J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

“He’s really pushing for that promotion,” I say.

“Seems like. Are we close on this thing or what?”

I bring him up to speed as quickly as possible, showing him the bedroom just as the lights are flipped back on. We walk as far as the back door, where Bascombe watches the coroner’s people withdrawing the nude body from the now-tranquil water, then return to where we started. In one corner of the living room, a headless dress form stands, half draped in fabric. There are more swatches on the worktable, next to a white sewing machine. From the looks of it, Oliszewski wasn’t just working in the dress shop for kicks. She had ambitions in that direction, ambitions that now will never be realized.

“The captain’s right,” Bascombe says. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense him leaving here and heading to your place.”

“He did, though. The blood on the knife recovered in my bedroom is what led us here in the first place.”

“The question is, why?”

Eric Castro enters from the bedroom, though I hadn’t noticed him there before. He holds an evidence envelope in one hand.

“Take a look at this,” he says.

Bascombe intercepts the bag, inspecting the contents, then hands it to me.

“Maybe that’s what provoked him.”

Inside the bag, one of my business cards rests, a slight crease running down the center. A splash of dried blood hides part of my name. I flip it over and see my mobile number written in ballpoint ink.

“Where did you find this?” I ask Castro.

“It was on her nightstand. Tucked under the base of the lamp.”

“When did you give it to her?” Bascombe asks.

“I didn’t.”

I look at the card again.

“But I think I might know who did.”

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15 — 8:30 A.M.

Early morning briefing. On side-by-side whiteboards, a projection screen, and a jumble of printed and handwritten pages, everything we know about Agnieszka Oliszewski spreads before me. All the detectives present at last night’s scene sit bleary-eyed around the table, joined by a couple of CSU supervisors and Quincy Hanford, who summarizes in far too much detail the contents of Oliszewski’s hard drive. Since the computer was a heavy desktop model, our killer decided to leave it-either that, or the discovery of my business card interrupted his flow.

“Let’s move on,” Bascombe says, presiding from the front of the room. “Unless you have anything tangible?”

Hanford starts distributing some stapled sheets. “I output the contacts on her computer so we’d have a starting point for the interviews.”

“Excellent.” He turns to me. “Now, what about the timeline?”

“We’ve painstakingly reconstructed her movements over the past forty-eight hours. She clocked out of the Times Boulevard boutique where she works at about six on Saturday, went for drinks with co-workers, went home. She left the next day around noon-a neighbor witnessed this-and a couple of hours later visited Dr. Joy Hill.”

“Really?” Bascombe says.

I nod. “Dr. Hill is coming in to give a statement.”

“Okay. Can you get Bridger on the line for a preliminary report?”

I punch some buttons on the speakerphone. Bridger must have been expecting us. When he picks up, he’s ready to go.

“Just as in Simone Walker’s case,” he says, “the fatal blow came first-a single stab wound to the heart-followed by the six-puncture semicircular mutilations that cover her torso. The knife recovered at Detective March’s house appears to be the murder weapon. That’s no surprise, considering her blood and prints were on it.”

Bascombe leans over the speakerphone, resting one big hand on either side. “Her prints on the handle. . what do you make of that?”

“Maybe she got the knife away from him at some point.”

I shake my head. I’ve been thinking about the question for hours, and there’s only one thing that makes sense to me.

“At the Walker scene, he came up behind her, held his hand over her mouth, and brought the knife down. With Oliszewski he choked her out first. So he could have reenacted the same process, only this time he puts the knife in her hand and guides it in. So she’s the one stabbing herself and not him.”

“Could be,” Bridger says. “You’ll need a psychiatrist to comment on the significance of that.”

Bascombe rolls his eyes. “What we need is a buyer’s name on that knife.”

“I’ve got another call in to Sam Dearborn, the dealer. He was supposed to get back to me yesterday. I guess I’ll have to pay him a visit.”

As the briefing breaks up, Jerry Lorenz pokes his head in. He scans the room, waiting for a few departing detectives to pass through the door. He raises his eyebrows at me.

“That professor showed up,” he says. “I stuck her in Interview Two.”

“Dr. Hill?” Bascombe asks. “Did you really have to drag her down here?”

“I got tired of making house calls. Since the election’s over, I figured I could bring her in. Did I do wrong?”

He gives me a hard look, then dismisses me with a jerk of the head.

“Can I smoke in here?”

The gravelly voice has lost all its charm. Dr. Joy Hill slouches in her chair, an elbow hitched on the seat back, one leg dangling over the other. She waves a red pack of Dunhills at me. I shake my head. She rolls her eyes- what is the world coming to? — and tucks the cigarettes back into her purse.

“When I heard about Agnieszka, I was devastated.”

“Really?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I thought you’d be thrilled. Agnieszka seduced your husband, after all.”

“Detective,” she laughs. “ Anyone could have managed that. And I already told you there were no hard feelings. If there had been, she wouldn’t have come to me Sunday.”

“Why did she visit you?”

“She’d gone to lunch with some girlfriends, and one of them brought up Simone’s death. It was the first she’d heard, and the news really shook her up. Over the phone she started asking me all sorts of questions-what had happened, what did the police think-and thanks to your unannounced visit that morning, I told her you probably suspected me. That confused her and I said, ‘Look, just come over and we’ll talk.’ So she did.”

“How long was she there?”

“Not long. Ten or fifteen minutes, tops. The conversation was awkward. Agnieszka seemed preoccupied, so she’d ask questions, but when I answered it was like she wasn’t listening. I told her about the man who said Simone was pregnant with his child, thinking that would get her attention. All she did was blink.”

“Maybe she knew about that already.”

She shakes her head. “I didn’t get the impression they’d kept in touch. Agnieszka knew Simone casually, and recommended her when I was looking for a tenant. But they weren’t girlfriends or anything.”

“But she seemed very upset about Simone’s death?”

Another nod. “She pushed past me and went out to the pool. She knelt by the edge of the water. She started to cry. I decided to leave her alone for a while, thinking she just needed to say her goodbyes. But her mood passed pretty quick. When I poked my head out, she was already on the phone.”

“Did you hear what was said?”

“Not much.” She lifts her head slightly, like she’s hearing the conversation now. “ ‘I should have stayed.’ She said that. And then she was quiet awhile, listening. She said ‘I was a fool to believe that,’ or maybe ‘It was foolish to believe that.’ With her accent it’s hard to tell sometimes.”