Windy City Blues by Sara Paretsky

Author:Sara Paretsky
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307425621
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 1995-08-31T22:00:00+00:00

II

Sergeant McGonnigal was not fighting sarcasm as hard as he might have. “You sent the guy to guard the upstairs exit and he waltzed away, probably taking the gun with him. He must be on his knees in some church right now thanking God for sending a pushy private investigator to this race.”

I bit my lips. He couldn’t be angrier with me than I was with myself. I sneezed and shivered in my damp, clammy clothes. “You’re right, Sergeant. I wish you’d been at the meet instead of me. You’d probably have had ten uniformed officers with you who could’ve taken charge as soon as the starting gun was fired and avoided this mess. Do any of the timers know who the man was?”

We were in an office that the school athletic department had given the police for their investigation-scene headquarters. McGonnigal had been questioning all the timers, figuring their closeness to the pool gave them the best angle on what had happened. One was missing, the man I’d sent to the upper balcony exit.

The sergeant grudgingly told me he’d been over that ground with the other timers. None of them knew who the missing man was. Each of the companies in the meet had supplied volunteers to do the timing and other odd jobs. Everyone just assumed this man was from someone else’s firm. No one had noticed him that closely; their attention was focused on the action in the pool. My brief glance at him gave the police their best description: medium height, short brown hair, wearing a pale green T-shirt and faded white denim shorts. Yes, baggy enough for a gun to fit in a pocket unnoticed.

“You know, Sergeant, I asked for the six timers at the far end of the pool because they were facing the swimmers, so none of them could have shot the dead woman in the back. This guy came forward. That means there’s a timer missing—either the person actually down at the far end was in collusion, or you’re missing a body.”

McGonnigal made an angry gesture—not at me. Himself for not having thought of it before. He detailed two uniformed cops to round up all the volunteers and find out who the errant timer was.

“Any more information on the dead woman?”

McGonnigal picked up a pad from the paper-littered desk in front of him. “Her name was Louise Carmody. You know that. She was twenty-four. She worked for the Ft. Dearborn Bank and Trust as a junior lending officer. You know that. Her boss is very shocked—you probably could guess that. And she has no enemies. No dead person ever does.”

“Was she working on anything sensitive?”

He gave me a withering glance. “What twenty-four-year-old junior loan officer works on anything sensitive?”

“Lots,” I said firmly. “No senior person ever does the grubby work. A junior officer crunches numbers or gathers basic data for crunching. Was she working on any project that someone might not want her to get data for?”

McGonnigal shrugged wearily but made a note on a second pad—the closest he would come to recognizing that I might have a good suggestion.

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