“Marino wants to go through my financial records,” I said to Wesley as he followed me into the living room.

“Ben Stevens is setting me up. Personnel files and copies of memos are missing from the office, and he’s hoping it will appear that I took them. And Roy Patterson, according to Marino, is a happy man these days. That’s the update of the hour.”

“Where do you keep the Scotch?”

“I keep the good stuff in the hutch over mere. Glasses are in the bar.”

“I don’t want to drink your good stuff.”

“Well, I do.”

I began building a fire.

“I called your deputy chief as I was driving in. Firearms has already taken a look at the slugs that were in Donahue’s brain. Winchester one-fifty- grain, lead, unjacketed, twenty-two- caliber. Two of them: One went in his left cheek and traveled up through the skull, the other was a tight contact at the nape of his neck.”

“Fired from the same weapon that killed the other two?”

“Yes. Do you want ice?”

“Please.”

I closed the screen and returned the poker to its stand. “I don’t suppose any feathers were recovered from the scene or from-Donahue’s body.”

“Not that I know Of. It’s clear that his assailant was standing outside the car and shot him through the open driver’s window. That doesn’t mean this individual wasn’t inside with him earlier, but I don’t think so. My guess is Donahue was supposed to meet someone at Deep Water Terminal in the parking lot. When this person arrived, Donahue rolled down his window and that was it. Did you have any luck with Downey?” He handed coke my drink and settled on the couch.

“It appears that the origin of the feathers and feather particles recovered from the three other cases is common eider duck.”

“A sea duck?” Wesley frowned. “The down is used in what, ski jackets, gloves?”

“Rarely. Eiderdown is extremely expensive. Your average person is not going to own anything filled with it.”

I proceeded to inform Wesley of the events of the day, sparing no details as I confessed that I had spent several hours: with Nicholas Grueman and did not believe he was even remotely involved in anything sinister.

“I’m glad you went to see him,” Wesley said. “I was hoping you would”

“Are you surprised by how it turned out?’

“No. It makes sense the way it turned out: Grueman’s predicament is somewhat similar to your own. He gets a fax from Jennifer Deighton and it looks suspicious just as it looks suspicious that your prints were found on an envelope in Susan’s dresser drawer. When violence hits close to you, you get splashed. You get dirty.”

“I’m more than splashed. I feel as if I’m about to drown.”

“At the moment, it seems that way. Maybe you ought to be talking to Grueman about that ” I did not reply.

“I’d want him on my side.”

“I wasn’t aware that you knew him.”