Whiplash

After Erin told him her impressions of Jane Ann Royal and what the woman had said, with many questions thrown in by Bowie along the way, he nodded. "So both you and Sherlock think she knows quite a bit about what her husband's doing, and she's just playing dumb. Sort of like Madoff's wife did a couple of years back?"

"I don't know how much Jane Ann actually knows, but I'll tell you, she puts on a good act, all straightforward and open, but she knows more than she lets on. And Sherlock, the consummate professional, agrees with me."

"All right, all right, I'll drop that if you will. The tennis pro, did you speak to him?"

"No, he just waved and left. Mrs. Royal said she hadn't decided to sleep with him yet. Evidently he wouldn't be the first tennis instructor she's bedded. She likes them young and hard. She said her husband prefers women nearer to his own age, like Carla Alvarez. An interesting reversal. I wonder if she's right. His name is Mick Haggarty and he really wants to be an actor. If what she says is true, he may not know much."

"Neither you nor Sherlock trust her, either. We'll see. I'll check out the tennis pro."

"Mick Haggarty. He's a tennis pro at the Glenis Springs Country Club right down the road."

Bowie nodded, put another glass in the cupboard. He was building a military-straight line of glasses.

She said, "Georgie was telling me about your long commute, how you get home tired a lot of nights. She said you were thinking about leaving Stone Bridge and moving to New Haven."

"The commute's not all that bad, really, but she's right, I am thinking about putting my house up for sale." He paused, frowned. "I don't know how she knew that."

"The kid's precocious, reads people, particularly you, very well, and she's a great eavesdropper. Actually, now that I remember back, I started early as well. I was a champ by Georgie's age. No one said anything I didn't pay attention to."

"That's what's in my future? Whispering whenever I'm in the house? Maybe it was a mistake to settle here in the first place, but given the current market, I may not have a lot of choice. Thing is, Georgie's school was highly recommended by a friend of mine in L.A., and that's what locked me on target. Georgie really likes her school, likes the kids, sure likes her dance class and teacher."

"Tough decision." Erin wiped her hands on a dish towel, found herself twisting it over and over. "Well, maybe it's not all that great a distance. I made it up to New Haven today to see my client, did it in under fifty minutes."

"What client?"

Big mouth, big mouth. Didn't matter. Who cared? "He's a professor at Yale, an old friend of my dad's. We ate in the Berkeley dining room, his college when he went there thirty years ago. Quite a place."

"What are you doing for him?"

Shut up, shut up. "Confidential, Agent Richards. Pull out my fingernails, you still can't make me talk. Tell me about Kesselring."

Why doesn't she want to tell me? He said, "Kesselring wanted to see Blauvelt's body today and that was when I decided to deal with him myself. I called Dr. Ella Franks and she met us at our local morgue, in the basement in the Stone Bridge Memorial Hospital. I have to admit he asked her good questions, and he said right off he didn't believe the killer obliterated his face to prevent identification. We've all been wondering about that."

Bowie thought back to the cold sterile room, standing across the autopsy table from Blauvelt's body. Bowie had watched Kesselring carefully as he stared down at Blauvelt's ruined face. "Dr. Franks, you said the killer struck a half-dozen blows to his face?"

Dr. Franks nodded. "Yes, exactly half a dozen, like his killer counted the hits. It was postmortem. Why do you think the murderer did this to him?"

Kesselring never looked away from Blauvelt's face. He said with complete certainty, "Rage, psychotic rage. Someone was really over the edge, so wound up he just didn't stop. He wanted to-how do you say it-erase the man, yes, that's it, the killer wanted to erase him, and he did."

And Bowie had said to him, "If the killer didn't care about his being quickly identified, then why did he cut off Blauvelt's fingers? Why not cut off his feet?"

Kesselring was silent a moment, chewing this over, and admitted it was strange. "Perhaps the psychotic rage had burned itself out, perhaps the killer heard someone coming. Perhaps he planned to come back and bury Blauvelt, but he was prevented from doing so."

All of that made sense, Bowie thought, and cursed under his breath.

Bowie had noticed that Dr. Franks, who admired him, dammit, respected what he said, was looking at Kesselring with something of the same expression he'd seen on Dolores Cliff's face. It burned his gut.