Read Online Solitary Dancer by John Lawrence Reynolds - Free Book Online Page A

much?” Vance asked.
    â€œStill don’t know,” Fox said. “Or what was in the file cabinet either. But it wasn’t forced. Unlocked, key still there, her prints on it.”
    â€œHow about the other men on the answering machine tape?” Vance looked back and forth between Fox and Donovan. “You identified their voices?”
    â€œWe think one’s a photographer, client of hers,” Donovan said. “The other might be her ex-husband, runs some plumbing or hardware outfit. There’s a boyfriend too. I’m talking to the husband today, check him out.”
    â€œWhat’ve you done about her landlord saying she feared for her life?” Fat Eddie asked. “She ever report it?”
    Fox shrugged. “Nothing in the records about it. She told her landlord the police couldn’t help her.”
    Fat Eddie raised his eyebrows and pulled at his mustache, lost in some private thought.
    Higgins was on his feet. “McGuire’s getting a court-appointed lawyer this morning,” he said. “Whoever it is, they’ll make a motion for release.” He shook his head. “I can’t oppose it.”
    Vance’s telephone rang. He nodded at Higgins, picked up the receiver and barked his name into the mouthpiece. “Who?” he said, then turned to Fox. “It’s McGuire’s ex-wife, the victim’s sister, came in from Florida last night. She wants to talk to you.”
    â€œI’ll take it at my desk,” Fox said, standing.
    Vance nodded, a Buddha serene on the surface, his indigestion simmering like a stew within, but his mind fastened on something else for a change.
    They took McGuire from his cell after breakfast. The guards clumped down the concrete corridor in heavy black boots with soles thick as watermelon rind. McGuire shuffled unsteadily between them, his feet flip-flopping in his sneakers with no laces.
    They led him to a room with gray plaster walls that were cracked and peeling and gray metal furniture that was dented and bent. Harvey Hoffman, McGuire’s appointed lawyer, lifted his head from the stack of legal documents he had been reading and nodded to McGuire, who sat facing him in the only other chair in the room. The guards retreated to the corridor, leaving the prisoner with his counselor.
    â€œYou okay?” Hoffman asked McGuire through his massive gray beard. The lawyer’s bald head shone in the glare of the single overhead fluorescent light fixture. It was just after nine in the morning but already Hoffman looked as though he had run a marathon in his three-piece suit. Running any distance would have been a remarkable feat for this man, who carried his nearly three hundred pounds like an armful of inflated balloons, folds of it spilling out here and there. A pair of delicate gold-rimmed half-frame spectacles spanned his broad face. His salt-and-pepper beard sprouted untrimmed and untamed from the lower half of his face like shrubbery.
    â€œI’m all right,” McGuire said.
    Over the years McGuire and Hoffman had encountered each other in various Suffolk County courtrooms, earning a grudging respect for each other, like sparring partners who know nothing of the other man’s life except the sight of him crouching, jabbing and darting away.
    â€œThis is a crappy move, what they did,” Hoffman said, suppressing a belch. He reached up and began unbuttoning his vest. “They couldn’t even stick a charge of threatening on you. Can’t threaten an answering machine.” He chose a sheaf of papers from the stack and slapped it with the back of his hand. “Nothing in here, in your statement, constitutes a felony, not even sufficient grounds for suspicion.” He removed his glasses. “Only reason you’re here is that Eddie Vance doesn’t like you very much, does he?”
    McGuire smiled.
    â€œWell, I’ve already talked to Higgins’s office, told them I’d