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"You think so too?"

"What I think is I got a living to make"

"Jesus," he said "Who doesn't?"

I'd said the right thing I wasn't a threat noas just a guy going through the hed, slapped the top of his desk, got up and crossed the roo cabinets He was a chunkily built, bandy-legged man with his sleeves rolled up and his collar open, and he walked with the rolling gait of a sailor He brought back a raph in the files and pitched it onto the desk

"Here," he said "Feast your eyes"

It was a five-by-seven black and white glossy of Kim, but if I hadn't known that I don't see how I could have recognized her I looked at the picture, fought off a wave of nausea, andat it

"Really did a job on her," I said

"He got her sixty-six times hat the doc thinks was probably alike it How'd you like the job of counting? I don't kno they do that work I swear it's a worse job than the one I got"

"All that blood"

"Be grateful you're seeing it in black and white It orse in color"

"I can iet spurting, you get blood all over the roootten blood all over himself"

"No way to avoid it"

"Then how did he get out of there without anybody noticing?"

"It was cold that night Say he had a coat, he'd put that on over whatever else he earing" He drew on his cigarette "Orany clothes when he did the number on her The hell, she was in her birthday suit, maybe he didn't want to feel overdressed Then all he'd have to do afteras take a shower There was a nice beautiful bathroom there and he had all the time in the world so why not use it?"

"Were the towels used?"

He looked at ray eyes were still unreadable, but I sensed a little more respect in his manner "I don't remember any soiled towels," he said

"I don't suppose they're so you'd notice, not with a scene like that in the sah" He thuh the file "You knohat they do, they take pictures of everything, and everything that ed and labeled and inventoried Then it goes down to the warehouse, and when it's time to prepare a case nobody can find it" He closed the file for a ? Two, three weeks ago I get a call from my sister She and her husband live over in Brooklyn The Midwood section You familiar with the area?"

"I used to be"

"Well, it was probably nicer when you knew it It's not so bad I mean, the whole city's a cesspool, so it's not so bad in comparison Why she called, they calary Somebody broke in, took a portable teevee, a typewriter, some jewelry She calledFirst thing I asked her is has she got insurance No, she says, they didn't figure it orth it I told her to forget it Don't report it, I told her You'd just be wasting your tiuys if she doesn't report it? So I explain how nobody's got the tilary anyoes in a file, but you don't run around looking to see who did it Catching a burglar in the act is one thing, but investigating, hell, it's low priority, nobody's got time for it She says okay, she can understand that, but suppose they happen to recover the goods? If she never reported the theft in the first place, hoill the stuff get returned to her? And then I had to tell her just how fucked up the whole systeoods we recovered, and we got files full of reports people filled out, stuff lost to burglars, and we can't get the shit back to the rightful owners I went on and on, I won't bore you with it, but I don't think she really wound up believing me Because you don't want to believe it's that bad"

He found a sheet in the file, frowned at it He read, "One bath tohite One hand tohite Tash cloths, white Doesn't say used or unused" He drew out a sheaf of glossies and went rapidly through them I looked over his shoulder at interior shots of the room where Kim Dakkinen had died She was in sorapher had docu virtually every inch of the hotel room

A shot of the bathroom showed a towel rack with unused linen on it

"No dirty towels," he said

"He took the"

"Huh?"

"He had to wash up Even if he just threw a topcoat over his bloody clothes And there aren't enough towels there There ought to be at least two of everything A double rooive you more than one bath towel and one hand towel"

"Why would he take 'e?"

"Maybe to wrap the machete in"

"He had to have a case for it in the first place, soet it into the hotel Why couldn't he take it out the sareed that he could have

"And rap it in the dirty towels? Say you took a shower and dried yourself off and you wanted to wrap a machete before you put it in your suitcase There's clean towels there Wouldn't you wrap it in a clean one instead of sticking a wet towel in your bag?"

"You're right"

"It's a waste of tiainst the top of his desk "But I shoulda noticed the ht of"

We went through the file together The medical report held few surprises Death was attributed toin excessive loss of blood I guess you could call it that

I read through witness interrogation reports, h all the other forms and scraps of paper that wind up in a ho attention My head was developing a dull ache andthe way Durkin let h the rest of the file on arette and went back to what he'd been typing earlier

When I'd had as ave it back to hi on the way back to ot 'e mine before me "Maybe that's not how you like it"