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"Oh"

"He didn'tin her blood and he had sex with her"

"What words did he use?"

"I don't know exactly You mean for the sex act? He said he fucked her"

"After she was dead"

"Evidently"

"And he had no trouble re that?"

"None I don't knohether he had sex with her before or after theone way or the other?"

"If it did, it wasn't in the report I'ether in ti, 'I fucked her and she's dead' As if his having had sex with her was the chief cause of her death"

"But he never re her I suppose he could have blocked it out easily enough I wonder why he didn't block out the whole thing The sex act Let o over this once more He said he walked in and found her like that?"

"I can't re all that clearly myself, Scudder He walked in and she was dead in the tub, that's what he said He didn't even say specifically that she was dead, just that she was in a tub full of blood"

"Did you ask him about the murder weapon?"

"I asked him what he did with it"

"And?"

"He didn't know"

"Did you ask him what the murder weapon was?"

"No I didn't have to He said, 'I don't knohat happened to the razor' "

"He kneas a razor?"

"Evidently Why wouldn't he know?"

"Well, if he didn't re it in his hand, why should he remember what it was?"

"Maybe he heard someone talk about the murder weapon and speak of it as a razor"

"Maybe," I said

I walked for a while, heading generally south and west I stopped for a drink on Sixth Avenue around Thirty-seventh Street Athe bartender that he was sick of working his ass off to buy Cadillacs for niggers on welfare The bartender said, "You? Chrissake, you're in here eight hours a day The taxes you pay, they don't get more'n a hubcap out of you"

A little farther south and west I went into a church and sat for a while St John's, I think it was I sat near the front and watched people go in and out of the confessional They didn't look any different coht be to be able to leave your sins in a little curtained booth

Richie Vanderpoel and Wendy Hanniford, and I kept picking at threads and trying to find a pattern to the myself draard, and I didn't want to take hold of it It rong, it had to be wrong, and as long as it reached out, tantalizing ned on for

I knehat had to co at me and I couldn't duck it forever And noas the best ti it in the ht a couple of candles and stuff a few bills in the offerings slot Then I caught a cab in front of Penn Station and told the driver how to get to Bethune Street

The first-floor tenants were out A Mrs Hacker on the second floor said she had had very little contact with Wendy and Richard She remembered that Wendy's former roommate had had dark hair Sometimes, she said, they had played their radio or stereo loud at night, but it had never been bad enough to complain about She liked music, she said She liked all kinds of music, classical, semiclassical, popular-all kinds of music

The door to the third-floor aparth to crack it but impossible to do so unobtrusively

There was nobody holad of that I went on up to the fifth floor Elizabeth Antonelli had said the tenants wouldn't be back until March I rang their bell and listened carefully for sounds within the apartment I didn't hear any

There were four locks on the door, including a Taylor that is as close as you can come to pickproof I knocked off the other three with a celluloid strip, an old oil-coer own a car Then I kicked the Taylor in I had to kick it twice before the door fleard

I locked the other three locks after ure out what had happened to the Taylor, but that was their problem, and it wouldn't come up until sometime in March I poked until I found thethat fed onto the fire escape, opened it, and climbed doo stories to the Hanniford-Vanderpoel apartment

The asn't locked I opened it, let myself in, closed it after me

An hour later I went out theand back up the fire escape There were lights on in the fourth-floor apartment by now, but the shade was drawn on theI had to pass I reentered the fifth-floor apartment, let myself out into the hallway, locked the door behind h tirab a sandwich before I kept ot off the BMT at Sixty-second Street and New Utrecht and walked a couple of blocks through a part of Brooklyn where Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst rub shoulders with one another A powdery rain wassome of yesterday's snow The weather bureau expected it to freeze soht I was a little early and stopped at a drugstore lunch counter for a cup of coffee Toward the rear of the counter a kid was deravity knife to a couple of his friends He took a quick look at ain that I haven't stopped looking like a cop

I drank half my coffee and walked the rest of the way to the church It was a ray by the years A cornerstone announced that the present structure had been erected in 1886 by a congregation established 220 years before that date An illuminated bulletin board identified the church as the First Refore, Reverend Martin T Vanderpoel, Pastor Services were held Sundays at nine thirty; this co Sunday Reverend Vanderpoel was slated to speak on "The Road to Hell Is Paved with Good Intentions"