“Well, try to remember,” Ava said.
She could see him thinking hard. Finally, he said, “I think I was there pretty much all day and night. My wife…she’s been insufferable since we had to close the mill and shop down. I’ve been staying with my friend for a while here and there.”
“We’ll need his name.”
“No, I don’t think so. No way I’m going to let you go over there under the guise of clearing my story only to bust him for having alcohol.”
“And what about the gun?”
“What about it?”
“Why did you have a gun on you when we came by?” Pawlowski asked. “It almost seems like you were waiting for someone in particular.”
He let out the same chuckle he’d voiced several times since they’d come into contact with him. “No. Just keeping it on hand in case I ever get the courage to end my life.”
Ava watched as Pawlowski considered this answer. She took several moments before she spoke again and when she did, Ava wasn’t sure exactly where she was headed with the interrogation.
“You said you’ve been staying at your friend’s house here and there, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“What about clothes? Do you have a change of clothes on you?”
He laughed once more. It was really starting to get on Ava’s nerves and started to support the idea that maybe thiswastheir man. He certainly wasn’t in his right mind, and he didn’t seem to be taking any of this seriously.
“You crazy broad. I just told you I have half a mind to kill myself. You think I give a damn about my clothes? I’ve been wearing these same clothes for nearly a week now.”
Standing behind her partner, Ava could see Pawlowski sigh. She nodded and turned to Ava with a strange look on her face. “Can I speak to you outside, Detective Gold?”
Ava nodded, and both women left the room to step out into the hallway. Pawlowski closed the door behind them and stepped to the right, not too far away from where Ava and Miller had spoken just moments before.
“You heard him,” Pawlowski said. “He hasn’t changed his clothes in several days.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, did you see his shoes?”
“No, I didn’t really pay attention to them.”
“I know it’s a long shot,” Pawlowski said, “but they look like they could be a match for that print we saw out on that beam at the Chrysler Building.”
Ava knew it was indeed a long shot, especially because a photographer had never been sent up to document the site. Andeven if she and Pawlowski could confirm that the shoe matched the print, it wouldn’t be enough.
“Thatisa long shot.” As she said this, another thought occurred to Ava. She’d felt the edges of the theory while speaking with O’Hare in the interrogation room, but it only now presented itself as a full-formed thought. “Hear me out, for a second….”
“What? You don’t think it’s him? The shoes…I know it’s flimsy at best, but…”
She shrugged, cutting her own self off. Ava wondered if her partner had come to the same conclusions she had just seconds ago.
“O’Hare is suicidal. He admitted to thinking of killing himself twice already. Why would a man murder someone by shoving them off a building and then approach the brink of killing himself two days later?”
“Maybe killing someone pushed him even further,” Pawlowski suggested. “Maybe losing everything was the crack in the foundation and then taking another person’s life split it.”
“That’s a good theory,” Ava said, thinking it over. But even then, something still didn’t feel right. “But why the Chrysler Building? O’Hare has no connection to it, even if Perkins did, in a small way.”
“When you put the Chrysler Building into it, it all does sort of fall apart, huh?” Pawlowski asked. “So…what do we do now? We’re almost out of time.”
“Maybe. Even if O’Hare isn’t our killer, hedidpull a gun on a cop. We can hold him on that for a while…paint it as if we’re still questioning him about Perkins while he’s here. That might buy us some more time.”