“Near the Columbia campus, on Broadway. Place called the Lion’s Pub.”
“How long have you been doing that?” I asked.
“Since I ran out of money to finish graduate school, a year and a half ago. I’m a neurobiologist. At least, I will be when I complete the program.”
“What are your hours there?”
“Eight p.m. till we close. Four in the morning.”
“And last night?” I asked.
“Same,” Travis said, while I tried to penetrate his blank stare. “What does this have to do with my brother?”
My exhaustion had me seeing suspects at every turn. If Travis Forbes had the same access to the library that his brother once enjoyed, he could have found his way to Tina on Wednesday evening, in the conservators’ office, and back again to move the body last night. But if his alibi held tight, he wouldn’t have been standing on a nearby street corner-with us in his sights-at the time the body was found and the ghoulish, laughing caller rang on Tina’s cell.
“Do you know a girl named Tina Barr?” Mike asked, refocusing the conversation.
“Who?”
“A friend of your brother’s.”
“Eddy’s a lot older than I am. We never really socialized together.”
“This is someone he worked with,” Mike said. “A conservator. Restores rare books and old maps.”
“I know what a conservator does, Detective,” Travis said, growing more churlish by the question. “Ask Eddy. You must have his number.”
“Why don’t you give it to me, just in case?” The ex-con was likely to have two phones-one that his probation officer used and one for his friends and family.
“I’ll have to ask him if he wants me to do that.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Not in here, you won’t,” Travis said, taking his hands out of his pockets to try to close his front door, dislodging Mike’s foot.
Mike tried to keep his balance by grabbing at the jamb with his left hand while his right one settled on Travis Forbes’s wrist. “Sorry. I get it. We’re out.”
Travis shook loose of Mike’s accidental grasp. At the same moment, we both saw the cuts on the back of Travis Forbes’s left hand. Long narrow strips of red-lined flesh protruded from both ends of a bandage strip.
“What’s with the scratches, pal?” Mike asked. “Your fish got fangs?”
The soft-spoken young man covered his bad hand with the good one. “Leave me alone.”
“You ought to have that looked at,” Mike said. “Could get yourself a nasty infection. I got a doc who’ll check it out for you.”
Mike wanted to see the injury, just as I did. He wanted to compare the size and shape of the wound to the marks on Tina Barr’s neck. Maybe she had tried to defend herself with one of the sharp tools from her own desk.
“I’ve already been treated,” he said, putting both hands back in his pants pocket.
“By whom?”
Footsteps charging down the staircase overhead signaled the reappearance of Shalik, on his way from Ms. Jenkins’s apartment to run her errands.
“How’d you get those cuts?” Mike asked. “You drop a steak knife on the job? I’m trying to help you out here.”
Now only Mike’s fingers on the door jamb prevented it from closing. “Who cut you?”
Shalik stopped to listen to the conversation, squatting on one of the steps, his nose between railings of the banister. But Travis Forbes didn’t speak.
Shalik let out a low hissing sound, and Forbes’s head snapped up to look at him.
“Quiet, kid,” Mike said. “I’m asking you once more, Travis, before I tell Ms. Cooper here to get me a subpoena to photograph your hand. Who cut you?”
“Hisself.”
Shalik repeated the word he had said the first time, when I had misheard him.
“Look in his pocket, man. He do it at night sometimes in the summer, sitting on the stoop. He crazy, Detective.”
“A subpoena for what?” Travis Forbes said, withdrawing his right hand from his pocket again. He spread it open and in it was a razor blade. “Talk to my shrink. I didn’t think my problem was illegal.”
Travis Forbes unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt and started to roll up his sleeve. Scars lined his inner arm, and marks that looked like they’d been left by lighted cigarette butts dotted the skin on the outer side.
Mike’s hand dropped to his side.
“Take care of yourself, Travis,” he said, backing away. “Here’s my card if I can do anything to help.”
THIRTY-ONE
“I gotta tell you, Mercer, I took one look at the guy’s messed-up paw and I was ready to throw the cuffs on and collar him,” Mike said, turning off Central Park West for the ride through the park to my apartment. “We gotta slow this down before I make a mistake.”
“I never saw Mike turn on a dime so fast,” I said from the back seat, patting him on the shoulder. “He went from executioner to social worker in a heartbeat.”
“Yeah, well, what makes you such an expert on self-mutilation, kid? I don’t think I’ve ever had one of these.”
“Alex and I have seen more than our share of it because the highest incidence is among teenage girls.”
“Does it mean that Travis Forbes is suicidal?” Mike asked.
“Not necessarily,” Mercer said. “It’s a form of intentional self-harm without actually having the wish to die.”
“So why do they do it? I mean, not the psychobabble, but what do you know about it?”
“The docs tell me that self-mutilation is some sort of outlet for strong negative emotions,” I said. “Usually anger or shame. Anger at someone else that’s then directed against the self.”
“So maybe he’s embarrassed about Eddy,” Mike said. “Mad at him for ruining the family name, being such a jerk to get caught. Is it always done by cutting?”
“Knives and razors,” Mercer said. “They’re the most popular. Biting or bruising yourself, pulling out hair, putting out cigarettes on your skin.”
“That fourteen-year-old we had last year,” I said to Mercer. “Remember? The one whose mother blamed her when the baby brother died?”
“Yeah. The shrink said she was dissociating. That her mind just split off that memory, which was too painful to keep in her conscious awareness. Whenever she hurt herself, she felt alive again.”
“Well, I should have given Shalik a bigger reward. He saved me from making a fool of myself with Forbes.”
“And it doesn’t seem that Travis has his brother’s book interests. I mean, you wouldn’t keep rare books in a junk heap like that,” Mercer said.
“We’ve still got to get to Eddy. His name just comes up in this too many times to ignore,” Mike said. “I’m dropping you at home, Coop?”
“Please.”
“I’ll hang with you for the autopsy,” Mercer said to Mike.
It was almost four when I got out of the car and walked into my lobby. I stopped for the mail and went upstairs, as anxious to know whether Luc was waiting for me there as I was to step into the shower and clear my head of the day’s confusion.
I unlocked the door and went inside. “Luc?”
