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“That’s right. Did you make it?”
Kenneth Buchanan hesitated, ran a hand with long fingers across his face, and pinched the bridge of his nose. The dark eyebrows inched together.
“I had an affair with Kristen,” he said. “It started about a year ago. I’m willing to cooperate with the police, off the record, but my wife can’t know about this. I want your guarantee.”
Will looked at the man. He might have been old enough to be Kristen’s father, but he supposed that was one of the perks that came with money and power.
“I can’t make that guarantee, sir. All I can say is that I’ll do my best.”
“Well, I was golfing with friends on Saturday, then I went home, where my wife and I had a quiet dinner and spent the evening and night together. So this should cover the entire period you’re talking about, if what I read in the newspape
rs is true.”
Will watched for tells that he was lying, saw none.
“So why did you call Officer Gruber? What did you talk about?”
“I got her voice mail. That’s it.”
“It was a six-minute conversation. Want to try again, counselor?”
He made fists out of his hands and put them in his lap.
“I didn’t kill her. I didn’t even see her, haven’t seen her for a month. We broke things off.”
“Because you were afraid of being found out?”
He rearranged himself to face Will, leaning against the door, and trying to stretch out.
“Let’s say I was tired of competing with other men, all right? Kristen was not…faithful.”
“As a mistress.”
His mouth crooked down. “You’re in no position to judge me, and I can walk away.”
“But you won’t,” Will said. “I got enough sense of your wife to know you really want her kept out of this.”
“And you’re an asshole.”
“So I’ve been told.” Will smiled without humor. “How did you meet Officer Gruber?”
“She moored her boat next to ours, like I told you. My wife doesn’t really care for the water, so usually I was there alone. She flirted. A man can tell. At least, I can tell. Things went from there.”
“Tell me about things.”
“Things? I don’t get you.”
“Did you have sex at her place?”
He angrily pursed his lips and nodded. “Sure.”
“Five times? Twenty times?”
Kenneth Buchanan laughed. “Obviously you didn’t know Kristen. A hundred would probably be more like it.” His eyes glowed with the memory.
Will used the ensuing quiet to study the man. Was a murderer sitting next to him? He looked physically powerful enough to have inflicted the brutal knife strokes that tore apart Kristen’s vagina. His hands were large, their backs showing engorged veins. But not one knife knick was showing on a knuckle or finger.
For someone who had been Kristen’s lover, who had been intimate with her so many times, he was strangely calm, actually cold, about her death and the way it came about. It was very close to being “no affect,” as the cops and shrinks put it.
