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I had the gun pointed at hiun in both hands I hadout thethrew soht, Jesus, a boer, felt it tre, and I froze, I froze, I couldn't pull the fucking trigger

Tiht or ten yards fro and slass It was just an empty bottle

And the car was just a car I watched now as it went on careening south on Ninth Avenue, six kids in it, six drunken kids, and they h to do it, but when they did it would be an accident They weren't professional killers, hitmen dispatched to murder me They were just a bunch of kids who'd had more to drink than they could handle Maybe they'd cripple someone, maybe they'd total their car,a fender

I got up slowly, looked at the gun in my hand Thank God I hadn't fired it I could have shot them, I could have killed the logically enough that they were trying to kill me

But I'd been unable to do it And if it had been pros, if the object I'd seen had been not a whiskey bottle but the gun or boht it was, I'd have been no er They'd have killed me and I'd have died with an unfired revolver in my hands

Jesus

I dropped the useless gun in my pocket I held outI didn't even feel particularly shaky inside, and I was daure out why not

I went over to examine the broken bottle, if only to make sure it was just that and not a Molotov cocktail that had providentially failed to ignite But there was no puddle, no reek of gasoline There was a slight whiskey sined it, and a label attached to one chunk of glass indicated that the bottle had contained J & B Scotch Other fraght of the streetlalass I placed it in the palypsy at a crystal I thought of Donna's poeue

I started walking It was all I could do to keep fro

Chapter 27

"Jesus, I need a shave," Durkin said He'd just dropped as left of his cigarette into as left of his coffee, and he was running one hand over his cheek, feeling the stubble "I need a shave, I need a shower, I need a drink Not necessarily in that order I put out an APB on your little Coloer'n he is I checked the ot him down there in a drawer Not yet, anyway"

He opened his top desk draithdrew aainst his ean shaving Over the whirr of the shaver he said, "I don't see anything in her file about a ring"

"Mind if I look?"

"Bethe ring wouldn't be on it Then I went over the photographs of the death scene I tried to look only at her hands I looked at every picture, and in none of the

I said as much to Durkin He switched off the shaver, reached for the photographs, went through them carefully and deliberately "It's hard to see her hands in soht, there's definitely no ring on that hand What's that, the left hand? No ring on the left hand Now in this shot, okay, definitely no ring on that hand Wait a ain It's not clear in this one Okay, here we go That's definitely her right hand and there's no ring on it" He gathered the photos together like cards to be shuffled and dealt "No ring," he said "What's that prove?"

"She had a ring when I saw her Both times I saw her"

"And?"

"And it disappeared It's not at her aparth school class ring, but that's not what I re on her hand"

"Maybe yourdoesn't even have a stone I went over there before I came here, just to check s with tooShe wouldn't have worn it, not with this mink and the wine-colored nails"

I wasn't the only one who'd said so After one straight to Kim's apartment, then used her phone to call Donna Campion "It's Matt Scudder," I said "I know it's late, but I wanted to ask you about a line in your poem"

She'd said, "What line? What poeave ive me a moment, will you? I'm not completely awake"

"I'ht What was the line?"

"Shatter / Wine bottles at her feet, let green glass / Sparkle upon her hand"

"Sparkle's wrong"

"I've got the poeht here, it says-"

"Oh, I know that's what I wrote," she said, "but it's wrong I'll have to change it I think What about the line?"

"Where did you get the green glass from?"

"Frolass on her hand? What's it a reference to?"

"Oh," she said "Oh, I see what you reen stone, didn't she?"

"That's right"

"How long did she have it?"

"I don't know" She thought it over "The first time I saas just before I wrote the poem"

"You're sure of that?"

"At least that's the first tiave me a handle on the poem, as a reen of the ring, but then I lost the blue when I got working on the poe those lines when she first showedabout

She wasn't sure when thaton one or another version of the poem? Since a month before Kim's murder? Two months?

"I don't know," she said "I have trouble placing events in time I don't tend to keep track"

"But it was a ring with a green stone"

"Oh, yes I can picture it now"

"Do you knohere she got it? Who gave it to her?"