Suspects by Thomas Berger

his years in Homicide, Moody never became habituated to the sight of a human body laid open with a scalpel and was more squeamish than LeBeau, on whom he might have tried to foist the job had his partner not been the father of a daughter near the age of the smaller victim.
    You could close your eyes, of course, but that was no defense against the odors that permeated the mask over your nose and mouth, and if you pinched your nose shut, you still tasted it or thought you could. The process took hours. He did not get back to his desk until early afternoon. He had eaten no lunch but would not have an appetite before dinnertime, if then.
    He filled LeBeau in. “Donna was killed by a blow to the back of the head. Pollack wants to study the wound more before coming to any final conclusions about the weapon, but it must have been heavy to do what it did. The knife wounds were made with an edge as thin and sharp as one of his surgical scalpels.”
    â€œAnd the little girl?”
    â€œThe cut across her throat,” Moody said curtly. “She wasn’t otherwise hurt.” He consulted his notebook, though he needed to read nothing there. “Neither one had been touched sexually.”
    At least LeBeau had meanwhile notified the woman whose number had been listed next to “Mom,” who turned out in fact to be the mother of Donna Howland, a Mrs. Elizabeth O’Neill, in Elkhart, Indiana. But she was not at home. The next-door neighbor who watered her plants directed him to call the hospital, where Mrs. O’Neill was currently a patient with a serious heart condition. According to the neighbor, Donna was an only child, and she knew of no other relatives. Mrs. O’Neill was a widow. So Dennis saw no way out of the unhappy duty of informing a very sick woman that her only child had been violently murdered.
    Moody visited the water cooler, where he swallowed two mint-flavored digestion pills.
    When he got back to his desk, LeBeau was just hanging up the phone.
    â€œLarry Howland came home.”
    The partners went down to their car, and Moody drove to 1143 Laurel. Across the street from the crime scene was a crowd of onlookers and also a scattering of media people. LeBeau and Moody ignored the shouted questions of the latter, ducked under the yellow tape, and walked to the house.
    The officer on duty had detained Howland in the living room. The detectives took over.
    Howland was a tall man going a little soft around the middle. He had curly dark hair cut neat and short. He was closely shaven but had the kind of beard that always casts a shadow. He wore a suit of medium gray, a shirt with a thin blue stripe, and a blue tie with a small red figure. His only visible jewelry was a gold wristwatch and a wedding band. He looked a few years older than the thirty-two they had established from Motor Vehicles records. The blue Escort parked up the street, just beyond where the yellow tape turned the corner at the driveway of 1143, was his, according to the number on the plate.
    Howland’s face was colored with indignation. He shouted at the detectives. He claimed not to know what had happened here.
    Moody asked him, “You are Lawrence Howland, and this is your home? Your wife is Donna Howland, and your daughter’s named Amanda?”
    The answer was given at high volume. “How much longer do I have to put up with this? Where are they? What’s happened to them?” He seemed more angry than worried. But the visible evidence of emotion could be highly deceptive.
    â€œThis won’t take a minute,” Moody said. “Would you mind just telling us where it was you really went yesterday? Because you weren’t on any of the airlines that fly in and out of Los Angeles—at least not under the name Lawrence or Larry Howland. Also your employer, Glenn-Air, states they never sent you to any kind of conference or convention or whatever, in L.A. or anyplace else.”
    Howland was suddenly