“No, that’s impossible,” Adam said.
“Why is it so impossible? She was having an affair with that other guy.”
This was a good point- and Xan was a younger guy, just like Tony.
Feeling sick, realizing he couldn’t totally rule this out, Adam said, “I don’t think she’d do that, not with Marissa’s boyfriend. She wouldn’t do that to Marissa.”
“You never know what somebody’ll do,” his mother said, letting the implications hang there.
Adam was shaking his head. “No, she wouldn’t do that, I’m positive.” He wasn’t positive at all, actually, but it made him feel better to say it. Then he added, “But I guess that doesn’t mean he felt the same way.”
“You mean you think he-”
“I’m just saying, what if Xan was interested in her? I mean, more interested in her than she was in him.”
“Then why would he kill her?”
“Maybe he came over here hoping to find her alone. Maybe that was why JoAnne next door heard her dog barking like crazy, probably around the time Dana was killed.”
“Call the police,” his mother said, panicked.
“No, wait, that doesn’t make any sense,” Adam said. “Xan was at the movie that night with Marissa. And just because he and Dana were flirting a little, if you could even call it flirting, doesn’t mean he’d come over here to try to sexually assault her. I’m taking a huge leap there. There was no sign of sexual assault; the police would’ve jumped on that right away. All of this is ridiculous, really, when you think about the facts. There’s no basis for any of it.”
“Call the police anyway,” his mother said. “Let them decide if it’s ridiculous or not.”
“Maybe, I’ll have to think about it,” he said. “It all seems very confusing right now.”
Adam went upstairs, even more stressed out than earlier. He took a hot shower, thinking the whole thing through every which way. While some parts of it seemed to fit, he still couldn’t come up with any logical motive for Xan to come over to kill Dana, a woman he hardly knew. Only a total psychopath would do something like that, and Xan wasn’t a psychopath. If Xan was mentally unstable or had psychopathic tendencies, Adam certainly would’ve noticed it immediately. Detecting abnormal behavior was his profession, after all. And Adam wasn’t even sure if it was physically possible that Xan could’ve done it. Would he have had time to kill Dana and then meet Marissa at the movie theater? Probably not. Adam tried to forget about the whole thing, think about something else, but the dog barking so ferociously at Xan kept nagging at him, and what his mother had said earlier about how Xan was basically a total stranger kept repeating in his mind as well.
When he got out of the shower, just to reassure himself, he went online to see what he could find out about Xan Evonov. He expected to find a lot of information, even Xan’s own Web site- the guy was an artist, after all- but a Google search for the phrase “Xan Evonov” turned up zero results. Adam thought this was pretty strange. Why wouldn’t an artist have any information online? He’d said he hadn’t exhibited his work yet, but it seemed like everybody marketed themselves online nowadays, especially people in the arts- and didn’t he say he had a benefactor? There were hundreds of results for “Alexander Evonov,” but they were mostly in Rus sian, and the few in English had nothing to do with Xan.
Adam was trying another search engine when the doorbell rang. He figured it was reporters again, harassing him, and several seconds later when his mother called, “Adam!” he mumbled, “Goddamn it.” He’d told her not to answer the door for reporters under any circumstances; what was she doing? He headed downstairs, ready to explode.
It wasn’t a reporter, though. Detective Clements was standing there, and Adam had a feeling that went way beyond dйjа vu.
“What’s going on?” Adam asked, hoping there was good news. Maybe there’d been a break in the case- Tony or someone else had been arrested.
But Clements, looking cold and serious, said, “I need to talk to you, Mr. Bloom,” and Adam thought, Jesus, not again.
Adam said, “If you have news I’d appreciate it if you just told me what it is. This is a very difficult time for me, obviously.”
“I understand, and I promise it won’t take long.”
“If you’re going to question me I don’t want to do it without my lawyer here.”
“That’s up to you,” Clements said, “but this isn’t formal questioning. I’m just doing some more information gathering. If you want to call your lawyer, you can, but I can’t hang around here waiting for him to show up. You’ll have to come down to the station with me.”
That was all Adam needed- if the reporters saw a detective taking him in for questioning, what stories would they write then? Adam figured he’d see how it went. If they were just basic questions, he’d answer them. If not, he’d call his lawyer.
They went into the dining room and sat in the same seats they’d sat in during Clements’s other interrogations- at the middle of the table, Clements directly across from Adam.
“You’re getting to be a pro at this, huh?” Clements asked.
“I guess it’s to be expected when I’m a person of interest.”
Adam’s tone was dripping with sarcasm, but Clements either didn’t get it or wasn’t amused; he didn’t crack a smile.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “you’re not a suspect in the case.”
Adam didn’t believe him. “Really?” he said. “Do the reporters out there know that?”
“Like I said, this won’t take long. I just need to go over your whereabouts on Monday evening, from the time you left your office to the time of the nine- oneone call.”
“Are you kidding me?” Adam said. “We’ve been through all this how many times?”
“I understand, but we’re doing this with everyone involved in the case. We just need to make sure there are no discrepancies.”
“What about Tony’s whereabouts? Are you double- and triple- checking his alibi?”
“Yes, we’re still talking to Tony, and we’re talking to a lot of other people. So you said your left your office at around six fifteen, is that correct?”
Adam told Clements pretty much verbatim what he’d told him the other day- he left his office, rode the subway to Forest Hills, stopped at the grocery store, discovered the body, and after several minutes called 911. He gave Clements the same estimated times he’d given during the previous questioning.
“Is it possible you shopped for less than ten minutes?” Clements asked.
“No,” Adam said. “It was at least ten minutes, maybe closer to fifteen or twenty. There was a woman complaining at the checkout counter.”
“So you’re saying that you got home no later than seven twenty- five or seven thirty?”
“That’s an estimated time, but yes, that sounds about right.”
Clements wrote this in his pad.
“Can I ask why my whereabouts are so important if I’m not a suspect?” Adam asked.
“Everything’s important in a murder investigation,” Clements said, not answering the question. Then he added, “We have to create an accurate time line for Monday night. Forensics has given us a probable time of death of between six thirty and seven thirty, so we think your wife was dead for less than an hour before the time you say you discovered her body. We have the reports of your neighbors’ German shepherd barking very loudly at approximately six thirty, which also fits into the time your wife was killed. We’re also talking to your neighbors and other people in the neighborhood to see if anyone saw-”
“I have to talk to you about that,” Adam said excitedly.
“About your neighbors?”
“No, the dog,” Adam said. “I think I have some information you might find pretty… well, pretty damn interesting.”
He told Clements that the dog had barked at Xan earlier today and when he’d found the note from Tony, and that Xan had flirted with Dana a few nights before she was killed, and that there was strangely no information about Xan on the Internet. As Adam spoke, he thought the whole scenario sounded so flimsy, so outlandish, so circumstantial, that he was convinced Clements was going to laugh the whole thing off.
So he was surprised when he was through and Clements asked very seriously, “So why do you think Xan
