Dillon excused himself and went out to the front desk. “Is Frank Ortiz still in there with Solana?” he asked Sergeant Ryan.
“Yeah. You want me to get him?”
“No, not yet. I want to talk to him before he leaves, but I gotta talk to O’Connell first. Just don’t let him go until I see him.”
On his way to O’Connell, he popped his head back in his office, where Anne sat quiet and composed, and the clerk was packing up his equipment.
“I’m going to ask you to wait in the hall while Jeff here types up your statement,” he told her. “We’ll come back in when it’s done, and you can review it. Meanwhile, if you want a lawyer, you can use the phone at the front desk. Sergeant Ryan will show you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Dillon,” she replied. She rose and followed him out to the waiting area by the desk.
She’s a cool customer, he thought. Really got hold of herself, but she’s wound pretty tight. Must have been a shock finding out her old flame wanted to light the fire again, and he’s willing to blackmail her to get her into bed. And her with a husband and kids!
“Come,” barked O’Connell in reply to Dillon’s knock. He entered, took his customary seat beside the desk, and gave his boss a rundown of the conversation with Anne.
“Think she’s telling the truth?”
“It’s real plausible. She can’t produce the letters, says she burned them, and it looks like she was away that weekend. She wasn’t home on Sunday morning when I questioned Matta, and he told me she was out of town. We can check the Saturday train times from Darien and confirm that she was out of her folks’ house when she said she was. Maybe she still has the ticket stubs, though she probably burned those, too. The conductor might remember her. I expect we’ll find that some of the unidentified prints in Lam’s place are hers.”
“There were some on the galoshes and the chicken’s foot, but the only other prints on the exquisite corpse items belonged to Lam,” said O’Connell. “If Carlos dressed him up, he must have worn gloves. By the way,” he continued, “did you find out whether the doc could narrow down the time of death?”
“Not yet. I left a message for him to call me.” Dillon rose. “I’d better get back to the office and have Anne Matta sign her statement. Should be typed up by now.”
“Well,” said O’Connell, “after you do that, we ought to have a talk with Ortiz.”