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"So after the case was et it out of our heads Just couldn't get it out of our heads, there wasn't a day one of us didn't bring it up So eventually ent to this Ruddle and asked hiraph test You knohat that is?"
"A lie detector?"
"A lie detector We were coht with him, we told him he could refuse to take the test, and we also told hiainst hiood idea, incidentally, but that's the law
"He agreed to take the test Don't ask ht it would look suspicious of hih hewas going tosuspicious to us Or ht he could beat the machine Well, he took the test, and I made sure we had the best operator available to administer the test, and the results were just e expected"
"He was guilty?"
"No question about it It nailed hi we could do with it I told hi 'Well, those machines must make a few ht now' And he looked ht in the eye, and he knew I didn't believe hi on earth I could do about it"
"God"
I went over and sat down next to her again I sipped so the look in that bastard's eyes
"What did you do?"
"My partner and I tossed it back and forth My partner wanted to put him in the river"
"You mean kill him?"
"Kill him and set him in cement and drop hi like that"
"I don't know Iwith it See, he did it, he killed that girl, and he was an odds-on candidate to do it again sooner or later Oh, hell, that wasn't all of it Knowing he did it, knowing he knee knew he did it, and sending the bastard ho like a hell of a good idea, and Ibetter"
"What?"
"I had this friend on the narcotics squad I told him I needed so every bit of it back Then one afternoon when Ruddle and his ere both out of the apartment I let myself in, and I flaked that place as well as it's ever been done I stuffed smack inside the towel bar, I stuck a can of it in the ball float of his toilet, I put the shit in every really obvious hiding place I could find
"Then I got back to my friend in narcotics, and I told him I knehere he could ht, with a warrant and everything, and Ruddle was upstate in Dannemora before he knehat hit him" I smiled suddenly "I went to see hi date His whole defense was that he had no idea how that heroin got there, and not too surprisingly the jury didn't sit up all night worrying about that one I went to see him and I said, 'You know, Ruddle, it's a shaht make people believe you didn't knohere that smack came from' And he just looked at me because he knew just how it had been done to hi he could do about it"
"God"
"He drew ten-to-twenty for possession with intent to sell About three years into his sentence he got in a grudge fight with another in is, you wonder just how far you have a right to turn things around like that Did we have a right to set hi him walk around free, and what other as there to nail hiht to put him in the river? That's a harder one for me to answer I have a lot of trouble with that one There must be a line there somewhere, and it's hard to know just where to draw it"
A LITTLE while later she said it was getting to be her bedtio," I said
"Unless you'd rather stay"
We turned out to be good for each other For a stitch of time all the hard questions went away and hid in dark places
Afterward she said that I should stay "I'll "
"Okay"
And, sleepily, "Matt? That story you were telling before About Ruddle?"
"Uh-huh"
"What made you think of it?"
I sort of wanted to tell her, probably for the same reason I'd told her the story in the first place But part of what I had to do was not tell her, just as I had avoided telling Cale Hanniford
"Just the similarities in the cases," I said "Just that it was another case of a girl raped and e, and the one case putI couldn't catch When I was sure she was sleeping soundly, I slipped out of bed and got into my clothes I walked the couple of blocks to ht I would have trouble sleeping, but it came easier than I expected
Chapter 15
The service had just gotten under hen I arrived I slipped into a rear pew, took a small black book from the rack, and found the place I'd missed the invocation and the first hy of the Law
He seemed taller than I reht His voice was rich and co, and he spoke the Laith absolute certainty