EPSTEIN STOPPED BY my office in the late morning and gave me a big brown envelope.
“Copy of Alderson’s file,” he said.
“What makes you think I’m interested,” I said.
“I know about you,” he said.
“Anything classified?” I said.
“I work for a very large government bureaucracy,” he said. “My fucking dick is probably classified.”
“And should be,” I said. “You got anything new on Doherty or his wife?”
“Water in his lungs. He was alive when he went in.”
“And conscious?” I said.
“No way to know,” Epstein said. “No bullets in him, no discernible wounds on the body. But it’s been banged around on the rocks and chewed on by sea creatures. Nothing is certain.”
“Time of death?”
“Approximate with his wife, give or take twelve hours,” Epstein said.
“Tidal analysis?” I said.
Epstein smiled.
“Body could have gone in most places north of the Cape,” he said.
“It was saltwater in his lungs,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Wearing his gun?” I said.
“Nope.”
“Holster?”
Epstein smiled again.
“Nope,” he said. “Nobody appears to have disarmed him. Gun and holster were in the top drawer of a bureau in his bedroom.”
“Did it appear to be her bedroom, too?” I said.
“Yes.”
“How was he dressed?” I said.
“Shirt, pants, shoes,” Epstein said. “Wallet in his hip pocket. He wasn’t wearing his suit coat or tie.”
“Sounds like they took him at home.”
“Which,” Epstein said, “leads me to wonder where she was.”
I nodded.
“You got any idea?”
“No,” I said.
“I was married once, twice actually, and I remember some of it, and one of our female agents went through the house too, and we agreed that there wasn’t enough makeup in the bathroom. Like she packed some and left.”
“After he heard the tape,” I said. “It would figure.”
“So where’d she go?”
“Ask around at the college?”
“Nobody knows.”
“Hotel?” I said.
“We’re running that now,” Epstein said. “Just thought you might save us a little time.”
I shrugged.
“Sorry,” I said.
Epstein sat quietly looking at me. Outside my window it was dark, with a lot of wind which drove short occasional bursts of rain against the glass.
“I talked with Martin Quirk about you,” he said. “Known you a lot longer than I have.”
“He’s always admired me,” I said.
“Sure,” Epstein said. “He told me you get sort of flighty upon occasion.”
“His admiration sometimes shades into jealousy,” I said.
“We agreed that you sometimes operate under the illusion that you’re Sir Lancelot.”
“Explains why my strength is as the strength of ten,” I said.
“That was Galahad,” Epstein said.
“Wow, a literate bureaucrat.”
“We also agreed that you were pretty good at this work and could go places and do things that cops are barred from,” Epstein said.
“Fewer rules,” I said.
“Mostly none, according to Quirk.”
I shrugged.
“And we agreed that you usually came out on the right side in the end,” Epstein said.
“When possible,” I said.
“At the end of this,” Epstein said, “you better be on the right side, which is to say, mine.”
“Do what I can,” I said.
“You better,” Epstein said. “You get the full force and credit of the U.S. government on your ass…we’ll win that one.”
“Eeek,” I said.