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“Who says anything is?”
She laughed.
I told her.
As my theory unfolded, her eyes got huge. When I finished, she said, “That would be beyond strange.”
“It’s probably nothing.”
“I’m not saying that, baby. Nothing doesn’t usually preoccupy you.”
“I should tell Milo?”
“Maybe do more research and see what comes up?”
“The case has stalled. Last thing he needs is another dead end.”
“You’ll know what to do,” she said. “You’ve always been a perceptive boy.”
—
Back at my computer, I began as deep a dive as possible into the life and times of Conrad Deeb, found a birth record forty-one years ago and an article inThe Harvard Crimsonhe’d published while a doctoral student.
Review of Jean Genet’sThe Maids.Genet was a career criminal who’d morphed into a literary darling. I knew the play and like much of Genet’s work it wallowed in sadomasochistic violence. Deeb’s review was airy and irrelevant and his final line made me wonder if he’d ever actually seen it.
“As the millennium rears its dystopic head, symbolism may evolve as the authentic realism.”
Searching theBoston Globearchive during that same period pulled up nothing. But aBoston Heraldpiece revved up my pulse rate.
Beyond strange.
I read, re-read. Printed. Then I kept hunting.
When I’d found enough and my brain had settled, I called Milo.
He was just about to leave the office, sounded exhausted.
I said, “You’re not going to believe this, but…”
—
Fifteen minutes later, he was in my office, sharp-eyed and antsy as a stag during hunting season as he studied the page I’d just handed him.
“The guy stabbed someone and became a professor.”
I said, “Bar brawl, self-defense, initial consideration of an ADW charge but the Boston D.A. decided not to file.”
“Self-defense,” he said. “Or Harvard dude versus Southie plumberis no contest…Jesus, sounds like he carved the poor guy up.” Touching the side of his neck, then his abdomen.
I said, “Knife-wielding Harvard dude.”
He put the clipping on the couch. “You checked him out because he gave you a feeling?”
“Not when I met him. He came across mild and accommodating, made a big thing about being nonconfrontational. I wasn’t necessarily buying it because once a case gets to me there’s been serious conflict. But no reason to think he was anything other than a bit of a suck-up. Then this morning I met his wife and recognized her from Cordi’s crime scene. You met her. She was one of the women trying to get Moe to speed things up so she could get out of there. She told you Cordi had been flirting with her husband.”
He nodded. “Coupla blondes getting pushy. Didn’t notice any resemblance.”
“Your mind was on other things and at that point Cordi’s face was covered in blood.”
