59.
My sister came by my hotel suite, bearing with her a bottle of merlot.
Now we were sitting on my bed, legs tucked under us, sipping from our glasses. Mary Lou was on her second glass and already buzzed. I was nowhere near being buzzed. In fact, my last buzz had been when I sucked the blood out of the gang-banger.
"So your case is over?" said Mary Lou.
"Yes, I suppose."
"You suppose?" she asked. "It was in the paper. The police found their man. Your name wasn't mentioned of course. Although that hunky detective had his mug on the front page. Sherbert or something."
"Sherbet," I corrected. "And he is kind of hunky, huh?"
She shrugged. "In a grizzly bear sort of way."
"Sometimes that's the best way."
"Sometimes," she said. "So why do you suppose?"
"I think we got the wrong guy."
"The detective seems to think you got the right guy."
"We're missing something, I'm not sure what."
"Tell me about it?," she said, topping off her glass. "Walk me through it, maybe I can help you."
"Perhaps you could have helped before you started on your third glass."
"You know I'm very lucid when I drink. Give me a shot. Lay it on me."
And so I did. Everything, from working through the files with Kingsley's secretary, Sara, to the multiple break-ins and the subsequent arrest.
"Other than the fact I don't agree with you tampering with evidence," said Mary Lou, "I don't see any holes here. Horton had the evidence, the files. He had the motive, and he even had a similar weapon registered to him."
"I have no doubt he killed Kingsley's client," I said.
"You just don't think he was the shooter who attacked your attorney."
"No," I said. "I don't."
"Why?"
"For one, they don't look alike."
"He was wearing a disguise," said Mary Lou, over enunciating her words, as she always did when she drank. "Anyone who's seen the video knows that was a fake mustache."
"Horton was clumsy," I said. "Sherbet and I watched Horton struggle with a trash can, and then slip and fall on his ass. He was as athletic as a warthog."
"I don't understand."
"The killer was athletic. Damn athletic. At one point in the video, he leaps smoothly over a bench
26
