Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [80]
Wilcox turned to face a burly man leaning on a cane.
“Who are you?” the man repeated.
“Mr. Wilcox’s—Mr. LaRue’s friend,” Wilcox answered. “Who are you?”
“Rudy. I’m his friend, too. He ain’t here.”
“I know. He gave me his key.”
Wilcox turned his head to avoid the alcoholic fumes coming from this man named Rudy. “Excuse me,” he said, opening the door and stepping into the apartment, aware of Rudy’s eyes boring into his back. He closed the door and drew a deep breath. Maggie came from the kitchen, looked up at him, meowed, and preceded him into the living room.
Wilcox stood in the center of the room. It was quiet; only an occasional honk of a car horn on Connecticut Avenue violated the silence. He went to each window and looked out, his thoughts as jumbled as the apartment was neat. In the narrow, old-fashioned kitchen, the day’s dishes had been washed, rinsed, and left to dry in a blue dish drainer. A vase of wilting flowers sat next to the drainer.
Back in the living room, Joe sat in a chair next to where Michael’s guitar and amplifier stood. He picked up the instrument and ran his fingers over the strings, the sound barely audible without amplification. He considered turning on the amp but was afraid he’d do something destructive, push the wrong button or turn the wrong knob.
The hollow core door on file cabinets on the opposite side of the room was as tidy as everything else in the apartment. The only items on its surface were the old electric typewriter, a desk calendar, and a halogen lamp. He sat at the desk, opened the file cabinets’ drawers, and perused their contents, barely disturbing papers as he went through them. He withdrew an envelope from a photo processing shop and rifled through the small color snapshots, most of them of Michael at an undetermined outdoor social event. He removed one from the pack that showed Michael alone, smiling into the camera, and placed it in his inside jacket pocket. A recurring chorus of ideas accompanied his seemingly aimless search. Were he pressed, he would have denied the thoughts he was having at that moment. But they were present, coming and going like mental dust bunnies.
Michael had murdered a young woman when he was a teenager and been found legally insane.
Michael had moved to Washington prior to the first of the two murders having taken place.
Michael worked for an office supply company and had made deliveries to the newspaper, including the night Jean Kaporis was killed.
Michael was in excellent physical condition, certainly strong enough to have strangled Kaporis and Colleen McNamara.
Michael was using a false name.
Edith Vargas-Swayze and her detective partner had questioned Michael; the partner found something troublesome about the deliveryman with the funny, French-sounding name.
None of which meant Michael had had anything to do with the murder of Jean Kaporis or McNamara. Still, it was a provocative notion, albeit unlikely, to ponder, and he continued to do that as he finished rifling through papers in his brother’s desk.
He went to the small bedroom. The bed was made, the corners of the sheet tight and precise, military style. He looked in the room’s only closet. The few clothes were hung carefully, the fronts of shirts and two suits facing in the same direction, slacks and jeans folded over hangers and occupying their own space. Three pairs of shoes on the floor were polished and lined up heel-to-heel, toe-to-toe.
A round table covered by a black cloth served as a night table. On it was a digital alarm clock, a lamp, and a five-by-seven color photo in an easel frame. Wilcox picked it up and examined the woman more closely. She appeared