"Yeah? How good does she look to you, Alan?"
He considered the question, then said heavily: "To tell you the truth, old buddy, she doesn't look that good. She never did." Alan forced himself to add: "Just the same, we'd look pretty silly keeping this case open on the basis of some dog-doctor's report and a gap of-what?-fifteen minutes?"
"Okay, let's talk about the note on the corkscrew. You remember the note?"
"'Nobody slings mud at my clean sheets. I told you I'd get you.' "The very one. The handwriting expert in Augusta is still mooning over it, but Peter jerzyck provided us with a sample of his wife's handwriting, and I've got Xerox copies of both the note and the sample on the desk in front of me. They don't match. No way do they match."
"The hell you say!"
"The hell I don't. I thought you were the guy who wasn't surprised."
"I knew something was wrong, but it's been those rocks with the notes on them that I haven't been able to get out of my mind.
The time sequence is screwy, and that's made me uncomfortable, yeah, but on the whole I guess I was willing to sit still for it.
Mostly because it seems like such a Wilma jerzyck thing to do. You're sure she didn't disguise her handwriting?" He didn't believe it-the idea of travelling incognito had never been Wilma jerzyck's style-but it was a possibility that had to be covered.
"Me? I'm positive. But I'm not the expert, and what I think won't stand up in court. That's why the note's in graphanalysis."
"When will the handwriting guy file his report?"
"Who knows? Meantime, take my word for it, Alan-they're apples and oranges. Nothing alike."
"Well, if Wilma didn't do it, someone sure wanted Nettle to believe she did. Who? And why? Why, for God's sake?"
"I dunno, scout-it's your town. In the meantime, I have two more things for you."
"Shoot." Alan put the silver dollars back into his drawer, then made a tall, skinny man in a top-hat walk across the wall. On the return trip, the top-hat became a cane.
"Whoever killed the dog left a set of bloody fingerprints on the inner knob of Nettle's front door-that's big number one."
"Hot damn!"
'Warm damn at the best, I'm afraid. They're blurry. The perp probably left them grasping the doorknob to go out."
"No good at all?"
"We've got some fragments that might be useful, although there isn't much chance that they'd stand up in court. I've sent them to FBI Print-Magic in Virginia. They're doing some pretty amazing reconstructive work on partials these days. They're slower than cold molasses-it'll probably be a week or even ten days before I hear back-but in the meantime, I compared the partials with the Jerzyck woman's prints, which were delivered to me by the ever-thoughtful Medical Examiner's office last evening."
"No match?"
"Well, it's like the handwriting, Alan-it's comparing partials to totals, and if I testified in court on something like that, the defense would chew me a new ass**le. But since we're sitting at the bullshit table, so to speak, no-they're nothing alike. There's the question of size, for one thing. Wilma jerzyck had small hands. The partials came from someone with big hands. Even when you allow for the blurring, they are damned big hands."
"A man's prints?"
"I'm sure of it. But again, it'd never stand up in court."
"Who gives a f**k?" On the wall, a shadow lighthouse suddenly appeared, then turned into a pyramid. The pyramid opened like a flower and became a goose flying through the sunshine. Alan tried to see the face of the man-not Wilma jerzyck but some manwho had gone into Nettle's house after Nettle had left on Sunday morning. The man who had killed Nettle's Raider with a corkscrew and then framed Wilma for it. He looked for a face and saw nothing but shadows. "Henry, who would even want to do something like this, if it wasn't Wilma?"
"I don't know. But I think we might have a witness to the rockthrowing incident."
"What? Who?"
"I said might, remember."
"I know what you said. Don't tease me. Who is it?"
"A kid. The woman who lives next door to the jerzycks heard noises and came out to try and see what was going on. She said she thought maybe 'that bitch'-her words-had finally gotten mad enough at her husband to throw him out a window. She saw the kid pedaling away from the house, looking scared. She asked him what was going on. He said he thought maybe Mr. and Mrs. jerzyck were having a fight.
Well, that was what she thought, too, and since the noises had stopped by then, she didn't think any more about it."
"That must have beenjillian Mislaburski," Alan said. "The house on the other side of the jerzyck place is empty-up for sale."
"Yeah. Jillian Misla-whatski. That's what I've got here."
"Who was the kid?"
"Dunno. She recognized him but couldn't come up with the name.
She says he's from the neighborhood, though-probably from right there on the block. We'll find him."
"How old?"
"She said between eleven and fourteen."