Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [96]
“What’s the lab say?” Evans asked, folding the piece of wax paper and his napkin into tiny, precise squares and dropping them into an overflowing wastebasket.
“They’ll run prints on it.” she said, “and do an analysis of the typeface. Looks like it was written on a typewriter, not a computer printer, that’s for sure.”
“The paper?”
“Nothing fancy we could trace. Plain white, hard surface, high gloss.”
“Good for prints,” Dungey said.
“Why do you figure he mailed it from the post office down the block from the Trib?” Evans asked.
“Makes sense to me,” Dungey said.
“I don’t mean whether it makes sense, Wade,” Evans said. “It just seems to me that whoever this guy is probably lives close by. He lives in the District, not a suburb.” To Dungey: “Are you finished running those backgrounds on people who were at the Trib the night the Kaporis girl was killed?”
“Close.”
Before ending the meeting, Evans said, “Put a tail on Wilcox. This nut is liable to want a face-to-face.”
“Not enough cheese,” Dungey groused to his partner as they sat at their desks filling out reports. “We should have ordered it with extra cheese.” They left the precinct at three and went to the car assigned them for that day. He slid behind the wheel.
“Where to?” Edith asked.
“Let’s swing by the address the Frenchman gave us.” He consulted notes he’d retrieved from his locker. “LaRue. Michael.”
“Why?”
“No good reason. You have a better suggestion?”
They pulled up in front of the apartment building.
“Nice older structure,” he said.
She knew he was interested in the city’s architecture and had taken tours of various neighborhoods sponsored by historical societies, a side of him that surprised her. Somehow, Wade Dungey didn’t seem the type to appreciate architecture, art, or other staid, static things. But she’d learned over the years from dealing with a variety of people, good and bad, that you couldn’t always tell a book by its cover.
For her, buildings and their spaces couldn’t be modern enough. Form meant little to her; function was everything. As she sometimes said to friends after separating from Peter, “What I really want out of life is a one-room apartment where everything is Formica, there’s a drain hole in the floor, and all I have to do is hose it down every once in a while.”
“Let’s stop in and see if he’s home,” Dungey said. “Make a social call.”
Michael’s intercom interrupted his dinner preparations. “Yes?” he asked.
“Detectives Dungey and Vargas-Swayze, Mr. LaRue,” Dungey announced.
“Oh? I wasn’t expecting anyone. I’ll ring you in.”
He stood outside his apartment door to greet them as they came down the hall.
“Sorry to barge in on you like this,” Dungey said, “but we were in the neighborhood.”
“Is something wrong?” Michael asked.
“No, nothing’s wrong,” Dungey said. “Just a couple of follow-up questions.”
“Of course. Come in.”
“You play the guitar?” Dungey asked, spotting the instrument the moment they entered.
“Just a little,” Michael said.
“I always wanted to play the guitar,” Dungey said. “Never got around to it.” He did a three-sixty. “Nice little place you have here.”
“Thank you. I’m quite comfortable. You’re obviously here because of the murder of the young lady at the newspaper. I’m afraid I’ve already told you everything I know. I delivered supplies there that night but don’t recall ever seeing her. I wish I had more to offer. All this talk of a serial killer being responsible for that murder and the murder of the girl in the park is most upsetting. What sort of animal could do such a thing?”
“A two-legged animal,” Dungey said. “Four-legged animals don’t kill anybody unless they’re in the jungle and haven’t had a meal in a while.”
“Yes,” Michael said. “An important differentiation. Have you developed any leads?”
Vargas-Swayze said, “You said you’re from the Midwest. Illinois, was it?”
“That’s right.”
“Mind if we look around?” Dungey asked as he went into the kitchen.
“I suppose I should object,” Michael said, following him. “I think I’m supposed