Free Sleep of the Innocent by Medora Sale Page A

dining room, with a round table and chairs in dark wood. Family castoffs, probably.
    He walked to the right and up a paved path that followed around the house into the back garden. The view through these windows was just as unhelpful. The back room was also a bedroom, unoccupied at the moment. He shrugged and headed back to his car. It seemed fitting, somehow, that she wouldn’t be easy to find. But just before he unlocked his car door, another thought occurred to him. He walked back to 490, up a neat concrete path, to a new porch with shiny black metal railings and rang the bell. No answer. No one lived on this street during the day. He went back to his car. This wasn’t even his case.
    It was too early to go home and too late to do anything useful. He had settled down at his desk to make up his final report for the day when Eric Patterson came in, looking haggard and exhausted. “How’s it going?” Lucas asked lightly.
    â€œIt isn’t,” said Patterson. “I’ve been trying to get something on his recent business deals. That five grand he had in his pants pocket wasn’t there to tip the doorman. He has to have been mixed up in some transaction that was purely cash.”
    â€œBlackmail?”
    Patterson shook his head. “Not that I can see. Maybe. I think it’s more likely to be a sweetener for someone. I mean, it’s too much money and not enough. See? Not enough for a deal—his deals are two-, three-million-dollar babies. Buildings, hotels, that kind of shit. And it’s too much just to carry.”
    â€œMaybe he was going to the track.”
    He paused, running his hand over his stubbly cheeks. “No, track hasn’t opened yet, has it? Still, you’re right. It’s a logical amount for a gambling man to carry. I’ll look into that.” He yawned and stretched back in his chair. “You get anything on that mysterious witness of yours?”
    â€œI’ve discovered that she exists. That’s something. And she sings in a band and lives on Oak Street.”
    â€œYou and Baldy are both demented, chasing after this bimbo. You’re wasting your time.” He slung his feet up on the desk and leaned his head back on his arms.
    â€œLook, Eric. She was in that apartment when Neilson got shot. I’m sure of it. They found her coat in the closet, the closet he was leaning against. And she sure as hell didn’t come in the apartment, find a corpse, move it, put away her coat, move it back again, and then call us. Did she?” Patterson grinned. “And she stank of that crummy perfume that was all over the apartment, too.”
    â€œDid she? I hadn’t realized that. I never actually saw her, you know. From my personal experience, she could just be a figment of your imagination. But how do you know it was her coat?”
    â€œIt was black leather, and she was dressed in black leather, and it was her size, more or less.”
    â€œWell, maybe.”
    â€œWhat else did you find in the apartment?”
    Patterson removed his feet from the desk, leaned forward, opened a drawer, and took out a sheet of paper. “Photocopy. Wonders of modern civilization. It’s a nuisance having your reports snatched away from you as soon as you finish them. Anyway, we found—property of the hotel—”
    â€œSkip that.”
    â€œOkay. We found, in the kitchen, a bottle of champagne, two apples, a quart of milk, a half bag of coffee and a glass container of orange juice. In the bathroom, besides the towels and stuff, we found one lipstick, Luscious Purple, one tube of mascara, one black pencil, one bottle of Ivory Princess liquid makeup, one container of white powder—it looked white to me, anyway—one bottle of Cobra perfume, almost empty, one jar of face cream, one bottle of moisturizer, and one box of tampons. Some of these things were in a drawer—the face cream and the tampons—the rest were all