LITMIR.BIZ

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      “That’s the way it is up here. If the guy hops a plane back to his home country, it’ll take a helluva legal wrangle to get him back over here, if ever. Happens all the time. Gotta watch the airports, that’s crucial.”

       Did the hick just say NYPD’s staked out TAP Airlines? THAT’S PORTUGAL!

      “It’s a sad thing the way these foreigners take advantage of our good nature. Hey, gotta run buddy. Nice seeing you again. Enjoy your stay.”

      You idiot hayseed …

      Every Southerner knows the thicker your accent, the more you’re viewed as a naïve bumpkin by anyone north of the Mason-Dixon. After using my most cartoonish twang to shovel shit into Benny Mac’s nonexistent lap, I walked the streets to burn off energy. I went up Lexington, crossed to Central Park, spanked pavement down Eighth Avenue to Greenwich Avenue – passing within two block of Folger’s house – walked Greenwich to Sixth and into Tribeca. I angled east to the Lower East Side and turned back uptown. I was only a dozen or so blocks from the precinct when my phone rang: Clair Peltier’s cell.

      “Hi, Clair.”

      “I tested the hair and fiber evidence from the NYPD. It’s strange and I don’t think it’s what you expected.”

      Boom. That was Clair in work mode. Direct and focused, science all the way. One of the reasons she was one of the top pathologists in the country.

      “Uh, expected what, Clair?”

      “You said the hair and fibers found at the woman’s crime scene were from New York?”

      “Local shops, salons, barbers. At least that’s what everyone figured. What’s wrong?”

      “Let me walk you through it. We took what you sent and burned it all in the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer.”

      “I don’t underst—”

      “Hush your head and listen. NYPD was right, testing on an individual basis was out of the question, unless you’ve got a hundred technicians or a couple of months. So our top tox guy, Ward, loaded everything in the GCMS, flashed it, and we checked the results. It’s almost bizarre.”

      “How?”

      “We got an amazing spike on arsenic. A few of those hairs were loaded. We think it has to be the hairs, unless someone had spilled arsenic on a rug, say, the rug fibers then included in the fibers left at the crime scene. But there were a lot more hairs than fibers. On a weight comparison, I’d put it a hundred-to-one hair over fiber. So I think a hank of hair inside the bag was thick with arsenic.”

      “Got you.”

      “I checked with the CDC in Atlanta. There was an arsenic poisoning in Key West nine months back, a husband loaded his invalid wife’s meals with the stuff. But, being an invalid, would she have gotten her hair cut outside her home, where someone could gather her hair? There’s that to consider. Anyway, that’s all I found in the whole country. At first.”

      I held my breath. “And?”

      “An hour ago I got a call from the CDC. They found a case that hadn’t reached the official records yet, still being documented. They put me in touch with a county coroner who said that his department had just recently uncovered an arsenic poisoning, homicide. A woman had loaded her abusive husband’s vitamin supplements with an old but potent agricultural-grade rat poison. The guy was a bodybuilder type, fit and powerful.”

      “So it took a lot of arsenic.”

      “The guy got sicker and sicker but thought he wasn’t adjusting his carbs and fats or whatnot – a head case. So wifey keeps upping the dosage until the guy could probably kill rats by sneezing on them.”

      “But he got a haircut during the poisoning, right?”

      “Every week. He wanted to look tidy if the Mr Universe pageant called.”

      My grip tightened on the phone. Maybe the hairs could provide a starting place to find the killer.

      “The poisonings were in the New York area, right? Or maybe New Jersey?”

      “No, Carson. Not quite.”

      “Where, then?”

      “A little town southeast of Jackson, Mississippi. Right here in our own back yard, so to speak. Does that change anything in your cases?”

      I hung up a minute later, head spinning. There was no proof the hair in the NYPD evidence bag was from Mississippi, it could be a local poisoning in progress. But the Mississippi case was scant miles across the border from central Alabama, an hour’s drive to the Institute, to Vangie’s house, to the area where my brother and I had grown up …

      It made no sense. Nothing made sense. I didn’t have long to ponder the anomaly. My phone rang. This time it was Waltz, brusque: “Get here now.”

      I grabbed a taxi and was in his office five minutes later. He threw the afternoon edition of the New York Watcher my way. I snatched it from the air, saw the headline.

      PORTUGUESE DIPLOMAT SUSPECT IN SLASHER SLAYING.

      The accompanying photo showed a hapless member of the Portuguese legation denying everything. The story was attributed to “an unnamed source close to the NYPD”.

      “Oh Jesus,” I said, hoping my face registered appropriate horror. “Where the hell did it come from?”

      “‘Close to the NYPD’ usually means some janitor or civilian passing through the detectives’ room heard the words ‘slasher’ and ‘Portuguese’ and ran to the Watcher to trade the words for a hundred bucks.” Waltz sank into his chair. “The local TV and radio are gonna land on it like flies on horseshit. You know what this does, don’t you?”

      I handed the paper back, nodded.

      “It’ll push Ridgecliff underground.”

      Waltz tossed the paper in the waste can. “Do you think this will set Ridgecliff off? If Folger’s alive, will this make him kill her?”

      “If he’s kept her alive there’s a reason. Having his cover blown shouldn’t affect that reason.”

      He walked to the open blinds and drew them tight. He turned to me.

      “Nothing makes sense about why Ridgecliff is in New York. It’s a goddamn carnival of mirrors. You sure you’re telling me everything about him?” Waltz stared, as if studying my reaction.

      “Why would I keep information under wraps, Shelly?”

      “Did you ever talk to Ridgecliff’s people? His relatives? That kid, the one who disappeared – Charles. Did Jeremy Ridgecliff like him, hate him?”

      “Jeremy Ridgecliff was adamant that he saved Charles’s life.”

      “How?”

      I frowned, as if sifting through hazy memories. “Jeremy Ridgecliff’s father was falling into pure madness. Harsher abuse, more frequent. The father had initiated the physical abuse when Jeremy Ridgecliff turned ten, like the kid reached some sort of point where the old man’s anger turned physical.”

      “I’m not getting it.”

      “A few days before his tenth birthday, a friend gave Charles a hamster as a gift. The kid hid it under his bed. On the night of the kid’s birthday, Mama and kids are in their usual tense state, no one knowing what Daddy’s gonna do. The cake is presented, Daddy gets a big-ass grin on his face, and runs off. He reappears with the hamster in his hand.”

      Waltz shook his head. “Oh Lord.”

      “Daddy screams, ‘I told you, no filthy animals in the house.’ He winds up like a major-league pitcher and fires the hamster into the wall. It falls to the floor, still alive, squeaking and twitching, blood coming from every opening. Hamsters scream … Ridgecliff told me

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