“Except,” I said, “Fields didn’t do it.”

Cornwallis sneered. “You’re so naïve.”

“Fields had no weapon. He had no real motive. He’s not dumb – after the cheese attack he had to know he’d be the prime suspect. He’s volatile, but he’s no fool.”

“Fields has a history of violence. He can’t control himself. He finally snapped and lost all control.”

I said, “Fields is angry and argumentative. That doesn’t mean a lot. Take you, for instance. You’re angry and argumentative, but you don’t go around shooting people. Some people, for a variety of reasons, turn out that way.

They usually make poor spouses, and I wouldn’t want one as my fifth-grade teacher. But if American society locked up all its deeply angry people, the country’s incarceration rate would be even more ridiculous than it is now.”

Cornwallis got even redder. Maybe he didn’t appreciate my including him in the nation’s prone-to-hissy-fit population.

As he glared at me and appeared about to let loose again, I added, “And then there’s this additional complication. A lot of angry people have good reasons for being angry. Barry Fields certainly has one now. You’ve got him in jail based on next to nothing. And he may have other reasons too. What do you know about Fields’ background?”

Looking dangerously scarlet now, Cornwallis spat out, “Get out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Get. Out.”

“You want me to leave?”

“That’s what I said, yes. Just get the fuck out of here.”

He seemed to be struggling to hold back and prove me wrong after I called him a deeply angry man. But a major artery was throbbing on the side of the DA’s neck, and I feared it might burst, spattering blood throughout the office if not the entire western side of Pittsfield ’s busy Park Square.

“Apparently I’ve made a poor first impression,” I said. “I’m sorry. I actually thought I might be helpful. I still can be, I think.”

“Just leave. Now.”

I said, “Barry Fields has a mysterious past. But I guess you know about that. That’s one reason you’re focused on him.”

Cornwallis blinked. He said, “What do you know about Fields’ past?” I could see his pulse rate drop marginally.

What I was thinking was, Thorny, why don’t you go first and tell me what you know? What I said was, “Fields comes from a troubled background.”

He didn’t bite. “Yeah? Which is?”

“His parents died in a boating accident when Barry was six, and he was raised by porpoises in the Andaman Sea.”

Cornwallis calmed down even further and said, “You don’t know any more than I do about Fields’ background, do you now, Mr. Strachey?”

“No, I do not. He is secretive about his past. His current identity goes back only about six years. Before that his life is a black hole.”

“What we discovered,” Cornwallis said, “is that Fields not only has no criminal record, he has no record of existing at all prior to his move to Great Barrington. Maybe in your mind, Mr. Strachey, that is a factor in his favor. In our minds it is the opposite.”

I said, “What do you know about Jim Sturdivant’s lending practices? His personal loans to acquaintances is what I’m referring to.”

Cornwallis blanched, a trick for a man so florid. “I know more about the Sturdivant-Gaudios hot-tub loan office than I care to think about,” he said. “The homosexual lifestyle is a mystery to me, and in my work I have become acquainted with practices that do not make it any less mysterious.”

“And you don’t think there’s any connection between Sturdivant’s financial practices and his murder?”

“Oh, but I certainly do see a connection,” Cornwallis said, leaning toward me and looking smug. “Bill Moore was one of Sturdivant’s borrowers. Steven Gaudios is prepared to testify to that fact and to produce records. Obviously, Moore was having a sexual relationship with Sturdivant – one of the terms of the low-interest loan – and Fields had a jealous fit and attacked Sturdivant and then killed him.” He sat looking at me coolly, as if my challenging this version of events would be foolhardy and stupid.

I said, “That’s nuts. Moore climbed into the Sturdivant-Gaudios hot tub just once. It was before he and Fields were a pair. Fields heard about the transaction later, and he found it gross. But he did not expect Moore to be a virgin when they wed, and he was not sexually jealous. Fields was mad at Sturdivant because Sturdivant hired me to investigate Fields before he married Bill Moore. Sex had nothing to do with it.”

Cornwallis almost smiled. He said, “What you apparently are not aware of, Mr. Strachey, is that Bill Moore happened to like getting into the Sturdivant-Gaudios hot tub. He did not visit it just once. He liked it, and he went back again and again. In fact, he visited the tub twice a week right up until the night of Jim Sturdivant’s death, on nights when Fields was at work at the Triplex movie house. Steven Gaudios will testify to that fact also.”

Gaudios. He was very deliberately framing Barry Fields, as if he knew who Sturdivant’s killer was and was desperate to deflect attention. Why?

I said, “Gaudios is lying.”

“I have no reason to believe so.”

“He told you Bill Moore was in the hot tub on the night of the murder? Not so. Moore was working on a computer job in Springfield. I’m sure that can be checked out. Anyway, how would Gaudios know who was there that night? He was off playing bridge somewhere.”

“Well, Gaudios didn’t say Moore was there that night. But on recent nights he had been. That is nights plural.”

I said, “You’re being conned. You’re so ready to believe that no man would ever turn down a blowjob when offered one – a conviction more commonly held by straight men than gays, I do believe – that you have been suckered into this horseshit story of Gaudios’s. You apparently believe that all gay men ever think about is dick, when in point of hard fact many of us have a variety of other interests.”

He peered at me confusedly. “You’re gay too?” My impulse was to bat my eyelashes, but I just nodded. “I have no problem with gays,” Cornwallis said.

“Peachy.”

“I have a lesbian on my staff.”

“You’re so advanced.”

“I’m not asking to be congratulated.”

“I’m relieved.”

“I happen not to agree with the church on homosexuality. We’re all sinners, but this ’disordered’ stuff is crap. I also know, however, that men do terrible things because of their sexual impulses. It’s not a gay thing. It’s a man thing. Gay men just happen to have more opportunities to fuck around and get in trouble and lose control of their emotions. The Sturdivant case is plainly one of those situations. It has crazed sexual jealousy written all over it. You’re deluding yourself, Mr. Strachey, to believe otherwise.”

Cornwallis was in love with a stereotype, and there was nothing I could do about it. To him this case was a simple queen-out-turned-violent, and he was stuck on that and not about to get unstuck. And it wasn’t as though his version of events would have been unprecedented. The murderously jealous queen stereotype had some basis in fact. But it happened rarely – never in all my years of PI experience – and the theory was all wrong here.

I said, “I’m going to prove you’re mistaken, Mr. Cornwallis. I’m going to ask you for some information about organized crime in Berkshire County and some names of people I can talk to about what’s going on currently, mob-activity-wise. And you’re going to give me that information just to watch me make a fool of myself. But then I’m going to surprise you and use this information and these contacts to find out who really killed Jim Sturdivant. And then you’re going to thank me profusely and eat shit.”

Cornwallis did not laugh uproariously at me, as I would have. He smirked. “Now there’s an offer only a total dickhead could refuse. Sure, I’ll point you in the direction of knowledgeable people. But if you lose a mouthful of teeth or get into a situation that ends up with organ failure, don’t come whining to me.”