Time to Murder and Create by Lawrence Block

made a lot of chalk marks, wrapped and bagged the gun, and finally zipped Prager into a body bag and got him out of there. Heaney and Finch took Shari's statement first so that she could go home and collapse on her own time. All they really wanted was for her to plug the standard gaps so that the coroner's inquest could return a verdict of suicide, so they fed her questions and confirmed that her boss had been depressed and edgy lately, that he had been evidently worried about business, that his moods had been abnormal and out of character, and, on the mechanical side, that she had seen him a few minutes before the shot sounded, that she and I had been sitting in the outer office at the time, and that we had entered simultaneously to find him dead in his chair.
    Heaney told her that was fine. Someone would be around for a formal statement in the morning, and in the meantime Detective Finch would see her home. She said that wasn't necessary, she'd get a cab, but Finch insisted.
    Heaney watched the two of them leave. "You bet Finch'll take her home," he said. "That's quite an ass on that little lady."
    "I didn't notice."
    "You're getting old. Finch noticed. He likes the black ones, especially built like that. Myself, I don't fool around, but I got to admit I get a kick out of working with Finch. If he gets half the ass he tells me about, he's gonna fuck himself to death. Tell you the truth, I don't think he makes any of it up, either. The broads go for him." He lit a cigarette and offered the pack to me. I passed. He said, "That girl now, Shari, I'll give you odds he nails her."
    "Not today he won't. She's pretty shaky."
    "Hell, that's the best time. I don't know what the hell it is, but that's when they want it the most. Go tell a woman her husband got killed, like breaking the news, now would you make a pass at a time like that?
    Whatever she looks like, would you do it? Neither would I. You should hear the stories that son of a bitch tells. Couple of months ago we had this ironworker falls off a girder, Finch has to break the news to the wife. He tells her, she cracks up, he gives her a hug to comfort her, pets her a little, and the next thing he knows she's got his zipper down and she's blowing him."
    "That's if you take Finch's word for it."
    "Well, if half what he says is true, and I think he's straight about it. I mean, he tells me when he strikes out, too."
    I didn't much want to have this conversation, but neither did I want to make my feelings obvious, so we went through a few more stories of Finch's love life and then wasted a few minutes reviewing mutual friends. This might have taken longer had we known each other better. Finally he picked up his clipboard and concentrated on Prager. We went through the automatic questions, and I confirmed what Shari had told him.
    Then he said, "Just for the record, any chance he could've been dead before you got here?" When I looked blank, he spelled it out. "This is off the wall, but just for the record. Suppose she killed him, don't ask me how or why, and then she waits for you or somebody else to come in, and then she fakes talking to him, and she's sitting with you, and she triggers a gun, I don't know, a thread or something, and then the two of you discover the body together and she's covered."
    "You better cut out all that television, Jim. It's affecting your brain."
    "Well, it could happen that way."
    "Sure. I heard him talking to her when she went inside. Of course, she could have set up a tape recorder--"
    "All right, for Christ's sake."
    "If you want to explore all the possibilities--"
    "I said it was just off the wall. You watch what they do on Mission Impossible and you wonder how criminals are so stupid in real life. So what the hell, a crook can watch television too, and maybe he picks up an idea. But you heard him talking, and we can forget tape recorders, and that settles that."
    Actually, I hadn't heard Prager talking, but it was a lot simpler to say that I had.