The Assailant by James Patrick Hunt Read Free Book Online Page B

don’t see anyone. I’ll go check the back.”
    He did so while Hastings remained at the front door. Theapartment was one of many in a set of buildings in a row, so Klosterman had to walk all the way around the block and come back up the alley. Hastings looked into the windows. Soon he heard Klosterman’s knocks on the back door. Hastings drifted down to the Jaguar parked at the curb. He knew there was no one home. He was getting cold.
    Klosterman came back, holding up his arm. “Nothing,” he said. “We got the telephonic warrant.”
    â€œLet’s find the super. Get him to let us in.”
    It took some time, but they found the night manager of the complex. She let them into the apartment. It was well furnished and clean, but there were few if any signs of warmth. Above her bed was a poster of Marilyn Monroe nude. The one she did for the first issue of
Playboy
. A couple of hardback books that didn’t look like they’d been read. The bed was not made. An empty refrigerator, an unopened box of Pop-Tarts in the cupboard.
    They spent the next two hours going through the apartment and another half hour questioning the night manager. They didn’t learn anything helpful.
    They were both in lousy moods when they left.
    Klosterman said, “I get the feeling she didn’t spend much time there.”
    â€œMe too,” Hastings said.

NINE
    He called Carol from his car on the way home.
    She answered the phone, “Yeah?”
    â€œHi. Uh, do you still want to go out for dinner?”
    â€œWell, it’s almost eight thirty. It would be nine before we sat down. I don’t know . . .”
    â€œWell, I could stop by someplace and pick something up.”
    â€œMaybe we could have dinner tomorrow night.”
    â€œI’d like to, but I’m picking Amy up tomorrow night,” Hastings said. “But the three of us could have dinner.”
    â€œWell . . . let’s see,” Carol said. He heard her sigh. And Hastings felt it then. A funk. She had spent the day alone and he had let her down. But a girl had been murdered, and it was better to chase leads when they were hot.
    Hastings said, “Do you want to be alone?”
    â€œNo. I didn’t say that. Just come over.”
    â€œDo you want me to bring food?”
    â€œNo. Just come over.”
    â€œOkay.”
    Hastings clicked off the phone and his first thought was, Okay, but what am I going to eat?
    A fine rain had begun. He turned on the windshield wipers.
    Hastings drove to a Coney Island stand and ordered two hot dogs with mustard and onions and a Dr Pepper. His plan was to eat them in the car before he got to Carol’s. He felt little guilt about this. It added about five minutes to his trip to her place, and his being hungry and cranky wasn’t going to be good for either of them. He felt better after he ate.
    Driving north on Skinker Boulevard, Hastings considered his relationship with Carol McGuire. He understood that she probably had justification to be irritated with him. He did not consider himself a workaholic, and he often got bored with people who had little to talk about outside of work. It led to even duller conversations about things like the Cardinals, but at least it was something else. In a sense, he and Carol McGuire were part of the same community. She was a criminal defense attorney who had cut her teeth in the public defender’s office. They worked opposite sides, so to speak, but they knew a lot of the same people and the same cases. When they first met, it was under conditions that could arguably have been called hostile. She got a witness out of jail, whom Hastings wanted to question. Both of them thinking they needed to be adversarial to the other, but soon realizing their goals were not all that different.
    Carol McGuire had been tentative with him at first. She recognized, as others had, that George Hastings could read people well enough,