No one spoke.
“Your wife’s handkerchief,” she said. “The one we found in Farnham’s apartment.”
“What about it?” said Warden.
“The girl Katrina Olson was using it to wipe her face. That was in Mr. McPhee’s apartment. Farnham wasn’t there.”
They looked at one another.
“I wonder why Pat McPhee never complained to anyone about the smell around his apartment,” said Somerville.
“Perhaps I’d better talk with Mr. McPhee,” said Carol Scott. “What is he doing now?”
SCENE 9
“It’s the mind,” said McPhee. “I’m observing myself and knowing how much I’m scaring you and hating myself for it. I like you, Thomas, and I don’t want you to be afraid. But there’s a passion in me that keeps welling up. Welling up, that’s an old-fashioned expression, but that’s the only term I can think of. Sometimes the passion takes over, and once it starts, once it becomes dominant, then I have a hard time getting my control back. Is this making any sense at all?”
“Yes sir.” Thomas stood with his jeans on and trembled.
“The worst time was right after I got back from New York. I was so calm at first, taking the train back to Washington and then catching the Metro out to my car in the airport parking lot. But I was like an alcoholic on a binge. Russell Phillips was just there, with tales of sexual conquest and his flippant attitude. It was his hair, you know? It looked so long and brushable. Russell was already corrupted, he needed to go. I figured I was bound to get caught after Russell, and I should have been. But they thought somehow he had killed himself—should have known better, don’t you think? I was ashamed of myself and hoped maybe I could stop. Saturday night I went back up to the wrestling room just to punish myself, just to remind myself of what I had done, and I admit, maybe to relive the moment a little, maybe to try to recapture that sense of satisfaction, of knowing that I’d made the world a little cleaner. Then Cynthia Warden came upstairs and had sex with Robert Staines.”
He paused, shook his head. “No, wait, that’s wrong,” he said. “Cynthia was there by herself, and then Angus found her, and Staines showed up later with that other blond girl. So many blondes. Staines showed up with a girl and had sex with her right there on the pad. Can you imagine? He had no self-control whatsoever. He just took that girl on the floor, showed no respect for her at all.”
Thomas thought of himself with Hesta in the chapel.
“I didn’t deserve to get caught for Staines’s death. He was entirely too undisciplined. So I got Angus and choked him and that worked just fine, especially when I hid my train ticket in Angus’s desk so the police would think he’d been to New York. But then I got wrapped up in the play. I went over and watched them trying to block Desdemona’s death scene, and I gave myself away. I said they ought to do it with Desdemona kneeling, and the only time Cynthia Warden had knelt was that night in the wrestling room. She had been up there before Staines arrived, and I had watched her from my hiding place among the mats rolled up against the wall. She guessed that I’d been there. In fact, when I showed back up at the theater she was expecting me. She knew I was going to kill her. I think she wanted it.”
He threw Thomas a white tee shirt. Thomas could barely hold it because of his trembling.
“I wouldn’t have gotten mixed up with the play if it hadn’t been for you,” said Coach McPhee. “You needed someone to walk over there with you.”
“Coach McPhee,” said Thomas. “Please let me go.”
“I will,” said McPhee. “I won’t hurt you. If I can possibly help it.”
Thomas would run if he had to. He didn’t have any shoes on, but he would kick at the glass door if he could get to it.
“I want you to hear the entire story, Thomas. And then I want you to answer a question for me. The answer to the question is very important. Would you do that?”
“Yes sir.”
“Would you care to sit down? You’ve been standing an awfully long time. I’m almost finished.”
“That’s all right,” said Thomas. “I’ll stand.”
“Sit down,” said McPhee. “Sit here on the bench.”
Thomas sat.
SCENE 10
Carol Scott pulled on her mittens and her knit hat and walked in the cold with two of her men from the Homestead to the gym. The main entrance was locked.
“Try the other doors,” she said to the men. “I’ll try the outside entrance to McPhee’s apartment.” She circled around the building to her right, past the chimney at the end of the building, and knocked at the darkened door to McPhee’s apartment. There was no answer. She tried the knob. It was locked.
This had been a bitch of a day for Carol Scott. One of her kids was sick with whatever flu was going around, and she still hadn’t done a bit of Christmas shopping; she’d asked for some time off, but Stuart had called at noon saying that they were two cops down and that he needed her to check out a burglary out on Blue Ridge Drive. It had been one nagging little thing after another all afternoon, then the call from Montpelier School. Crap. This was her first murder case since her maternity leave, and she was pleased at the way it had gone, even with that headmaster bitching at her. Now there was a chance she had a false arrest on Farnham. That would be just groovy. Eldridge Lane would be all over her butt if she’d arrested the wrong man. She would hate to give him that satisfaction.
It couldn’t be McPhee. It had to be Farnham. She just needed to find out how he got that whistle.
But she was a good enough cop to
