“What did you need?” It came out abruptly. I was angry with Jake, angry to find myself

in this position – and I was apprehensive.

“I’m sure you’re aware that we’ve arrested Angus Gordon?” Rossini said.

I nodded. Glanced at Jake, then looked away. Easier if I didn’t look at him. If I

pretended he wasn’t there at all.

Abruptly, I remembered the first time I’d met him. Even less happy circumstances than

these. We’d sat in this same crowded office with him asking questions about a murder. Today

the other cop – Rossini – did most of the talking. I answered mechanically. They showed

me photos of Kinsey. She was a year or two younger and a lot cleaner in the photographs.

I admitted I had seen her before, that she had come into the store asking for Angus. I

admitted I had given Angus money when he had expressed fear over harassment from fellow

students.

Rossini was inclined to follow this line of questioning. He began to ask about my

relationship with Angus.

“Safe to say, Gordon was more than an employee?”

I opened my mouth, but Jake cut in. “We’ve already established Mr. English’s role.”

This breach of etiquette naturally irritated the other detective. He tapped his pencil on

the edge of the desk as though trying to recover his train of thought.

“For the record, Mr. English, what were you doing last night from the hours of, say, six

p.m. to ten p.m.?”

Ten p.m. So she hadn’t been dead for long when I walked in. I wondered if she had

been killed at the house. Looking back from a safe distance, I thought that – considering

those terrible wounds – there hadn’t been as much blood as you’d expect at the crime scene.

Which isn’t to say that it hadn’t been plenty gory…

Once again I was standing in that dark hallway staring at the broken bloody corpse

lying in the tumbled bed clothes.

I wondered what would have happened if I’d walked into the house forty-five minutes

earlier.

I swallowed hard. “I closed the store around five-thirty. I ate dinner here –”

“What’d you have for dinner?” Rossini interrupted genially.

“Uh…a kind of Lean Cuisine thing.” That was the truth; it was the question itself that

gave me pause.

He didn’t speak, so I went on. “I host a weekly writing group on Tuesday nights. They

met from seven to nine. After that I did paperwork, and at some point Angus called.”

“At what point? What time exactly?”

“Eleven-ish. Eleven-thirty at the latest.”

No comment. He could verify the time, and certainly would, if he was any kind of cop

at all. It didn’t matter; this was all basically true. “I went to bed after leaving the message

with Detective Riordan.”

I thought it was a pretty tight alibi – assuming I actually needed one. Maybe it was

remotely possible that I could have hunted Kinsey down and murdered her in the hour after

Partners in Crime dispersed – or killed her before everyone arrived and then calmly

discussed sentence structure for a couple of hours before carting her corpse over to Angus’s –

but I was betting on Rossini’s commonsense. (Although the guy did wear red socks with blue

trousers.)

Where my story fell apart was after the time of the murder. Hopefully no church ladies

selling raffle tickets or Girl Scouts peddling cookies had turned up banging on my door after I

split for Angus’s. Hopefully, the police had no interest in my actions after the hours of six

and ten.

Rossini made a note.

“The message you left was regarding this phone call from Gordon?”

Jake’s silence was like a fourth person in the room, a formidable presence.

“Right.” It took willpower not to look toward Jake. Why would Rossini ask that?

“Why again did you think Detective Riordan should investigate Gordon’s house?”

He was a smart cop. He had good instincts. He knew something was fishy with my

story, but the fact that Jake, in essence, vouched for me, made it awkward.

“I guess the…fear factor,” I said. “Angus sounded terrified. He sounded in fear of his

life. Besides, Detective Riordan had told me to get in touch with him if he – Angus –

called.”

I cast a look at Jake, wondering if it had occurred to him yet that Angus was unlikely to

back our strangers-in-the-night scenario.

His eyes met mine, sheared off. His lips were tight, all feeling held in check.

“You had no idea why Gordon was terrified?”

We had already been over this, so I wasn’t sure why Rossini was angling around again.

I said, “I thought I had a pretty good idea. I was wrong. I thought he was being

harassed, bullied by other kids. I assumed it was student hazing, something like that. I had no

idea that it might tie into this…thing in the papers.”

This multiple homicide thing in the papers, that is.

“You thought he was the victim of hazing? But he was a grad student. He was working

as a teaching assistant. How likely is it that someone like that would be targeted that way?”

Rossini must not have gone to college. “It happens,” I said.

“Oh, for Chrissake, Rossini,” Jake said, bored. “English acted like a good citizen. Why

are you giving him a hard time? Look, we’ve got places to go and perps to talk to.”

This was so far out of line that Rossini almost couldn’t swallow his anger. He stopped

writing. He didn’t tap his pencil, he didn’t move a muscle. I was guessing that he was the

senior officer in this investigation. He could probably have Jake removed from the case if he

chose.

I said, “I admit I didn’t think it through. I just threw money at the problem.”

Rossini snorted as though this were a common mistake that led to countless cult

murders.

He asked me a few clipped questions about my encounter with Kinsey, which I

instinctively downplayed. Rossini resumed jotting his notes.

There was a lull in the questioning. I said, without thinking, “Do you think any of this

has to do with Gabriel Savant’s disappearance?”

They scrutinized me.

Rossini said, “Gabriel who?”

“The mystery writer who disappeared a couple of days ago,” Jake supplied without

inflection.

“Why would there be a connection?”

I had already explained all this over the phone to the cops handling Savant’s missing

person case. They hadn’t been impressed with my story, and I had to admit, hearing myself