Backfire

Savich said, “Nothing from Hammersmith about the Dodge Charger he’s been looking for?”

“He’s had no luck with that,” Cheney said. “And no useful leads yet from any of the hotels in the city on the man—or woman—who was driving it.”

Savich said, “After what the killer did to Mickey O’Rourke, we should stop talking about a woman. We all think you’re right, Cheney. It’s a man who killed Mickey O’Rourke.”

Burt Seng said, “Still, guys, it could have been a very strong woman. Hey, Eve here could carry lots of dead weight.”

“Not that much,” Eve said.

Dillon said, “Mickey O’Rourke weighed two hundred and ten pounds, and everyone has described the perp as slender, not very big, so it’s got to be a man, a very fit man.”

Harry said, “I agree; even the ponytail couldn’t have managed it.”

Eve said, “I know I couldn’t, so it’s a man. For sure. Now, I don’t think Cindy was putting us on, either, about the name Sue—it was too raw, too fast. I don’t know who this Sue is, but I agree, she can’t be O’Rourke’s murderer. Maybe an accomplice, but not the killer.”

Sherlock said, “Boozer Gordon described a man, too, not a woman; there was no question in his mind. So, yeah, good-bye, Sue.”

“Without those kids,” Harry said, “not only wouldn’t we ever have found Mickey O’Rourke, but, bigger yet, we still would have been trying to fit our killer into a female body.”

Cheney said, “I say we buy those kids tickets to a Forty-niners game.”

Savich repeated slowly, “If Sue is an accomplice, was she with the killer when he beat Mickey? Did she question him? Did she tell him to slice Mickey’s throat? If so, then why wouldn’t she go with him to bury him? As his lookout, his helper, whatever? But she didn’t.” Savich stopped cold. He looked very thoughtful, then, without another word, he started quickly typing on MAX’s keyboard.

Sherlock cocked her head at him, since she knew that Eureka! look well. He’d thought of something, something big. She said, “We’ve been working on a bit of information Boozer Gordon gave us. When the man was putting on plastic gloves to draw Boozer’s blood, Boozer noticed two rings on his fingers. The diamond pinkie ring sounds like the one Mrs. Moe described the shooter wearing when he rented the Zodiac. As for the other one, Boozer said it looked sort of ‘religious’ and actually asked the man if he was a priest. The man said no, he’d won it in a poker game. But still it could be an easy lie. Since it was an odd sort of ring to wear, it could have significance, it could be important.”

Eve said, “Priests don’t wear rings, not in the Catholic Church, though bishops do.”

Sherlock nodded at her. “We sent a police artist to meet with Boozer and get a sketch of the ring. Here it is, to the best of Boozer’s memory.”

While everyone looked at the drawing, Sherlock said, “Even though it’s pretty rough, we sent the sketch back to the Hoover Building. Given all the ecclesiastical rings I looked at on the Internet, Boozer’s description of the ring isn’t far off. We should know soon if our people can find anything.” But Sherlock didn’t look hopeful.

Harry pointed to the sketch. “The ring does look faintly religious. I hope you’re right and it’s important to this guy, for whatever reason.”

“Well, well, would you look at this,” Savich said. He looked down at MAX again for a moment, then smiled at everyone. “In all the talking we’ve done about Sue, we’ve assumed Sue is an American woman because it’s an American name, short for Susan. But it occurred to me to ask if there are names in other languages that sound like Sue, since this case revolves around espionage. I ran it as a search through MAX, and it turns out there are names in Chinese that are pronounced Sue, or close to it. The closest one is a family name, written in English as X-u or S-u. Either way, since it’s a surname it can be a man or woman’s name, but no matter, I’d say Xu is a man and very probably Chinese.”

Cheney rose straight up, slammed his fist to the table. “That’s got to be right! It fits too well not to be. It all makes sense now. The Cahills had a Chinese handler named Xu who probably recruited them to get access to Mark Lindy’s classified information. Question is, why is Xu still in the country? Why is he still around more than eight months after the Cahills were arrested?”

“Maybe he’s trying to clean things up before he checks out,” Harry said.