“Shortly before midnight.”
“All right, suppose they came home, found Beegan either standing in the door of the girl’s apartment or in the hallway or on the stairs? They had an argument. Or else they just walked into the apartment behind him and took a pot shot at him. If you list them as suspects, the killing could have been any time before the body was discovered.”
“It sounds silly.”
“Perhaps it does to you. It sounds silly to me to think that I’d have shot him.”
“You wanted his girl.”
“No more than I want a couple of hundred other attractive women.”
“Enough to run risks of taking a beating.”
“I was working.”
“I know,” he said, and ran the tips of his fingers along the angle of his jaw, “you have a great devotion to duty.”
“When I work on a case, I want to crack it — the same as you do.”