Free New Hope for the Dead by Charles Willeford Page B

hunger. He divided the huge pile into three more or less even stacks without counting them. He also got some legal pads and Bic ballpoints from his office. Sanchez returned with three coffees and Hoke’s doughnut.
    “Sergeant Henderson’s still out there in the bullpen talking to Lieutenant Slater and Teddy Gonzalez,” she said, “but I brought coffee for him, too. Are you going to brief Teddy on what we’ve been doing?”
    “Gonzalez’ll be busy enough as it is. For now, we’ll hangonto our own cases. There’s only the one child-abuse case and a suicide. We can complete them and handle the cold cases, too.”
    “But Major Brownley said—”
    “I know what he said. But there’s no hurry on our pending cases. After we get the P.M. , we can close out the Hickey overdose case, too. I talked to Mrs. Hickey last night and found out that the kid was in over his head. Two guys came around yesterday afternoon and told her that Hickey had ripped them off for twenty-five thousand bucks.”
    “There was only a thousand in his room.”
    “I know. I’m giving it to her today. What I figure, Hickey stashed the money somewhere, and then was so excited by the idea that he gave himself a stronger fix than he thought he was getting.”
    Ellita nodded. “It could’ve happened that way. But Mrs. Hickey could’ve also taken the extra twenty-four thousand and left the thousand on top of the dresser.”
    “No.” Hoke shook his head. “She wouldn’t do that.”
    “You told me yesterday that an amateur never takes it all, and that only pros take everything.”
    “That’s true as a general rule, but it doesn’t apply to Mrs. Hickey. I talked to her for a long time, and she isn’t the kind of woman who’d steal from her stepson.”
    “Jerry isn’t her son?”
    “No, she inherited him from her ex-husband, along with the house, when they got divorced.”
    “It’s a possibility, just the same.”
    “No way. She’s a successful businesswoman, with her own flower shop in the Gables. Forget about it. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
    Sanchez watched him and sipped her coffee.
    Hoke took off his jacket and draped it over the back of the folding chair. He had been wearing the same short-sleeved flowered sports shirt for three days, and there were three concentric white rings of dried sweat under the armpits.He wouldn’t have a clean shirt until Saturday evening. The windowless room was cool enough, with plenty of cold air coming through the ducts, but he realized that if he could smell the dried perspiration on his shirt, Ellita could, too. So what? He could smell her overdose of Shalimar perfume, with an extra overlay of added musk. Like most Cuban women, she used too much perfume.
    “Just take a stack,” Hoke said, “and read them all. When I get through my stack we’ll exchange. After we’ve read all the cases, we’ll each vote on the three most likely cases to work on. Then we’ll see what we’ve got. Take your time, Ellita. My idea’s to discover the ten most likely cases. If we all come up with the same ten, we’ll have a consensus. But we won’t look at each other’s choices till we’ve each gone through all fifty of them. I don’t want to prejudice you or Bill by telling you my choices as we go along.”
    “You won’t. But we won’t get through all these cases today.”
    Hoke shrugged. “We’ve got two months. But the ones we do agree on, even if it takes us a week, will save us a lot of useless running around later.”
    They went to work, not speaking, and taking occasional notes. Bill Henderson joined them at nine-thirty. Hoke briefed him on the plan, and Henderson moved his stack down to the far end of the table.
    “That extra cup of coffee’s yours, Bill,” Hoke said.
    “Thanks, Ellita,” Henderson said, removing the plastic lid. He sipped the coffee and made a face. “Christ, it’s stone cold. I’ll go down for some more. Anybody else ready for more coffee?”
    “I’ll get it,”