Little Dog Laughed by Joseph Hansen Page A

said, “until he tried to defend himself with it against attackers stronger than he was, who took it away from him and killed him with it. Was it your son who had it fitted with a silencer?”
    Glendenning shook his head. “I did that. Later.”
    “Why did your son leave the gun behind?”
    “The airline wouldn’t let him take it.”
    “Right. And Streeter knew that. So buying the gun was your son’s own idea. Which suggests to me that Streeter gave him a fair picture of the danger he was flying into. I don’t call that irresponsible.”
    Glendenning started to answer, and Cecil came in with mugs of coffee on a tray. He set the tray on the hearth near Dave. Spoons lay on the tray beside a squat brown pottery pitcher of cream, a squat brown sugar bowl. Glendenning wanted his coffee black; Dave wanted a cigarette with his coffee and climbed to the loft to get the pack and his lighter. He heard Cecil stir sugar and cream into his coffee and ask:
    “Did your son talk to you about Los Inocentes—what he hoped to find there?”
    “He wanted to get to the insurgents, the rebels, to live with them if he could, to tell their side of the story.” Glendenning gave a brief dismal laugh. “And they killed him, didn’t they?”
    “That’s how the government tells it,” Cecil said.
    Dave found his cigarettes and lighter on the bedside stand and came down out of the loft darkness into the lamplight again. He sat down on the hearth, lit a cigarette, tried his coffee, and thought of lacing it with brandy. He looked down the room to the bar in deep shadow under the new section of loft. But he didn’t go there.
    Glendenning said, “He also hoped to prove there were American special forces fighting the rebels in the hills. Something Washington always denies.”
    “If it’s true,” Cecil said, “maybe they killed him.”
    Glendenning brooded over his coffee mug. “I’m sick about the whole thing. Sick to the heart.”
    “When you leave here,” Dave said, “go to Parker Center and find Detective Sergeant Jeff Leppard and tell him where the Desert Eagle came from.”
    Glendenning’s head jerked up. His glasses magnified the dismay in his eyes. “Must I? What good will it do?”
    “They’re trying to hang the killing on Mike Underhill,” Dave said. “A man who worked for him. And I don’t think it was Underhill. You can’t let them convict the wrong man.”
    “Why was he the wrong man? Anyone could have used the gun. I didn’t have it that night. Adam Streeter had it.” Glendenning got up quickly, set the mug on the hearth, stood talking down at them. “What you’re asking me to do is bring disgrace not just on myself, but on my wife, my parish, my whole denomination. I’m morally guilty, I know that. Guilty before God, and don’t think I’m not miserable about it. But I did not kill that man.”
    “It was your son’s gun,” Dave said, “fitted with your silencer. You were serious enough about killing him to buy that. You hated him, and I wonder if that stopped. I wonder if, a few days later, you didn’t buy a pair of wire cutters.”
    Glendenning gaped. “What are you talking about?”
    “The guard on the gate at Streeter’s place says you didn’t pass her that night. But that night someone cut the fence in back of the place. Someone crossed the marina by water in the dark, cut the fence, and—”
    “No. Absolutely not. Fantastic.”
    “My guess could have been wrong. That Streeter took the gun away from you and kept it.”
    “He did. But even if he hadn’t—I wasn’t at the marina that night. I was at County USC Medical Center. A parishioner was taken violently sick—Tom Fraser. Fine man. My deacon. I was there with his family, wife, daughter, son, until the emergency surgery was completed, and they told us he was out of danger. I got the call around midnight, and it was daylight by the time I left the hospital.”
    “And the doctor’s name?” Dave said.
    “Scheinwald,” Glendenning