“So what do you think happened?”
“The most likely scenario was that Comb-Over got wind of what was up and killed them. But we never really bought that.”
“Why not?”
“Because there was evidence—lots of it, actually—that Comb-Over was searching for Lemay and Rangor too. Even harder than we were. For a while it was like the race was on, you know, who’d find them first. When they never turned up, well, we figured we lost the race.”
“This Comb-Over. He still on the streets?”
“Yes.”
“And what about Clyde Rangor?”
“We have no idea where he is.” Yates shifted in his chair. “Clyde Rangor was a major whack-job. He managed a couple of strip clubs for Comb-Over and had a rep for enjoying the occasional, uh, rough session.”
“How rough?”
Yates folded his hands and placed them in his lap. “We suspect that some of the girls didn’t recover.”
“When you say didn’t recover—”
“One ended up in a catatonic state. One—the last one, we think—ended up dead.”
Loren made a face. “And you were cutting a deal with this guy?”
“What, you want us to find someone nicer?” Yates snapped.
“I—”
“Do I really need to explain to you how trading up works, Investigator Muse?”
Steinberg stepped in. “Not at all.”
“I didn’t mean to imply. . . .” Loren bit back, her face reddening, upset with herself for sounding so amateurish. “Go on.”
“What else is there? We don’t know where Clyde Rangor is, but we believe that he can still provide valuable information, maybe help us take Comb-Over down.”
“How about Charles Talley and Detective Max Darrow? Any idea how they fit in?”
“Charles Talley is a thug with a record for brutality. He handled some of the girls in the clubs, made sure they kept in line, didn’t steal much, shared their, uh, tips with the house. Last we heard he was working for a dump in Reno called the Eager Beaver. Our best guess is, Talley was hired to kill Emma Lemay.”
“By this Comb-Over guy?”
“Yes. Our theory is that somehow Comb-Over found out that Emma Lemay was pretending to be this Sister Mary Rose. He sent Talley here to kill her.”
“And what about Max Darrow?” Loren asked. “We know he was in Lemay’s quarters. What was his role?”
Yates uncrossed his legs and sat up. “For one thing, we think Darrow, though a fairly solid cop, might have been crooked.”
His voice drifted off. He cleared his throat.
“And for another,” Loren prompted.
Yates took a deep breath. “Well, Max Darrow . . .” He looked at Thurston. She didn’t nod, didn’t move, but Loren got the impression that, as she had done with Steinberg, Yates was looking for an okay. “Let’s just say that Max Darrow is connected into this case in another way.”
They waited. Several seconds passed. Loren finally said, “How?”
Yates rubbed his face with both hands, suddenly looking exhausted. “I mentioned before that Clyde Rangor was into rough trade.”
Loren nodded.
“And that we think he killed his last victim.”
“Yes.”
“The victim was a small-time stripper and probable hooker, named . . . hold on, I have it here . . .”—Yates pulled a small leather notepad from his back pocket, licked his finger, flipped through the pages—“named Candace Potter, aka Candi Cane.” He snapped the notebook shut. “Emma Lemay and Clyde Rangor disappeared soon after her body was found.”
“And how does that fit in with Darrow?”
“Max Darrow was the homicide investigator in charge of the case.”
Everyone stopped.
“Wait a second,” Ed Steinberg began. “So this Clyde Rangor murders a stripper. Darrow catches the case. A few days later, Rangor and his girlfriend Lemay vanish. And now, what, ten years later, we get Darrow’s fingerprints at Emma Lemay’s murder scene?”
“That pretty much sums it up, yes.”
There was more silence. Loren tried to digest this.
“Here’s the important thing,” Yates continued, leaning forward. “If Emma Lemay still had materials pertinent to this case—or if she left information on the whereabouts of Clyde Rangor—we believe that Investigator Muse is in the best position to find it.”
“Me?”
Yates turned toward her. “You have a relationship with her colleagues. Lemay lived with the same group of nuns for seven years now. The Mother Superior clearly trusts you. What we need you to concentrate on is that angle—in finding out what Lemay knew or what she had.”
Steinberg looked at Loren and shrugged. Joan Thurston moved around her desk. She opened a mini-fridge. “Anybody want a drink?” she asked.
They didn’t reply. Thurston shrugged, grabbed a bottle, began to shake it. “How about you, Adam? You want something?”
“Just a water.”
She tossed him a bottle.
“Ed? Loren?”
They both shook their heads. Joan Thurston twisted off the cap and took a deep sip. She moved back in front of her desk.
“Okay, time to stop the dance,” Thurston said. “What else have you learned, Loren?”
Loren. Already calling her Loren. Again she checked with Steinberg. Again he nodded.
“We found several connections between all of this and an ex-con named Matt Hunter,” Loren said.
Thurston’s eyes narrowed. “Why does that name ring a bell?”
“He’s local, from Livingston. His case made the papers years back. He got into a fight at a college party—”
“Oh, right, I remember,” Thurston interrupted. “I knew his brother Bernie. Good lawyer, died much too young. I think Bernie got him a job at Carter Sturgis when he got out.”
“Matt Hunter still works there.”
“And he’s involved in this?”
“There are connections.”
“Such as?”
She told them about the phone call from St. Margaret’s to Marsha Hunter’s residence. They did not seem all that impressed. When Loren started filling them in on what she’d learned this very night—that Matt Hunter had, in all likelihood, gotten into a fight with Charles Talley at the Howard Johnson’s—they sat up. For the first time Yates started jotting notes in the leather pad.