Festival of Deaths(120)

“It always amazes me where police detectives can hide handcuffs.”

“I’ve been caught short before,” Jackman said. “Just do it.”

Gregor did it. He got the handcuffs. He got Prescott Holloway’s hands behind his back and secured. Prescott Holloway cooperated and the whole operation took less than one and a half minutes.

“I can understand what you guys are thinking,” Holloway said. “But I didn’t do anything. I just came up to see where everybody was and found Itzaak in there lying on the floor.”

“Put him in a chair,” John Jackman said. Gregor escorted Prescott Holloway to the chairs beside the nurses’ station and sat him down. Prescott did some more cooperating and ended up with his legs stretched out across the vinyl floor, twisted into that strange body kink that is the only way to sit comfortably in a chair when your hands are cuffed behind your back. Gregor made a note of the fact that it was a maneuver Prescott Holloway seemed perfectly familiar with. He didn’t have to fumble around and he didn’t have to be told.

John Jackman was behind the nurses’ station counter and on the phone. Gregor could hear him giving directions in his patented police command bark.

“Tell the nun at the desk we need some doctors up here. We’ve got at least one person dead and at least one person seriously hurt and I want someone to check out Carmencita Boaz just in case. And get up here yourself. Shecker’s missing. And get me some uniforms and the techies and the mobile crime unit and do it in the next ten seconds because I need help up here and I need it right away.”

Gregor left Prescott Holloway where he was sitting—it was not easy to get out of a chair from that position; it took work—and went around to John. He watched Prescott Holloway every second of the way. The bland smirk on the face. The smooth fall of rep stripes under the perfect knot of the tie. The little bulge in the pocket of his shirt where it looked as if he’d stuffed one of the nuns’ hard candies. The brass buckle on his good leather belt. Gregor had heard people describe Prescott Holloway as someone who had “seen better days,” but that wasn’t accurate. Prescott Holloway was a man whose days were pretty good right now.

Gregor came to a rest beside John and looked down at the back of Prescott’s head. John was staring at the phone, looking morose.

“Come here,” he said, gesturing toward the head nurse’s office. When they were out of Prescott Holloway’s way and had a decent chance at not being overheard Jackman went on.

“It isn’t going to work is it?” he asked Gregor. “We’re going to arrest him. And they’re going to prosecute him. But we’re not going to get him.”

“I don’t know what they have in New York,” Gregor said, “but here you’ve got Herbert Shasta to contend with. Herbert Shasta was a known serial killer and he was found standing right next to the body. That’s reasonable doubt.”

“Right,” Jackman said, “and unless Carmencita saw him hit her—which she probably didn’t—the defense is just going to say she would testify to anything to get out from under being deported, and if we don’t get her out from under being deported, she might not be here to testify. God, this is a mess.”

“I know,” Gregor said. “I know.”

“Sometimes I think I want to go into the army, Gregor, I really do. Get a rifle. Shoot the sons of—”

“Skip it,” Gregor said. “Shouldn’t we be looking for your cop?”

“I can’t leave him. You could look.”

“Maybe I will. Just in case we got lucky and we don’t have another dead body on our hands.”

“Good luck.”

“I hope your uniforms get here soon,” Gregor said. And then he stopped. He stopped dead in his tracks. He ran the memory of his last look at Prescott Holloway through his mind one more time, and he nearly laughed.

“What is it?” John Jackman demanded.

“It isn’t hard candy,” Gregor said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Good luck charms.”

Gregor went back around the nurse’s station counter and stood in front of Prescott Holloway again. He looked at the bulge in Prescott’s shirt pocket and smiled.

“Excuse me,” he said, reaching in and taking out the dreidel. “I’m making a note to Mr. Jackman here that I removed this dreidel from your shirt pocket. That’s for the chain of evidence report.”

“Chain of evidence for what?” Prescott Holloway demanded. “That’s a plain ordinary wooden dreidel. It’s practically Hanukkah. I work for a Jewish woman. Why shouldn’t I have one?”