Crispin returned to his book.
“Out,” she said, pointing to the door and staying close behind us as we retraced toward the front of the house.
Back in the living room, she said, “You need to understand: He haszerofacial recognition. By now, he’s forgotten whatyoulook like sodon’twaste your time and mine.”
She flung her front door open. “You’re not going to make troubles for him, right? He’s obviously no danger to anyone.”
Milo said, “So far so good.”
“What doesthatmean?”
“Now that you’re aware, I’m sure you’ll be paying close attention—”
“Like I don’talready? Like I haven’t been paying attention every singledaysince he started to show hisdifferences? You people areunbelievable.”
She glared from her doorway. Held the pose as we drove away.
Milo said, “Making new friends every day. So the kid sees a man and a woman early Saturday morning right before three. The timing’s right.”
I said, “A two-person job like we thought. One of them drove the limo, the other brought a second vehicle for getaway.”
“And I’ve got an eyewitness who can’t recognize faces.” He laughed. “Some kid. What do you think about his dangerousness? I don’t see grounds for any kind of charge and now that he’s going back to homeschooling, I can’t see involving BHPD.”
“A few coded messages and no weapons in the house? No action would be taken. Like you said, all she can do is keep an eye on him.”
A mile later, he said, “Therewasthat squirrel. Then again, he and the raccoon parted ways amicably. Poor thing. Her. From a beach hottie to that. But enough compassion, time to redouble on Okash and Weird Beard.”
CHAPTER
32
We were back at my house by five forty. Twenty minutes to go for Moe Reed’s watch on Okash. As the unmarked idled, Milo phoned him.
Reed said, “No movement, L.T., her lights are still off and her car’s still here.”
He recapped the talk with Crispin. “Let Alicia and Sean know.”
“Kid probably saw the murderers,” said Reed, “but no facial recognition—that psychiatrist—Oliver Sacks—Liz gave me one of his books, he had the same thing.”
“The way my luck’s going, he’ll be my next potential witness.”
“He passed away, L.T.”
“Proves my point.”
—
Silent house, Robin working, Blanche assisting. I made coffee, drank it on my battered leather couch, and wondered if there was anything else I could do. The databases had yielded little about the woman Medina Okash had slashed but the D’s had been too busy to dig deeper, so why not give it a try?
I keywordedcontessa welles.Nothing. Maybe a nickname. Or as Reed had suggested, an NYPD clerical error.
I began pairingwelleswithconnie, constance, consuelaand ran into the opposite problem: too many hits. The two most interesting were a character in a Robert B. Parker novel and a wounded Andean condor in a Peruvian bird sanctuary. Avian Connie had learned to nibble treats daintily from her keeper’s hand.
The flood of names drained quickly as I filtered by age and geography, assuming Okash’s victim was around her age, give or take five years on either side, and had lived in or near New York. I repeated the process withwellswith no greater success. Returned tocontessapaired with surnames that a tired desk officer might confuse with Welles.
Welch, Welsh, Walsh, Walls.
Ping.
