Even if I couldn’t recall meeting Douglas Ettinger, I had a picture of him in my mind. Tall and raw-boned, dark hair, pallid skin, knobby wrists, Lincolnesque features. A prominent Adam’s apple.

I woke up Saturday morning with his image firmly in mind, as if it had been imprinted there during an unremembered dream. After a quick breakfast I went down to Penn Station and caught a Long Island Railroad local to Hicksville. A phone call to his house in Mineola had established that Ettinger was working at the Hicksville store, and it turned out to be a $2.25 cab ride from the station.

In an aisle lined with squash and racquet-ball equipment I asked a clerk if Mr. Ettinger was in. “I’m Doug Ettinger,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

He was about five-eight, a chunky one-seventy. Tightly curled light brown hair with red highlights. The plump cheeks and alert brown eyes of a squirrel. Large white teeth, with the upper incisors slightly bucked, consistent with the squirrel image. He didn’t look remotely familiar, nor did he bear any resemblance whatsoever to the rail-splitter caricature I’d dreamed up to play his part.

“My name’s Scudder,” I said. “I’d like to talk to you privately, if you don’t mind. It’s about your wife.”

His open face turned guarded. “Karen?” he said. “What about her?”

Christ. “Your first wife.”

“Oh, Barbara,” he said. “You had me going for a second there. The serious tone and all, and wanting to talk to me about my wife. I don’t know what I thought. You’re from the NYPD? Right this way, we can talk in the office.”

His was the smaller of the two desks in the office. Invoices and correspondence were arranged in neat piles on it. A Lucite photo cube held pictures of a woman and several young children. He saw me looking at it and said, “That’s Karen there. And the kids.”

I picked up the cube, looked at a young woman with short blonde hair and a sunny smile. She was posed next to a car, with an expanse of lawn behind her. The whole effect was very suburban.

I replaced the photo cube and took the chair Ettinger indicated. He sat behind the desk, lit a cigarette with a disposable butane lighter. He knew the Icepick Prowler had been apprehended, knew too that the suspect denied any involvement in his first wife’s murder. He assumed Pinell was lying, either out of memory failure or for some insane reason. When I explained that Pinell’s alibi had been confirmed, he seemed unimpressed.

“It’s been years,” he said. “People can get mixed up on dates and you never know how accurate records are. He probably did it. I wouldn’t take his word that he didn’t.”

“The alibi looks sound.”

Ettinger shrugged. “You’d be a better judge of that than I would. Still, I’m surprised that you guys are reopening the case. What can you expect to accomplish after all this time?”

“I’m not with the police, Mr. Ettinger.”

“I thought you said—”

“I didn’t bother to correct your impression. I used to be in the department. I’m private now.”

“You’re working for somebody?”

“For your former father-in-law.”

“Charlie London hired you?” He frowned, taking it all in. “Well, I guess it’s his privilege. It’s not going to bring Barbie back but I guess it’s his right to feel like he’s doing something. I remember he was talking about posting a reward after she was murdered. I don’t know if he ever got around to it or not.”

“I don’t believe he did.”

“So now he wants to spend a few dollars finding the real killer. Well, why not? He doesn’t have much going for him since Helen died. His wife, Barbara’s mother.”

“I know.”

“Maybe it’ll do him good to have something he can take an interest in. Not that work doesn’t keep him busy, but, well—” He flicked ashes from his cigarette. “I don’t know what help I can give you, Mr. Scudder, but ask all the questions you want.”

I asked about Barbara’s social contacts, her relationships with people in the building. I asked about her job at the day-care center. He remembered Janice Corwin but couldn’t supply her husband’s name. “The job wasn’t that important,” he said. “Basically it was something to get her out of the house, give her a focus for her energy. Oh, the money helped. I was dragging a briefcase around for the Welfare Department, which wasn’t exactly the road to riches. But Barbie’s job was temporary. She was going to give it up and stay home with the baby.”

The door opened. A teenage clerk started to enter the office, then stopped and stood there looking awkward. “I’ll be a few minutes, Sandy,” Ettinger told him. “I’m busy right now.”

The boy withdrew, shutting the door. “Saturday’s always busy for us,” Ettinger said. “I don’t want to rush you, but I’m needed out there.”

I asked him some more questions. His memory wasn’t very good, and I could understand why. He’d had one life torn up and had had to create a new one, and it was easier to do so if he dwelled on the first life as little as possible. There were no children from that first union to tie him into relations with in-laws. He could leave his marriage to Barbara in Brooklyn, along with his caseworker’s files and all the trappings of that life. He lived in the suburbs now and drove a car and mowed a lawn and lived with his kids and his blonde wife. Why sit around remembering a tenement apartment in Boerum Hill?

“Funny,” he said. “I can’t begin to think of anyone we knew who might be capable of... doing what was done to Barbie. But one other thing I could never believe was that she’d let a stranger into the apartment.”

“She was careful about that sort of thing?”

“She was always on guard. Wyckoff Street wasn’t the kind of neighborhood she grew up in, although she found it comfortable enough. Of course we weren’t going to stay there forever.” His glance flicked to the photo cube, as if he was seeing Barbara standing next to a car and in front of a lawn. “But she got spooked by the other icepick killings.”

“Oh?”

“Not at first. When he killed the woman in Sheepshead Bay, though, that’s when it got to her. Because it was the first time he’d struck in Brooklyn, you see. It freaked her a little.”

“Because of the location? Sheepshead Bay’s a long ways from Boerum Hill.”

“But it was Brooklyn. And there was something else, I think, because I remember she identified pretty strongly with the woman who got killed. I must have known why but I can’t remember. Anyway, she got nervous. She told me she had the feeling she was being watched.”

“Did you mention that to the police?”

“I don’t think so.” He lowered his eyes, lit another cigarette. “I’m sure I didn’t. I thought at the time that it was part of being pregnant. Like craving odd foods, that sort of thing. Pregnant women get fixated on strange things.” His eyes rose to meet mine. “Besides, I didn’t want to think about it. Just a day or two before the murder she was talking about how she wanted me to get a police lock for the door. You know those locks with a steel bar braced against the door so it can’t be forced?”

I nodded.

“Well, we didn’t get a lock like that. Not that it would have made any difference because the door wasn’t forced. I wondered why she would let anyone in, as nervous as she was, but it was daytime, after all, and people aren’t as suspicious in the daytime. A man could pretend to be a plumber or from the gas company or something. Isn’t that how the Boston Strangler operated?”

“I think it was something like that.”

“But if it was actually someone she knew—”

“There are some questions I have to ask.”

“Sure.”

“Is it possible your wife was involved with anyone?”

“Involved with—you mean having an affair?”

“That sort of thing.”

“She was pregnant,” he said, as if that answered the question. When I didn’t say anything he said, “We were very happy together. I’m sure she wasn’t seeing anyone.”

“Did she often have visitors when you were out?”

“She might have had a friend over. I didn’t check up on her. We trusted each other.”

“She left her job early that day.”

“She did that sometimes. She had an easygoing relationship with the woman she worked for.”

“You said you trusted each other. Did she trust you?”

“What are you driving at?”

“Did she ever accuse you of having affairs with other women?”

“Jesus, who’ve you been talking to? Oh, I bet I know where this is coming from. Sure. We had a couple of arguments that somebody must have heard.”

“Oh?”

“I told you women get odd ideas when they’re pregnant. Like food cravings. Barbie got it into her head that I was making it with some of my cases. I was dragging my ass through tenements in Harlem and the South Bronx, filling out forms and trying not to gag on the smell and dodging the crap they throw off the roof at you, and she was accusing me of getting it on with all of those damsels in distress. I came to think of it as a pregnancy neurosis. I’m not Mr. Irresistible in the first place, and I was so turned off by what I saw in those hovels that I had trouble performing at home some of the time, let alone being turned on while I was on the job. The hell, you were a cop, I don’t have to tell you the kind of thing I saw every day.”

“So you weren’t having an affair?”

“Didn’t I just tell you that?”

“And you weren’t romancing anybody else? A woman in the neighborhood, for example?”

“Certainly not. Did somebody say I was?”

I ignored the question. “You remarried about three years after your wife died, Mr. Ettinger. Is that right?”

“A little less than three years.”

“When did you meet your present wife?”

“About a year before I married her. Maybe more than that, maybe fourteen months. It was in the spring, and we had a June wedding.”

“How did you meet?”

“Mutual friends. We were at a party, although we didn’t pay any attention to each other at the time, and then a friend of mine had both of us over for dinner, and—” He broke off abruptly. “She wasn’t one of my ADC cases in the South Bronx, if that’s what you’re getting at. And she never lived in Brooklyn, either. Jesus, I’m stupid!”

“Mr. Ettinger—”

“I’m a suspect, aren’t I? Jesus, how could I sit here and not have it occur to me? I’m a suspect, for Christ’s sake.”

“There’s a routine I have to follow in order to pursue an investigation, Mr. Ettinger.”

“Does he think I did it? London? Is that what this whole thing is about?”

“Mr. London hasn’t told me who he does or doesn’t suspect. If he’s got any specific suspicions, he’s keeping them to himself.”

“Well, isn’t that decent of him.” He ran a hand over his forehead. “Are we about through now, Scudder? I told you we’re busy on Saturdays. We get a lot of people who work hard all week and Saturday’s when they want to think about sports. So if I’ve answered all your questions—”

“You arrived home about six thirty the day your wife was murdered.”

“That sounds about right. I’m sure it’s in a police report somewhere.”

“Can you account for your time that afternoon?”

He stared at me. “We’re talking about something that happened nine years ago,” he said. “I can’t distinguish one day of knocking on doors from another. Do you remember what you did that afternoon?”

“No, but it was a less significant day in my life. You’d remember if you took any time away from your work.”

“I didn’t. I spent the whole day working on my cases. And it was whatever time I said it was when I got back to Brooklyn. Six thirty sounds about right.” He wiped his forehead again. “But you can’t ask me to prove any of this, can you? I probably filed a report but they only keep those things for a few years. I forget whether it’s three years or five years, but it’s certainly not nine years. Those files get cleaned out on a regular basis.”

“I’m not asking for proof.”

“I didn’t kill her, for God’s sake. Look at me. Do I look like a killer?”

“I don’t know what killers look like. I was just reading the other day about a thirteen-year-old boy who shot two women behind the ear. I don’t know what he looks like, and I don’t imagine he looks like a killer.” I took a blank memo slip from his desk, wrote a number on it. “This is my hotel,” I said. “You might think of something. You never know what you might remember.”

“I don’t want to remember anything.”

I got to my feet. So did he.

“That’s not my life anymore,” he said. “I live in the suburbs and I sell skis and sweatsuits. I went to Helen’s funeral because I couldn’t think of a decent way to skip it. I should have skipped it. I—”

I said, “Take it easy, Ettinger. You’re angry and you’re scared but you don’t have to be either one. Of course you’re a suspect. Who would investigate a woman’s murder without checking out the husband? When’s the last time you heard of an investigation like that?” I put a hand on his shoulder. “Somebody killed her,” I said, “and it may have been somebody she knew. I probably won’t be able to find out much of anything but I’m giving it my best shot. If you think of anything, call me. That’s all.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I got angry. I—”

I told him to forget it. I found my own way out.