I'm unaccustomed to being interrogated by the
police. I was nervous."
"Forgive me, Dr. Ladd," Smilow said wryly. "But
you're the least nervous person I have ever questioned.
We've all commented on it. Ms. Mundell, Mr.
Cross, and I all have agreed that you're remarkably
composed for someone under suspicion of murder."
Unsure if he meant that as an insult or a compliment,
she didn't respond. It made her uneasy to know
that they had discussed her. What had Hammond's
"comments" on her been? she wondered. She had
certainly provided him a lot to talk about, hadn't she?
"You're a fraud, you know."
"I beg your pardon." Pretending to be affronted,
she grabbed two handfuls of his hair and tried to lift
his head. But he was unyielding.
"You come across as a woman who's all calm,
cool, and collected." The stubble on his chin lightly
scratched her tummy. "That's what I thought after I
rescued you from the marines. This is one cool
chick."
She laughed. "Between a fraud and a chick, I'm
not sure which is the most offensive."
"But in bed," he continued, undeterred both in his
vein of conversation and his intent, "your participation
is anything but contained."
"It's hard--"
"It certainly is," he groaned. "But it can wait."
"--to keep one's composure when ..."
"When?"
"When ..." Then his tongue touched her and her
composure was shattered.
"You went to this fair alone?"
"What?" For one horrifying moment, she feared
she had gasped out loud, echoing her orgasm. Even
more horrifying, she had unintentionally turned and
was looking at Hammond. His eyes were hot, as
though he had been following her thoughts. A blood
vessel in his temple was distended and ticking.
She whipped her head back around to Smilow,
who repeated his question. "You went to this fair
alone?"
"Yes. Yes, alone. That's right."
"And you remained alone throughout the
evening?"
Looking into Rory Smilow's implacable eyes, it
was difficult to lie. "Yes."
"You didn't join a friend there? You didn't meet
anyone?"
"As I said, Mr. Smilow, alone."
He paused for a beat. "What time did you leave?
Alone."
"When the attractions began closing. I don't remember
the exact time."
"Where did you go from there?"
Frank Perkins said, "Irrelevant. This whole interrogation
is irrelevant and improper. There's no basis
for it, so it doesn't matter where Alex was, or whether
or not she was alone. She doesn't have to account for
her whereabouts on Saturday evening any more than
you do, because you still can't place her inside Pettijohn's
hotel suite. She's told you she didn't even
know him.
"It's appalling that someone with her impeccable
reputation and high standing in the community is
being subjected to questioning. Some guy from
Macon claims to have seen her at a time when his
bowels were about to burst. Do you honestly consider
him a reliable witness, Smilow? If you do, then
you've lowered your own rigid standards of criminal
investigation. In any event, you've inconvenienced
my client all you're going to." The lawyer motioned
for Alex to stand.
"That was a nice speech, Frank, but we're not
done here. My investigators have caught Dr. Ladd in
another lie that concerns the murder weapon."
Vexed but wary, Frank Perkins backed down. "It
better be good."
"It is." Smilow turned back to her. "Dr. Ladd, you
told us yesterday that you don't own a gun."
"I don't."
From a file, he produced a registration form,
which Alex recognized. She scanned it, then passed it
to Frank for his perusal. "I bought a pistol for protection.
As you can see by the date, that was years ago.
I no longer have it."
"What happened to it?"
"Alex?" Frank Perkins leaned forward, a question
in his eyes.
"It's all right," she assured him. "Beyond a few
rudimentary lessons, I never even fired it. I kept it
in a holster beneath the driver's seat of my car and
rarely thought about it. I even forgot about it when
I traded the car in on a newer model.
"It wasn't until weeks after the trade-in that I remembered
the revolver was still beneath the seat. I
called the dealership and explained to the manager
what had happened. He offered to ask around. No one
claimed to have any knowledge of it. I figured that
someone cleaning the car, possibly even the person
who later purchased it, had found the gun, thought
'finders-keepers,' and never returned it."
"It's a pistol that fires the caliber bullet that killed
Lute Pettijohn."
"A .38, yes. Hardly a collector's item, Mr.
Smilow."
He smiled the cold smile she had come to associate
with him. "Granted." He rubbed his brow as
though worried. "But here we've got proof of your
owning a pistol, and an uncorroborated story of how
you came to lose it. You were spotted at the scene
about the time Mr. Pettijohn died. We've caught you
in one lie about where you were that evening. And
you haven't provided an alibi." He raised his shoulders.
"Look at it from my perspective. All these circumstantial
elements are beginning to add up."
"To what?"
"To you being our killer."
Alex opened her mouth to protest but was dismayed
to find that she couldn't speak. Frank Perkins
spoke for her. "Are you prepared to book her,
Smilow?"
He stared down at her for a long moment. "Not
just yet."
"Then we're leaving." This time the lawyer didn't
leave room for argument. Not that Alex felt like arguing.
She was frightened, although she tried to keep
her fear from showing.
An important part of her job was reading the expressions
of her patients and interpreting their body
language in order to gauge what they were thinking,
which often differed from what they were saying.
How they stood, or sat, or moved frequently contradicted
their verbal assertions. Moreover, when they
spoke, their phrasing and inflection sometimes conveyed
more than the words themselves.
She applied her expertise to reading Smilow now.
His face could have been carved from marble. Without
even a nod toward diplomacy, he had looked her
straight in the eye and accused her of murder. Only
someone with absolute confidence in what he was
doing could be that resolute and unemotional.
Steffi Mundell, on the other hand, seemed ready to
hop up and down and clap her hands in glee. Based
on her experience of reading people, Alex could say
accurately that the police felt the situation was definitely
in their favor.
But their reactions weren't as important to her as
Hammond Cross's. With a mix of anticipation and
dread, she turned toward the door and looked at him.
One shoulder was propped against the wall. His
ankles were crossed. His arms were folded over his
midriff. The straighter of his two eyebrows was
drawn down low, almost into a scowl. To an untrained
eye, he might appear comfortable, even insouciant.
But readily apparent to Alex were the emotions
roiling dangerously close to the surface. He wasn't
nearly as relaxed as he wanted to appear. The hooded
eyes, the clenched jaw were dead giveaways. His
folded arms and crossed ankles weren't components
of an indolent pose.
Indeed, they seemed essential to holding him together.
CHAPTER
20
He was a casting director's dream for the role of
"the nerd." First because of his name--Harvey
Knuckle. It was an open invitation to ridicule.
Knuckle-head. What have you got for lunch today,
Harvey, Knuckle-sandwiches? No-nuts-Knuckle.
Let's pop our Knuckle. Classmates and
later co-workers had coined a variety of such taunts
and they'd been merciless.
In addition to his name, Harvey Knuckle looked
the part. Everything about him fit the stereotype. His
eyeglasses were thick. He was pale and skinny and
had chronic post-nasal drip. He wore a bow tie every
day. When Charleston's weather turned cold, he wore
argyle V-neck sweaters beneath tweed jackets. In the
summer they were substituted for short-sleeved shirts
and seersucker suits.
His one saving grace, which ironically was also
stereotypical, was that he was a computer genius. The
very people around city hall who poked the most fun
at him were at his mercy when their computers went
on the fritz. A familiar refrain was, "Call Knuckle.
Get him over here."
On Tuesday evening, he entered the Shady Rest
Lounge, shaking out his wet umbrella and apprehensively
squinting into the smog of tobacco smoke.
Loretta Boothe, who had been watching for him,
felt a twinge of sympathy. Harvey was a disagreeable
little twerp, but he was entirely out of his element in
the Shady Rest. He relaxed only marginally when he
spotted her coming toward him.
"I thought I'd written down the wrong address.
What a horrible place. Even the name sounds like a
cemetery."
"Thank you for coming, Harvey. It's good to see
you." Before he could bolt, which he appeared to be
on the verge of doing, Loretta grabbed his arm and
dragged him toward a booth. "Welcome to my office."
Still jittery, he propped his wet umbrella beneath
the table, readjusted the lapels of his jacket, and
pushed his eyeglasses up his long, narrow nose. Now
that his eyes had adjusted to the gloom and he had
gotten a better look at the other customers, he shuddered.
"You're not afraid to come here alone? The
clientele appear to be the dregs of society."
"Harvey, I am the clientele."
Abashed, he began stammering an apology.
Loretta laughed. "No offense taken. Relax. What
you need is a drink." She signaled the bartender.
Harvey folded his delicate hands on the table.
"That would be nice, thank you. A short one. I can't
stay long. I'm allergic to secondhand smoke."
She ordered him a whiskey sour and a club soda
for herself. Noticing his surprise, she said, "I'm on
the wagon."
"Really? I had heard you... I had heard other
wise."
"I've had a recent conversion."
"Well, good for you."
"Not so good, Harvey. Cold turkey sucks. I hate
it."
Her candor made him laugh. "You always were a
straight shooter, Loretta, and you haven't changed.
I've missed seeing you around. Do you miss the
P.D.?"
"Sometimes. Not the people. The work. I miss
that."
"Are you still doing some private investigating?"
"Yes, I'm freelancing." She hesitated. "That's why
I called and asked you to meet me."
He moaned. "I knew it. I said to myself, 'Harvey,
you're going to regret accepting this invitation.' "
"But your curiosity got the best of you, didn't it?"
she teased. "That and recollections of my ready wit."
"Loretta, please don't ask me for a favor."
"Harvey, please don't be such a goddamn hypocrite."
Officially he was a county employ, but his computer
access also allowed him to delve into city and
state records. He had so much information at his fingertips,
he was frequently approached by people willing
to pay handsomely to know their coworkers'
salaries, or such. But Harvey refused to be part of
anything unethical or illegal. To anyone who came to
him trying to wheedle a favor, he was irritatingly
adamant in his refusal.
That's why Loretta's blunt statement shocked him.
He blinked rapidly behind the thick lenses of his
glasses.
"You're not the good little boy you would have
everyone believe."
"How altogether boorish of you to remind me of
my one little indiscretion."
"The only one I know about," she said intuitively.
"I still think you pulled the plug, so to speak, on that
asshole who hassled you at the Christmas party.
Come on, now, Harvey, fess up. Didn't you retaliate
by scrambling all his programs?"
He pursed his lips.
"Never mind." She chuckled. "I don't blame you
for not confessing, but your secret would be safe with
me. In fact, I like you better for showing a weakness.
I can identify with human frailty." She wagged her
finger at him. "You love the thrill you derive from occasionally
breaking the rules. It's how you get your
rocks off."
"What horrid terminology! Furthermore, it's untrue."
Despite his public avowal to be a teetotaler, he
quaffed his drink and didn't object when she ordered
another round.
As a policewoman working overtime in county
records one night, she had caught Harvey Knuckle in