J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

“Do you have the number, or should I look it up?”

I dig through my notes, sliding the number in front of him. He dials with a slender digit, punching the numbers with crisp precision. “It’s ringing.”

The conversation takes thirty seconds, and when he hangs up, there’s a grin on his lips.

“She’ll be right over.”

Mainz goes to the door alone, greeting her in a high-pitched, stagey voice, tut-tutting at her inaudible remarks. As they come down the hallway, he pauses to prepare her for the shock.

“Now, don’t be angry with me,” he says. “I have a little surprise.”

When Kim Bayard sees me on the sofa, she stops in her tracks.

“You’re the one who searched the house and took Dave away.”

“Roland March,” I say, rising to extend my hand.

“I shouldn’t be talking to you.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’s just that I have some questions and you’re the only person who can answer them.”

Mainz guides her to a chair, easing her down, then positions himself to one side. “If he tries anything fresh, don’t worry. I’ll be right here.”

I hadn’t expected him to stay. It’s a little unorthodox, conducting an interview with an audience. But it’s his house and I can hardly ask him to leave. His presence might go a long way to helping her open up. So I smile at the little man. I smile at Kim. I take the recorder from my breast pocket, then open the Filofax on my lap to consult my notes. She shakes her head.

“I don’t want you writing anything down,” she says. “I’ll answer your questions, assuming I can, but only off the record. I won’t testify against my husband, but if I can help him by clearing up your confusion, I’m willing to do that. Off the record.”

I close the Filofax, sandwiching the running recorder between the pages. I set it on the couch beside me, hoping either that she didn’t notice the little device or, seeing me remove it from inside my jacket, mistook the shiny metal case for a pen.

“We were just talking about your son,” I say. “Where exactly does he live?”

“You know that big high-rise on Kirby? He has a little place there. His father pays the rent. His father pays for everything.”

“I see. And he’s not a student at A amp; M anymore, is he?”

She shrugs. “He’s supposed to be working on a dissertation, but he had some kind of trouble over there and came back.”

“David has a problem with his hand. An injury. He told me his father did that to him.”

“He did?” She shakes her head in mock admiration. “You know, he told one of the counselors at St. Thomas that he had a little sister who wasn’t allowed to go out. He said we kept her in an upstairs closet because she was deformed. They obviously didn’t believe that, but in this day and age, you have to be sure, don’t you? It was humiliating.”

“What happened to his hand, then?”

“He did that himself,” she says. “My husband collects knives. When David was in high school, I heard a scream from upstairs, and when I found him I thought he’d chopped his finger off. There were all these little holes in his father’s desk, and blood everywhere, and I couldn’t get him to hold still long enough to see what was wrong.

“What happened was, he was stabbing the knife between his fingers, seeing how fast he could do it. He’d seen Dave showing off in front of some guests. But the knife turned in his grip and cut into him. It took a big chunk out of one finger and sliced up the other. I wanted to get rid of all the knives, but Dave wouldn’t listen. That’s when he had the glass cases installed, to keep David away from the weapons.”

“Mrs. Bayard,” I say. “Are you aware that the knife used to kill Simone Walker and Agnieszka Oliszewski was one of your husband’s?”

She blinks. Freezes.

“What I can’t figure out is, if your husband didn’t kill them, how did the killer get the knife?”

Silence.

“Can you think of an explanation?”

“Well,” she says. “David sold some of his collection recently.”

“This wasn’t one of those knives. But now that you mention it, I was wondering why he sold them? Did he need the money, or did you put your foot down again and this time he listened?”

“I’m not sure,” she says to the floor. “I don’t know why he did it.”

“I think you do.”

She covers her mouth with her hand.

“It’s essential that you tell me the truth.”

The hand drops. “I think. . I think one of the knives went missing.”

“Missing.”

She nods. “But that was long before the murders. That was more than a month ago.”

“David took the knife,” I say. “And his father responded by selling off some more. Like he was trying to cover it up. Like he thought David would do something bad with that knife.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “You don’t understand at all. My husband is the only person who can get through to him. If he was going to do anything-anything serious -Dave would’ve stopped it from happening. He’s always. .”

“Always what? Always stopped things from happening?”

She nods.

“Only he couldn’t this time. He was leaving for Africa. His job was in jeopardy. He had other things on this mind. David comes and goes as he pleases, doesn’t he? The things we found in the attic, they belong to him.”

She sinks into the chair, nodding wanly. Surrender. Mainz, sensing the shift, pulls a chair up beside her, putting his hand over hers.

“He has a room in the attic,” Kim says. “He used to live up there, and when he came back from College Station, he moved back in. But I made Dave tell him to go. He moved everything to the high-rise.”

“Not everything,” I say. “This was recent, wasn’t it? You’re making it sound like your stepson has been living in the high-rise a long time, but that was a recent development.”

“Afterward,” she says.

“After what?”

“After Dave came back from Lagos.”

“After the first murder, you mean.”

Nothing.

“Why, then? Why kick him out after Simone’s death? You knew, didn’t you?”

She crosses one leg over the other, bouncing it nervously at the knee. She gnaws at her fingernails, staring off to her left.

“Let go of it,” I say. “This isn’t yours to carry.”

Her eyes dart toward me, then away.

“Kim, it’s time to tell the truth. I’ve brought more people through this than you can ever imagine, and I know all the signs. You can’t live with what you’re holding, believe me. If you don’t get clear of him, he’ll drag you down, too.”

“I don’t know anything,” she says. “I can’t prove anything.”

“You don’t have to. Just tell me what you do know.”

“Unwanted touching,” she says.

“Come again?”

“That’s why he was asked to leave the first school. He was only nine. He didn’t mean anything by it. But the others, they all acted so shocked, like nothing had ever happened like this before. Like there was something wrong with us, with me and Dave. I told them he was a normal boy. I told them he was just. . curious.”

She covers her mouth again, closes her eyes. The tears come. I expect Mainz to lean over and comfort her, but instead he shrinks back, his mouth curled downward in disgust. He strokes the fabric of his trousers, wiping his hand up and down the crease.

“There were doctors,” she says. “There were diagnoses and prescriptions. It got so complicated that I couldn’t remember what the problem was supposed to be in the first place. He grew so docile. So withdrawn. But it never seemed to stop. All we were doing was masking the symptoms. Underneath it all, he was so bad. He would do things to himself. Hurt himself. And if it wasn’t knives, it was fire. I always had to watch him. I was afraid of what would happen the moment I looked away.”