"I haven't excused you yet."

Her eyes were big and centered.

"Damn! You're going to be a knockout when you grow up, you know that? A damn knockout. Girls are going to be all over you. But you'll always be my Beauty Boy." She reached out and gave him a hug when he made a move to get away.

She dropped her grip. "Okay, okay," she muttered, repressing whatever impulse had prompted her. She snatched something off the vanity. It was a black stocking. She shook her head. "You haven't got a clue," she said softly. "Not a flipping clue."

He started to leave again, when she snapped at him. "Where're you going?"

"My room."

"No, you're not. You get right back here."

"Mom, I've got homework."

She had tears in her eyes. "You're not leaving."

She looked as if she were about to sob. "What's wrong?"

She hesitated for a moment to catch her breath then said, "I love your daddy. But you just don't understand what it's like some times," she said. "A woman needs warmth and affection." Then she caught herself again. "Heck, I sound like I'm right out of a Tennessee Williams play. It's nothing, honey, really." She grabbed some tissues from the box and dabbed her eyes. Her mascara had run, smudging them black. "Now look at me."

With a tissue she began to redo her eyes. Her mood shifts unnerved him. When she finished, she was calm again. But she wouldn't let him go back to his room. She sat on the toilet seat and held up one leg and slipped a stocking over one foot then stretched out her long white leg in front of him, slowly pulling up the material to her thigh. She then stood up and adjusted the lacy elastic top so it was smooth. "I should use a garter belt but they make me feel like a stripper is all." Then she sat back down and pulled up the other stocking in exaggerated slow motion. She was doing this for him, because she kept shifting her eyes to gauge his reaction.

"I hate these things, but your father doesn't like panty hose. So he bought me these. But I shouldn't complain. They're Wolfords, which are tres expensive." She then turned toward him. "What do you think?"

"I have to go."

"Hey."

He didn't know if she was going to get mad and slap him or what. He just knew that he wanted to leave. Suddenly she took his face in her hands. He felt something sharp pass through his heart. Her eyes were crazy askew. Because she was tall, he only stood shoulder-high to her. So when she pulled him to her, he found his face buried in her breasts, her gold crucifix digging into his cheek. By reflex, he turned his head, but she held him against her.

Suddenly he felt scared. "Mom, what are you doing? Let me go."

She loosened her grip, but still held his face. She said nothing as she stared at him. He could not read that twisted gaze, but he felt his blood flow faster. The moment buzzed with anticipation. Suddenly she pressed her mouth against his. It was open and wet and he felt her tongue trying to force itself into his mouth.

The next second she shoved him off of her. "Get out of here," she said. Her voice was scathing. "Get out of here!" And she pushed him into the hall and slammed the door.

For a stunning moment he stood there gaping at the door. Then he dashed into his room, wiping his mouth in horror at what had just happened, but knowing that for the next several days she would not speak to him, not even look at him. That she would suffer a silent, black torment that would last until it ran its course like a fever.

In the meantime, he would be gnarled with fear and guilt.

29.

"No, you're not under arrest," Steve said. "We impounded your computers and want to ask you a few questions before you leave the country."

"Okay." Pendergast's lips were white and his eyes were fighting smoke again.

"And, remember, you're free to go whenever you'd like. So just relax."

On Neil's request, Pendergast had arrived at the station for more questioning. He was dressed in chinos, a white shirt open at the neck, and a linen navy blazer, looking as if he were heading for class. Once again Steve tried to imagine this mild-mannered Keats scholar premeditatedly strangling a woman with a stocking. While he had to work at the image, he reminded himself how two years ago he had arrested a seventy-four-year-old grandmother for bludgeoning her granddaughter to death with a meat tenderizer because she refused to take out the trash. All things were possible.

They moved to a small interrogation room-an eight-by-ten white cubicle with a table, three chairs, and a video camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling. Neil put his hand on Pendergast's shoulder. "May I call you Earl?"

"Sure." He tried to project ease, but he was a wad of raw nerve endings, twitching and blinking and fidgeting with his hair.

Steve and Neil had done team interrogations for months and had the good copbad cop routine down. Yes, it was cheesy-a cliche in movies and TV shows-but it was standard practice in law enforcement because it worked. Under arrest or not, nearly everyone brought into a police station felt vulnerable and worried about all that could go wrong. And here was a middle-aged English professor still licking his wounds over the public exposure of sexual improprieties, now under question in the murder of a stripper. Unless, as Neil had decided, he was an erotomaniac posing as a poetry scholar, his main concern was returning to teaching with his name free of scandal. That was their hedge against his putting the kibosh on the interview by demanding legal counsel.

Steve worked at relaxing him by citing the high ratings from his students. Then he asked, "You understand why we got a warrant to impound your computers?"

Pendergast's hand went to his face, pretending to rub his forehead but blocking his eyes. "I guess to see if I had any correspondence with Ms. Farina."

"Right, and it turns out that the hard drive was erased clean. Just wondering why you did that."

"I think I explained that I purchased a new system. It hasn't arrived yet, but I'm donating the old one to the Cambridge Middle School and I didn't want to send it over to them with all my stuff on it-you know, tax and financial records, student recommendations, et cetera." From his shirt pocket he produced a flyer asking residents of Cambridge for computer donations.

"Important files like those I assume you backed up," Steve said.

"Some of them, yes."

"Were there any e-mails or other files, text or visual, relating to Ms. Farina?"

"No."

"Earl, we found some stuff on your office computer that makes us wonder about your relationship with her."

"I told you that I went out with her only once, and that was it."

Steve nodded. "We're curious about some blogs on the site pale-princerules dot com."

Pendergast's face turned to granite. No place on the blog had he revealed his identity. That connection came from his computer wallpaper illustration.

Neil cleared his throat so loudly that it startled Pendergast. It was his announcement that Bad Cop had pulled into town. "Look, Earl, you say on your blog that you had found your ideal woman in Xena Lee-a.k.a. Terry Farina. You said: 'What she does with a pair of stockings will make your eyeballs smoke.' Those were your words, right?"

Pendergast's face looked as if it were crawling with bugs. "I suppose they are."

"Is that yes or no?"

"Yes."

"The person who killed her seemed to be driven by a sexual obsession."

"I wasn't obsessed with her. And I didn't have anything to do with her death. I swear on my life."

"Usually it's their mother's."

Before Neil pit-bulled Pendergast out of the room, Steve cut in. "Look, Earl, what we're saying is that you had a thing for her, and I can understand that. I'm pretty partial to redheads myself. So, when was the last time you saw her?"

"I told you, the last time I visited the lounge, which I guess was last Thursday night."

"Right, which means you were one of the last persons to see her alive."

"So were a hundred other people. And anyone she saw over the next two days."

"True, but as far as we know you're the only one of those hundred guys who dated her."

"But that doesn't mean that I killed her."

"True. So, where were you last Saturday, June the second?"

"I went into the office for a few hours."

"On a Saturday?"

"Yeah. I'm leaving next week for a month, so I was finishing some preps for the fall."

"How long were you in the office?"

"I don't know, until around four."

"Then where did you go?"

"Home. I had a splitting headache. So I stayed in all night and went to bed around nine."

"And you didn't leave your place at all?"

"No."

"When was the last time you were at her apartment?" Neil asked.

Pendergast flinched. "I told you, I've never been there."

"Never?"

"You just want me to say yes to confirm your suspicions."

"No, we just want you to tell us the truth," Steve said.

"I'm telling you the truth."

Neil cut in. "Look, Earl, you admitted that you dated her, right? You've also got a hard drive full of porn sites, including several specializing in redheads. You've contacted at least four escort services asking for 'hot foxy redheads.' You've got a reputation for being sexually aggressive with women. Plus you've got a lewd and lascivious conviction with a girl of seventeen."

"Those charges were dismissed because she'd lied about her age."

"A mere technicality," Neil said. "Frankly, Professor, you fit the profile of someone who could have done this to her, okay? So let's cut the bullshit and get real. You've got a track record of someone who's a sexual predator."

Pendergast looked from Neil to Steve. "I don't need to take this." He started to get up.

But Neil stopped him. "You walk out of here, and you give us probable cause to arrest you, which means everything goes public, so you might as well make it easy for yourself."

That was a bullshit bluff, and Steve cut in again before Pendergast left. He turned to Neil. "Maybe you can get me a bottle of water, okay?" His look said, Leave this to me.

Neil glared at him for a bristling moment then got up and left the room, his face ablaze because he didn't want to break the momentum. Steve put his hand on Pendergast's shoulder. "He's coming down pretty hard because he was a personal friend of Terry's."

Pendergast nodded and choked back the tears. "It's unfair. He's bringing up stuff that I want to put behind me. I made mistakes and paid for them, believe me. But I'm not a sexual predator." He began to sob.

Shit! "Okay. Okay." What hope Steve had held out was beginning to dissipate.

"She also wasn't a real redhead."

"Pardon me?"

"You could see the dark roots. She began to color it about a month ago."

"Did you have something to do with that?"

"No." He was having a hard time controlling himself.

"Okay. Take it easy. I'll go out and talk to him to ease up on you."

Steve left the room and found Neil in the kitchenette. "We don't have him."

"Bullshit. He's fucking lying."

"I don't think he is." But, God in heaven, do I wish he was.

"Then he's got you conned. The guy's a sexual pervert."

"She was not raped but murdered," Steve shot back. "He doesn't fit the profile."

"Then let's get a poly on him."

"We can try."

Neil followed Steve back into the room. "We have no more questions. You're free to go. But we're wondering if you'd consent to a polygraph before you leave the country."

"A polygraph?"

Steve saw instant panic in Pendergast's eyes, but it had lost its appeal. Polygraphs spooked most people. "It might be the one way to clear you."

"I've heard they aren't very reliable."

"They can never be wrong," Neil said, "because it's only a recording of what it reads from you."