suspect, I should keep these next suggestions to myself. But I’ve gone by the book with this investigation, and although we’ve had a few leads, I’m no closer to finding Joanna’s killer than I was the day we pulled her out of the mud. Karen would tell me that I need to trust my gut. So I’m ignoring the sound coming from Patel’s throat, and I’m taking my wife’s advice.
“Joanna’s murderer could’ve sent the text from her phone so you wouldn’t try to contact her.” My gut jumps as if it knows I’ve just spoken the truth. “If you thought she had moved on and didn’t want to see you again, you wouldn’t file a missing person’s report. If no one thinks there’s been foul play, no one searches for the killer. He or she goes free. Might’ve been an excellent diversion technique.”
“You’ve got quite an assortment of theories there,” Harris snaps. “Which one do you think is the truth?” His eyes are locked on mine.
“Mr. Harris, at this moment, it’s impossible to know for certain.”
“But what do you think?” he insists.
“The final one,” I say, eyeing Patel. “I think those were the words of her killer.”
He groans.
“You’re going to look into Travis, aren’t you?” He looks up, his eyes glossed with tears. “I think—no, I know—he killed my wife. Please don’t rule him out.”
“We’re not, Mr. Harris,” Patel says, getting to his feet. “We’re not ruling anyone out yet.”
Including you. Those are the unspoken words, and I get the feeling Michael Harris knows it.
“He’s paranoid,” Patel says as soon as Harris leaves the station.
“Of course he is,” I say. “He thinks we’re closing in on him.”
“We are,” Patel says. “He’s sick, if you ask me. I don’t like that he’s getting shifty, telling us who we need to be looking at, what we need to be doing. We should’ve had him come in, put more pressure on him. We might’ve been able to crack him. I worry about that girlfriend of his—he could take it out on her.”
“I’m telling you, Patel, there’s something else going on here. Something that doesn’t fit. Let me look into the neighbors a bit more. The chef, too. I don’t know that I trust a word out of his mouth.”
Patel narrows his eyes over the rim of his giant mug. “When we get toxicology back, we’ll know for certain. But I’ll bet you a week’s salary that we’ll be arresting Michael Harris for murder before day’s end. For his new girlfriend’s sake, we can’t afford to waste any more time.”
RACHAEL
I’m sitting up in bed reading an entertainment magazine when Travis slams into the room and heads straight for the closet. He doesn’t say a word, but that’s not surprising. We haven’t talked much since last night, when he insisted on making a regal entrance at the Harris Financial party. It was tacky as hell to walk in like that. After all, we’d been disinvited. But Travis insisted we shouldn’t hide. We should show our faces proudly because we didn’t do anything wrong. Give me a break. What do we have to be proud of lately?
“Where’ve you been?” I ask, flipping a page of my magazine. I try to keep my tone calm, but I hear its edge anyway.
“I went for a drive. To clear my head.”
I’m not buying any of his excuses. Not anymore. I can’t believe a word he says. If he lied to me about his affair with Joanna, he could be keeping anything from me. What else is lurking in the dark, waiting to rise up and ruin my life? Other affairs? Murder? I don’t want to think he had something to do with Joanna’s death, but he’s been odd lately. Jumpy and tense. He’s hiding things, like the lunch on Thursday with God-knows-who. And he’s too concerned about what I’m telling the police. Staying up later than usual to clean his gun, and rising earlier to head into the city.