Free Blood Innocents by Thomas H. Cook Page A

enough to encircle a telephone pole. Reardon quickly surmised that such a man could easily sever the spine of a fallow deer with one blow.
    â€œSit down,” Reardon said.
    Bryant sat down, and for a moment Reardon wondered if the chair would support him.
    â€œWant some coffee?” Reardon asked.
    â€œNope.”
    Reardon took a drink from his cup and examined Bryant’s face. He had light brown hair, balding at the top. His eyes were blue and very watery, giving him the appearance of being continually on the verge of tears. He had a small mouth with a thin lower lip and almost no upper lip at all. And there was something beneath the face which Reardon could not touch upon exactly — a kind of boiling honesty in large matters, coupled with heedless deviousness in small ones.
    â€œI understand that you were on duty the morning the fallow deer were killed?” Reardon began.
    â€œThat’s right.” Bryant took a bent cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it. “I was there.” He threw his head back and blew a smoke ring.
    Sometimes, Reardon knew, an unnatural nonchalance while being interrogated was as damning as a fingerprint. But he did not think this was the case with Bryant. Rather, he suspected that Bryant was utterly innocent, knew it, and felt confident in that knowledge.
    â€œThe deer were killed at approximately three-thirty A . M .,” Reardon said. “Were you anywhere near the deer cage at around that time?”
    Bryant looked at Reardon and smiled. “Can you keep a secret?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œI mean if I tell the Police Department something, do they have to blab to the Parks Department?”
    â€œDepends on whether or not what you tell me is relevant to the case.”
    â€œWell, suppose a guy was guilty of goofing off, and that’s all?”
    â€œIn that case, I would say that it has no relevance.”
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œIt means we can keep a secret.”
    â€œWell, in that case,” Bryant said with a wink, “I was goofing off.”
    â€œThat’s okay,” Reardon said. “Like I said, that has nothing to do with the case.”
    â€œI’m not the only slacker, you know. Hell, I bet you soak a little extra time out of the lunch hour, right?”
    â€œMaybe.” Reardon shifted in his chair, impatient with Bryant’s cheekiness. “While you were in the park did you see anything unusual?”
    â€œNope.”
    â€œDo you know of anyone who might have a grudge against the Parks Department?”
    Bryant laughed. “Everybody who ever worked for that bunch of two-bit assholes has a grudge.”
    â€œDo you know of anybody who might take it out on the fallow deer?”
    â€œHell, no!” Bryant exclaimed. “And if I’d seen that son of a bitch, seen him hurting those deer, I’d have broken his goddamn neck! He’d of looked like those deer before I got through with him!”
    â€œNoble talked about hearing something while he was working in the elephant cages,” Reardon said. “A sound. Two sounds, really. A kind of harsh, grating sound and a kind of muffled one. Noble said it sounded like something being dragged.”
    Bryant took a handkerchief from his back pocket and swabbed his brow. “Noble says he heard something like that?”
    â€œYes. Around three or three-thirty, something like that.”
    â€œOh, hell,” Bryant said, “that explains why I didn’t hear it. Like I said, I was goofing off.”
    â€œYou were not in the zoo around that time?”
    â€œNo, I was in a coffee shop.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œOn Second Avenue, over from the park. All-night place there. But, you know, you might ask Andros. He was on his way to the zoo around that time.”
    â€œWho was?”
    â€œAndros,” Bryant said. “You know, Petrakis.”
    â€œThe other