The phone rang the next morning while we were having breakfast. Elaine answered it, and it was TJ, checking to see if she wanted him to spell her at the shop. She talked with him, then said, “Hang on,” and passed me the phone.
“It ain’t the peach pits,” he said. “You got to crack the pits, and there’s this kernel inside.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Talkin’ ‘bout cyanide, Clyde. Like he put in the scotch bottle? I can’t say if you could kill yourself eatin’ peach kernels, but there was a dude did it with apricots. Didn’t eat but fifteen or twenty of ’em, and that was enough.”
“Apricot kernels, you mean.”
There was a pause, and I could picture his eyes rolling. “If you could die from eatin’ fifteen or twenty apricots, don’t you think they’d make ’em put a warnin’ on the package? Dude cracked open the pits, ate the kernels, an’ that was his last meal.”
“And it was suicide?”
“Couldn’t find out for sure. Could be he was tryin’ to cure cancer. There’s this drug they make outta apricot kernels, and you’ve got people swearin’ it works and people swearin’ it don’t. Laetrile? Might be I ain’t pronouncin’ it right.”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“So this dude who ate the kernels, could be he was on a do-it-yourself Laetrile project. But we was wonderin’ if you could kill yourself that” way, eatin’ peach pits, an’ if fifteen or twenty’s all it takes, I guess the answer’s yes, at least with apricots. Assumin’ you fool enough to try.”
“Somehow I don’t think Adrian got cyanide from apricot kernels.”
“No, but that leaves a whole lot of other ways to get it. Turns out there’s all kinds of industrial uses for that shit.” He went on to tell me some of them. “So his name might turn up on a list,” he said, “or Allen Johnson’s might, but they might not. On account of there’s so many different ways to get it.”
“How do you happen to know all this?”
“Computer.”
“You don’t have a computer.”
“This girl does.”
“What girl?”
“Girl I know. Not like the Kongs, she ain’t no hacker, don’t know how to do anything tricky, sneakin’ into networks an’ data bases and all of that. She just use it to do her homework and balance her checkbook an’ shit.”
“So you asked her computer about peach pits and cyanide and it spat out all that information?”
“You don’t ask the computer nothin’. Computer just a machine.”
“Oh.”
“She got this on-line service, see, and you hook up to that and browse these different message boards. An’ when you find somebody might know the answer to your question, you send him an E-mail. An’ he E-mails you back. Like talkin’, ’cept it on the screen.”
“Oh.”
“An’ what else you can do, you can post a question on the message board, an’ people post their answers an’ you can pick ’em up later on. Or they’ll E-mail it straight to you. Anything you want to know, somebody out there got the answer.”
“Oh.”
“Course, sometimes what you get gonna be the wrong answer, ’cause people who don’t know be just as apt to answer as people who do. So all of that about the apricot kernels ain’t exactly somethin’ you can take to the bank, Frank. Might be he got the details wrong.”
“I see.”
“Anyway,” he said, “I learned all of that, so I thought I’d pass it on. I be at Elaine’s shop later, case you need me.”
I finished my coffee, and I was on my way out the door when the phone rang.
It was Joe Durkin. “We have to talk,” he said.
“I was on my way over.”
“Don’t come here. There’s that coffee shop I met you once, Greek place, Eighth between Forty-fourth and Forty-fifth. I forget the name, they changed it when they redecorated, but it’s the same place.”
“I know the one you mean. The east side of Eighth.”
“Right. Ten minutes?”
“Fine. I’ll buy the coffee.”
“All I want is straight answers,” he said. “I don’t give a shit who buys the coffee.”
He was in a booth when I got there. He had a cup of coffee in front of him and an expression on his face that I couldn’t read. He said, “I want to know what you know about Will.”
“What brought this on?”
“What brought it on? I made a phone call this morning, just thought I’d ask if the Allen Johnson name turned up on any lists they might have got from Poison Control.”
“I gather it rang a bell.”
“The name? It couldn’t, because I didn’t get that far. Before I knew it I was right in the middle of a Chinese fire drill. What did I know about Will? What did I have and where did it come from?”
“What did you tell them?”
“That I’d heard something from a source during an investigation of another matter. I don’t remember exactly what I said. I didn’t mention your name, if that’s what you were wondering.”
“Good.”
“The only reason I kept you out of it,” he said, “is before I give you to them I want to know what I’m giving. How did this Allen Johnson get to be Will, and how did you get onto him, and who the hell is he anyway?” When I hesitated he added, “And don’t hold out on me, Matt. If you’re blowing smoke, blow it someplace else, will you? And if you’ve got something, well, the son of a bitch already murdered four people. Don’t sit there with your thumb up your ass while he goes and kills somebody else.”
“He’s not going to kill anybody else.”
“Why, because he gave us his word? He kills people but he draws the line at lying?”
“His killing days are over.”
“And you know for a fact he won’t change his mind?”
“He can’t.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because he’s dead,” I said. “The last person he killed was himself. I’m not blowing smoke and I’m not holding out, either. Will was Adrian Whitfield. He killed three people and then he killed himself.”
He looked at me. “In other words, case closed. Is that what you’re saying?”
“It’ll take some police work to wrap it up and tie off the loose ends, but—”
“But Will’s history and the people of this great city can sleep safe in their beds. Is that it?”
“Evidently not,” I said, “if your tone of voice is anything to go by. What have you got?”
“What have I got? I haven’t got a thing. I could tell you what they’ve got downtown, except you can figure it out for yourself when I tell you who they got it from. Our old friend Martin J. McGraw.” I looked at him and he nodded. “Yeah, right,” he said. “Another letter from Will.”