Page 172 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Jury-rigged

to pick him up and then lend him the car. The pay phone records for
the vicinity of his alleged route didn’t give us any familiar numbers,
so we have nothing to go on.”
“What about his clothing, his shoes, his fingers? Did you examine
them for connections to the murder scene?”
“Yes, yes, yes.” I resented her lack of confidence in me, and fought
to regain self-control. “Nothing to link him to it.”
“All right. Then you will have to reconstruct his path to determine
if the elapsed time can be accounted for, given his impaired walking
speed. I’d like to see that as soon as you can put it together.”
Ugh. That would be a real chore! Maybe she would forget about it
after she went on to other aspects of the case. Sure she would, and
maybe Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy would leave some lovely
presents in my bedroom tonight.
“Hannibal Simulian,” she droned on, “posed a problem for your
surveillance teams. You had them stationed both in front and back of
his house, as it is served by an alley. Through a window they saw him
sitting in front of the TV until about midnight; then the lights went
out and the place was quiet. The watchers settled in for an uneventful
shift. About seven in the morning the men parked in front were
surprised to see Hannibal walking down the street toward his
residence. Were they new to the force?”
“Well, it was their first night on this assignment—but they had
been on stake-outs before. They swear they didn’t fall asleep, but
there was no other explanation at the time.”
“When you interrogated Hannibal he explained that he awoke
suddenly about an hour before dawn, remembering that he had to
return his videos before the rental shop opened in the morning. It
being a pleasant morning for a stroll, so he said, and as he was wide
awake, he decided to take the movies back and get some fresh air and
exercise at the same time. The records of Eastern Blocbuster show
that his tapes were indeed left during the night in the after-hours
depository.”
“Right. Any time between ten p.m. and nine a.m. the next
morning. He had rented Bombs over Chechnya, Gulag Rottweilers from
Hell—both violent horror films—and Catherine in the Stable, an
unrated sex farce, on Thursday. He would have had to pay for

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