“How come you never asked me about that night she spent at my house? You knew about it months ago.”
“At first it seemed like none of our business—even though we were keeping an eye on you. When we’re doing surveillance, we learn a lot of details about people’s personal lives. We had no idea Isabella was relevant to the Novak case. We thought she was just a random civilian. And, by the way, a totally hot librarian. By the time we realized she’d killed Novak, she was on the run. And she didn’t run toward you when she ran. She ran away from you. It’s not like you’ve aided and abetted.”
“So you’re not thinking I’ve done something wrong.”
“Sexually risky, yeah. Criminally wrong? No. Not unless there’s something else you haven’t told us.”
“No, that’s it. What now?”
“We keep looking,” Thornton said. “We’re already checking medical clinics for female patients who came in with burned hands. Now we’ll start checking for prenatal care, too. But there are a hell of a lot of clinics in the United States. Meanwhile, I trust you’ll let me or Emert know if she contacts you.”
“I’m not holding my breath,” said Emert. “Nobody ever tells me anything.”
“Good grief, Emert, don’t be a baby,” said Thornton. “I gotta go. Doc, give my regards to Price and Rankin.” He clicked off, leaving me to wonder how much he knew about their body-brokering investigation—and how much they knew about my personal but not-so-private life.
“Hey, Doc?” Emert was still on the line. “Who are Price and Rankin?”
“Can’t tell you,” I said, and hung up.
CHAPTER 14
BURT DEVRIESS’S LAW OFFICE OCCUPIED SOME OFthe swankiest real estate in downtown Knoxville: the twentieth floor of Riverview Tower, a sleek skyscraper—tall enough to scrape Knoxville’s sky at least—perched on the bluff near the headwaters of the Tennessee River. The streamlined oval building was clad in alternating horizontal bands of green glass and stainless steel. Early in our acquaintance, as we’d walked back to his office from a court hearing, Grease had nudged me and pointed to the building. “Just look at it, Doc,” he’d said, “all green and silver. The color of money. No wonder I love it.”
Today I was the only passenger in the elevator, which whisked me up without stopping, the air in the shaft whistling slightly during the ascent. DeVriess had phoned to ask if I wanted to drop by for an interesting tidbit about the Willoughby case. His call caught me on my way back to campus from my session with Dr. Hoover. I was still feeling antsy and anxious, so I was grateful for the distraction of an errand and an inside scoop.
I was also glad to have occasion to see DeVriess’s assistant, Chloe Matthews, again. I’d first met Chloe a year earlier, the afternoon I’d walked in off the street, the taste of freshly swallowed pride rising bitter in my throat, and asked DeVriess to defend me against a murder charge. Chloe had greeted me that dark day with a welcoming smile and a warm handshake. I’d been grateful then, and I was grateful still. She was on the phone when I walked in, but she flashed that same smile at me and held up a finger to tell me she’d be with me momentarily. As the call dragged on through several of Chloe’s attempts to wrap it up, she rolled her eyes and made the universal hand-puppet motion for “yak, yak, yak” with her right hand. “Sorry,” she said as she finally hung up with a head shake. “My mother, bless her heart, calling to complain about how longher mother keeps her on the phone. So now I’m complaining to you, and you can complain to Mr. DeVriess about me.”
“And then Burt can phone your grandmother to gripe about me,” I teased. “How’ve you been? And how’s the speed dating working out?” The last time I’d seen Chloe, she was about to go on a speed date, a round-robin lunch gathering where single people spent five or ten minutes auditioning a series of other single people.
“Utter disaster,” she laughed. “It took me twenty years to get over junior high school, and one hour of speed dating undid two decades of progress and self-esteem. I clammed up and turned into a total geek again.”
I found it hard to imagine the attractive, articulate, and confident woman in front of me as a geek.
“Did you ever try it?” she asked.
“Actually, I did look into it once,” I confessed, “but I got rejected even before I got in the door. Too old.”
“You? Too old? No way,” she scoffed.
“Seriously. You have to be under fifty. I’ve missed my chance by a year or three.”