Grosses’ accounting firm, got voice mail, hung up. “Too complicated to leave a message. Anything else?”
“Hennepin’s chef boyfriend—Kleffer—was alibied solidly, but now we’ve got two dinner scenes.”
“Darius the Elusive returns? Not ever talking to him was sloppy, huh? Maybe I’m slipping.”
He grabbed my hand, shook it vigorously. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“I slip, I could fall. Sometimes you supply a net.”
CHAPTER
10
The following morning Milo called and asked if I’d take another look at the Hennepin murder book. I said, “Sure,” and six minutes later, Sean Binchy was at the door delivering the blue folder.
The request, just a formality. I supposed that defined friendship.
I went to my office and read after Robin had gone to her studio, concentrating on linking Katherine Hennepin to Ursula Corey any way I could.
The only thing they seemed to share was death followed by creepy culinary displays. I gave the files another try. By the fourth go-round, I might as well have been reading Sanskrit.
When you hit a wall, take another route. I refocused by stepping away from the details.
Milo’s initial reaction to the dinner scene at Ursula’s was to take it personally. Understandable response to surprise and frustration. But what if he was at least partially right and the killings were a power play against authority?
Making fools of the cops by setting up crime scenes designed to misdirect, because detectives play the odds. We all do.
Spot an eighty-year-old woman hobbling your way down a dark city street and your blood pressure, pulse, and respiration are unlikely to spike.
Switch the scene to a husky young male swaggering toward you and your sympathetic nervous system jams into high gear.
Sure, it’s profiling and sure, it’s imperfect. Get close enough to that old woman and realize she’s a guy in drag whipping out a gun and you’ve lost out to limited thinking. But for the most part, things
are
what they seem and we all bank on that.
Try living randomly and see how far it gets you.
When it comes to police work, professional judgments about a crime are often formed early, sometimes during the first moments of viewing a crime scene. That can lead to tunnel vision and rushes to judgment. But more often than not, seasoned detectives’ expectations are met because patterns do exist and ignoring patterns is stupid and reckless.
A bright detective keeps a sliver of mind open. Milo’s one of the brightest but his assumptions had just been churned to sludge.
He wouldn’t be forgiving himself anytime soon, but I was coming to believe that he deserved a pass. Because the slaughter of Katherine Hennepin
was
a textbook example of an overkill slice-job by someone the victim knew well. And the assassination of Ursula Corey
did
bear the hallmarks of a for-hire hit prompted by money or passion or both.
A pair of textbook cases that had skidded way off the page. A couple of obvious prime suspects who’d alibied out.
Was blowing probability to bits the big thrill for the monster who’d choreographed, directed, and starred in all this violence?
Were the killings little more than stage shows? Dinner for two, the props?
But why
these
two women? The victims mattered. The victims always matter.
Full circle …
I brewed coffee, drank too much of it, walked around the house and out to the garden and back, developing a killer headache that proved oddly reassuring.
Dinner for two. Pleased at his first tableau and repeating it? Because something about setting up a cozy culinary scene made his penis hard and flooded his shallow mind with pulsating memories?
Or did it all reduce to an ad for himself? Just another
look-at-me
vanity production.
Murder as bragging.
If so, how many other women would be sacrificed to a metastatic ego?
Were we dealing with someone who’d never matured properly due to abuse or neglect? Or one of those mutants who defy explanation?
If I was right about his
“Hennepin’s chef boyfriend—Kleffer—was alibied solidly, but now we’ve got two dinner scenes.”
“Darius the Elusive returns? Not ever talking to him was sloppy, huh? Maybe I’m slipping.”
He grabbed my hand, shook it vigorously. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“I slip, I could fall. Sometimes you supply a net.”
CHAPTER
10
The following morning Milo called and asked if I’d take another look at the Hennepin murder book. I said, “Sure,” and six minutes later, Sean Binchy was at the door delivering the blue folder.
The request, just a formality. I supposed that defined friendship.
I went to my office and read after Robin had gone to her studio, concentrating on linking Katherine Hennepin to Ursula Corey any way I could.
The only thing they seemed to share was death followed by creepy culinary displays. I gave the files another try. By the fourth go-round, I might as well have been reading Sanskrit.
When you hit a wall, take another route. I refocused by stepping away from the details.
Milo’s initial reaction to the dinner scene at Ursula’s was to take it personally. Understandable response to surprise and frustration. But what if he was at least partially right and the killings were a power play against authority?
Making fools of the cops by setting up crime scenes designed to misdirect, because detectives play the odds. We all do.
Spot an eighty-year-old woman hobbling your way down a dark city street and your blood pressure, pulse, and respiration are unlikely to spike.
Switch the scene to a husky young male swaggering toward you and your sympathetic nervous system jams into high gear.
Sure, it’s profiling and sure, it’s imperfect. Get close enough to that old woman and realize she’s a guy in drag whipping out a gun and you’ve lost out to limited thinking. But for the most part, things
are
what they seem and we all bank on that.
Try living randomly and see how far it gets you.
When it comes to police work, professional judgments about a crime are often formed early, sometimes during the first moments of viewing a crime scene. That can lead to tunnel vision and rushes to judgment. But more often than not, seasoned detectives’ expectations are met because patterns do exist and ignoring patterns is stupid and reckless.
A bright detective keeps a sliver of mind open. Milo’s one of the brightest but his assumptions had just been churned to sludge.
He wouldn’t be forgiving himself anytime soon, but I was coming to believe that he deserved a pass. Because the slaughter of Katherine Hennepin
was
a textbook example of an overkill slice-job by someone the victim knew well. And the assassination of Ursula Corey
did
bear the hallmarks of a for-hire hit prompted by money or passion or both.
A pair of textbook cases that had skidded way off the page. A couple of obvious prime suspects who’d alibied out.
Was blowing probability to bits the big thrill for the monster who’d choreographed, directed, and starred in all this violence?
Were the killings little more than stage shows? Dinner for two, the props?
But why
these
two women? The victims mattered. The victims always matter.
Full circle …
I brewed coffee, drank too much of it, walked around the house and out to the garden and back, developing a killer headache that proved oddly reassuring.
Dinner for two. Pleased at his first tableau and repeating it? Because something about setting up a cozy culinary scene made his penis hard and flooded his shallow mind with pulsating memories?
Or did it all reduce to an ad for himself? Just another
look-at-me
vanity production.
Murder as bragging.
If so, how many other women would be sacrificed to a metastatic ego?
Were we dealing with someone who’d never matured properly due to abuse or neglect? Or one of those mutants who defy explanation?
If I was right about his
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