J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

“Hello?”

“I’ve got something for you.” The delight in his voice is unmistakable, which gets my hopes up. “First thing this morning I read the news stories about your case. There was something you forgot to mention, wasn’t there?”

“I told you what I could.”

“But you didn’t tell me that your murder victim was living with Joy Hill.”

“You seemed to know already.”

“I knew it was in West U., but not that the dead girl was found in Joy’s house. That is too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

“In what way, Brad?”

“Dr. Joy Hill,” he says.

“And?”

“You don’t know about her? A couple of years ago, the parents of one of her female students brought a civil suit. For sexual harassment.” He chuckles over the line. “It was withdrawn, probably settled out of court, but at the time there was some talk about her tenure being in jeopardy.”

“In this day and age? Professors and students hooking up isn’t exactly a new phenomenon.”

“Well, her husband obviously thought it was a big deal. He said sayonara tout suite, even though it cost him. She got the house and a nice chunk of change.”

“According to her, she took in a tenant to help make ends meet.”

Templeton laughs. “You might want to check her bank balance just in case. I can think of other reasons why she’d want to have a pretty young girl at her beck and call. And if that girl wasn’t so amenable, well, people get killed over things like that.”

“Is that all you’ve got for me?”

“Isn’t it enough?”

“Go back through your correspondence file and make sure you haven’t gotten any crank letters that fit the profile I gave you.”

“What about Joy Hill? Did you go through her bookshelves?”

“Brad, has she ever written you a letter?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then why don’t you check. Goodbye.”

I gulp some coffee down without any creamer, which only gives me something else to worry about. My first conversation with Joy Hill replays in my mind, from the time she snatched my Filofax to her last-minute tribute to Simone. Self-absorbed, calculating, condescending-all characteristics of methodical killers, though the qualities are not exclusive to them. Unless she’s stronger than she looked, it is hard to imagine Dr. Hill committing such a physical crime. But then, I hardly know anything about her. If she was lying about her relationship with Simone, that’s something I need to find out. A liaison between them would give her a motive.

And if he discovered something like this, given his religious convictions, how would Jason Young have reacted? If what Templeton says is true, it might give him a very compelling reason to lash out.

When I get to the monitoring room, Aguilar isn’t alone. Mack Ordway leans against a filing cabinet with a plastic evidence bag dangling from his hand. Inside is the promotional card from the strip club we found in Young’s back pocket.

“You boys are gonna watch a video?” he says. “That sounds nice. But I’m thinking we ought to run out to this place and take a look around.”

I pluck the envelope out of his hand, then drop into the chair next to Aguilar.

“Hit play.”

After a lingering glance at the card, during which Ordway exits in a huff, he leans forward and mashes the button.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 7 — 10:24 A.M.

Driving south from Bush Intercontinental Airport, half the billboards on I-45 advertise places like the Silk Cut, the upscale establishments catering to the affluent business set. Unlike the seedy roadside joints with neon signs and gravel parking lots full of dusty pickups, these gentlemen’s clubs offer up their vice in a polished, sanitized form complete with a buffet.

The Silk Cut is screened from the surrounding chain restaurants and hotels by a line of sickly brown palm trees. A pink stucco building. A circular drive leading up to the covered entrance with a tail of asphalt wrapping around back. Rectangular brickwork to suggest the outline of absent windows. The landscaping up front is in worse shape than the trees, and the walls could use a good power wash. Business must be down.

Inside, the place is empty. Ordway would have been disappointed. The manager greets me and Aguilar at the front door, ushering us past an empty bar and an unlit stage into a back office where stored boxes of liquor compete with a cramped desk and a bank of video monitors. He’s a clean-cut kid in his late twenties in designer denim and a tight-fitting T-shirt with a chain hooked to the fat wallet stuffed in his hip pocket. He gives us the two available chairs and sits on the edge of the desk.

I produce a photo of Jason Young. “Can you tell me whether this guy was in here recently?”

“This guy?” He flicks the photo with his finger. “I had a feeling when you called that’s what it was about. We came this close to calling y’all in the first place. I kept the video, too, just in case.”

“You have video?” I ask.

“Give me a second and I’ll pull it up.”

He goes to the computer linked into the video system and mouse-clicks his way through the software. I leave my chair to peer over his shoulder.

“He’d already had plenty to drink when he came in here, but at first he didn’t make any trouble. Just sat at the bar and watched the girls from there. Next thing I know, he’s going at it with these other customers-here, look.”

For the second time this morning, I find myself staring at Jason Young’s image on-screen. The interview footage with Bascombe, crystal clear in vivid color, is a sharp contrast to this pixelized black-and-white view, and Young’s demeanor is entirely at odds, too. Where he’d been shocked and tearful in Interview Room 2, giving a convincing performance of a man who’s just learned of his wife’s death, at the Silk Cut bar he holds himself with the tense, aggressive posture of a compressed spring. Facing the distant stage with his elbow propped behind him on the bar, he keeps turning his head sharply at the circle of customers to his right, a mix of men and women straining to order drinks.

The time stamp on the video reads half past eleven, well after Simone’s body was discovered. The action at the Silk Cut was unfolding simultaneously with my investigation of the scene, which means it doesn’t give him an alibi.

“He was making rude comments to the ladies.”

“Are those girls strippers or something?” Aguilar asks.

The kid shakes his head. “They came in together, that whole group. I think they’re all servers at one of the restaurants down the street. One of the men with them finally got in his face-see that? — and then wham , it all breaks loose.”

The man accosting Young gets a word or two out before the fist shuts him up. When he stumbles, Young charges forward into the group, swinging at the others, and then I lose sight of him in the press of bodies until a couple of black-shirted security men start pulling everyone apart.

“Our guys didn’t know what exactly went down, but if you have ten against one, guess who gets tossed to the curb? That’s me.” He points to his own silhouette on-screen, following security as they frog-march Young out of frame. “Here’s the front door camera. We chuck him outside, and as soon as my back is turned, two of the guys he went after stream out after him. See, right there. He turns and bam , they clock him with something-maybe a belt buckle? — and he doesn’t go down. He just takes it and goes right after them. Our guys had to break it up again.” He taps the monitor. “There we are.”

One of the security men gets Young in a bear hug and hustles him out into the parking lot off-screen. The other men stand and argue with the manager, then leave in the opposite direction.