop, you’re the expert. Just tell me what it means.”
His sigh was long and loud. “It means, detective, that somebody touched the paper when it was blank. The print is beneath the typed letters.”
“I see,” she said. “Which further means that this particular print could belong to the person who actually wrote the letter.”
“Very good, detective. Anything else I can do for you?”
Drop dead, she thought.