accident?"
"Not unless she jumped and she didn't leave a note."
"Neither did Delaney. There are no witness statements in her file either. Did your uniforms bother to knock on any doors on this one?"
McNair swept the remains of the ribs into his wastebasket and turned the volume down on his radio. He stood, planted his palms on his desk, and hung his head, smiling the thin, tight-lipped smile of the trod upon, then turned on me.
"Listen, hotshot, these weren't my cases. I got them when Jason Bolt called the chief and told him to reopen the cases or get sued. The chief promised he'd have someone take another look so I took another look and I didn't see anything new because there wasn't anything new to see."
"You didn't think it unusual that Delaney and Blair both died the exact same way they dreamed they would within a month of one another and that both were participants in this dream project?"
"What? Bolt wants to collect from your boss on these cases and you want to turn them into murder so he don't have to pay? The hell with both of you! Those two had death wishes and they made their wishes come true. You tell me what you would do if you were in my shoes, someone tells you a cockamamie story like that."
"I think I'd ask some more questions, knock on some more doors, and do the job right."
McNair straightened, yanking his pants over his belly.
"I showed you these files as a professional courtesy and all you can do is bust my chops. Delaney was depressed and shot himself. Blair was stupid and fell off the edge of a concrete slab three stories up where she had no business being on account of there was no safety barrier and she was afraid of heights. That's not just me talking. That's what the prosecuting attorney and the coroner said. You want to turn that into murder, be my guest but do it on your time. Now get the fuck out of here!"
Chapter Twelve
My ex-wife, Joy, divorced me after twenty-eight years of marriage. I didn't blame her. When our young son, Kevin, was murdered, she anesthetized her pain with booze and I buried mine with work, each of us blaming the other for our daughter Wendy's problems. Twenty-plus years after Kevin died, she came out of her fog and realized that it was time for both of us to move on. I didn't argue. We'd done enough of that.
Some people keep the war going after they split up. Joy and I went the other way. At first, she blamed me for what happened to Wendy, but in time she let that go too, shouldering more of the responsibility than was right. We had what I called an easy peace, both of us reconciled to what we had had and what we had lost.
I met Kate Scranton while I was married, lying to myself that my crush on her was merely the admiration of one professional for another. She was a forensic psychologist and jury consultant, blessed or cursed depending on the moment, with a unique ability to diagnose involuntary microfacial expressions that she claimed were the true windows into our hearts, minds, and souls. Together with her father, Henry, and ex-husband, Alan, both also psychologists, she had built a successful jury consulting practice, reading jurors with uncanny accuracy.
I justified our long lunches as networking, denying Joy's allegations that I was cheating even though our marriage had been dead by any definition of intimacy for a long time. I didn't know what an emotional affair was until Wendy called me on it.
Kate gave me a second chance after the divorce. She was ten years younger, a difference that peeled years off me without aging her. Tall and slender with shimmering black hair and blue eyes to get lost in, she had the sleek, confident beauty that caught other men's stares but stopped my heart. That she wanted me was an enduring mystery I didn't try to solve.
Reality chilled our fantasy of love lost and found. There were reasons we were both divorced. She could be unyielding and just because my body did contortions didn't mean that I was flexible. She could
"Not unless she jumped and she didn't leave a note."
"Neither did Delaney. There are no witness statements in her file either. Did your uniforms bother to knock on any doors on this one?"
McNair swept the remains of the ribs into his wastebasket and turned the volume down on his radio. He stood, planted his palms on his desk, and hung his head, smiling the thin, tight-lipped smile of the trod upon, then turned on me.
"Listen, hotshot, these weren't my cases. I got them when Jason Bolt called the chief and told him to reopen the cases or get sued. The chief promised he'd have someone take another look so I took another look and I didn't see anything new because there wasn't anything new to see."
"You didn't think it unusual that Delaney and Blair both died the exact same way they dreamed they would within a month of one another and that both were participants in this dream project?"
"What? Bolt wants to collect from your boss on these cases and you want to turn them into murder so he don't have to pay? The hell with both of you! Those two had death wishes and they made their wishes come true. You tell me what you would do if you were in my shoes, someone tells you a cockamamie story like that."
"I think I'd ask some more questions, knock on some more doors, and do the job right."
McNair straightened, yanking his pants over his belly.
"I showed you these files as a professional courtesy and all you can do is bust my chops. Delaney was depressed and shot himself. Blair was stupid and fell off the edge of a concrete slab three stories up where she had no business being on account of there was no safety barrier and she was afraid of heights. That's not just me talking. That's what the prosecuting attorney and the coroner said. You want to turn that into murder, be my guest but do it on your time. Now get the fuck out of here!"
Chapter Twelve
My ex-wife, Joy, divorced me after twenty-eight years of marriage. I didn't blame her. When our young son, Kevin, was murdered, she anesthetized her pain with booze and I buried mine with work, each of us blaming the other for our daughter Wendy's problems. Twenty-plus years after Kevin died, she came out of her fog and realized that it was time for both of us to move on. I didn't argue. We'd done enough of that.
Some people keep the war going after they split up. Joy and I went the other way. At first, she blamed me for what happened to Wendy, but in time she let that go too, shouldering more of the responsibility than was right. We had what I called an easy peace, both of us reconciled to what we had had and what we had lost.
I met Kate Scranton while I was married, lying to myself that my crush on her was merely the admiration of one professional for another. She was a forensic psychologist and jury consultant, blessed or cursed depending on the moment, with a unique ability to diagnose involuntary microfacial expressions that she claimed were the true windows into our hearts, minds, and souls. Together with her father, Henry, and ex-husband, Alan, both also psychologists, she had built a successful jury consulting practice, reading jurors with uncanny accuracy.
I justified our long lunches as networking, denying Joy's allegations that I was cheating even though our marriage had been dead by any definition of intimacy for a long time. I didn't know what an emotional affair was until Wendy called me on it.
Kate gave me a second chance after the divorce. She was ten years younger, a difference that peeled years off me without aging her. Tall and slender with shimmering black hair and blue eyes to get lost in, she had the sleek, confident beauty that caught other men's stares but stopped my heart. That she wanted me was an enduring mystery I didn't try to solve.
Reality chilled our fantasy of love lost and found. There were reasons we were both divorced. She could be unyielding and just because my body did contortions didn't mean that I was flexible. She could
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