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which is very near to humility.
Kate was involved in the final stages of the case and even testified during
the trial of Thomas Darcy, but her heart was not in it, and the case seemed
remarkably distant and flat in the wake of the revelations of David Sawyer's
statement.
Once they had the name, the case quickly became watertight: plane tickets, a
gasoline station receipt, and a hotel clerk with a good memory placed him in
San Francisco the week his brother was killed. The identity of the John Doe in
the park was confirmed as that of Alexander John Darcy through the partial
fingerprint raised by forensics and the dental X ray sent by his Fort Worth
dentist. By the time Thomas Darcy was faced with Beatrice, he had become
slightly more wily, but he had still used a credit card to hire a car,- the
newsagent in Fort Worth testified that Darcy had received the Wednesday San
Francisco paper with the interview of Beatrice on the day after it had
appeared, and Darcy was remembered by the sales clerk in a Pacifica hardware
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store where he had bought a pair of narrow, strong wire cutters. He even took
the wire cutters home with him to Texas, where they were found in an
odds-and-ends drawer in his kitchen. Forensic analysis proved that the
clippers had been used on the cut ring found near Beatrice's body, a ring
remembered well by many, including the owners of Sentient Beans, who testified
at Darcy s trial, as well. The partial fingerprint lifted from the side of the
ring had enough points of similarity to clinch the case.
For his brother's death, he was found guilty of the lesser charge of
manslaughter, but for the killing of Beatrice Jankowski, the charge of
first-degree murder persisted to the final verdict.
He was never tried for the death of his brother's dog Theophilus, although
traces of canine blood were identified in the crevice between the sole and
upper on the right boot of a pair in his closet.
Before all that, though, on the day Thomas Darcy was arrested in Fort Worth,
Kate went to the jail and personally supervised the release of David Sawyer.
She waited outside while his orange jail clothes were taken from him and his
jeans and shirt, duffel coat and knit cap, the worn boots with the dust of
Barstow still on them, the knapsack with two books and a jug of stale water,
and the worn gold wedding ring were all returned to him. When he came out into
the hallway, he was met by the sight of Inspector Kate Martinelli, propping
herself up against a carved hiking stick nearly a foot taller than she.
He stopped.
"I thought you might want your stick back," she said.
He did not answer and made no move to take the staff,- he said only, "Is
there some place we can go for coffee?"
She carried the awkward pole through the halls, into the elevator, out the
doors, and down the street, finally threading it through the door of the
coffee shop to lean it against the greasy wall in back of her chair, all the
time wondering if he was going to leave the damned thing with her and what on
earth she would do with it.
The waitress came by with her pad, looking as tired and disheveled as the
chipped name tag pinned crookedly to her limp nylon uniform.
"Just coffee, thanks," Kate said.
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Sawyer looked into her dark eyes and smiled. "I, too, would like a cup of
coffee, please, Elizabeth. Would you also be so kind as to give me some cream
and some sugar to go in it?"
The woman blinked, and Kate was aware of an odd gush of pleasure at Sawyer's
undisguised enjoyment of the words he was pronouncing. He seemed to taste them
before he let them go, and she thought she was catching a glimpse of what
Professor Whitlaw had meant when she described his power as a public speaker.
Their coffee came quickly. Sawyer opened two envelopes of sugar, stirred them
and a large dollop of cream into the thick once-white mug, and put the spoon
down on the table.
"Beatrice's funeral is this afternoon," he said.
"I planned on going. Al, too."
"I asked Philip Gardner to take the service."
"Your license being expired," she said with a smile.
"I did not feel I had the right to the cassock."
It suddenly struck Kate that he was not wearing his wedding ring, either. She
set her cup down with a bang. "Now look, David, you can't go around taking all
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