Then Naomi Jensen was found murdered, with a .38caliber bullet through her throat. Beside her lay a young musician, Kilburn Holmes, whom she had been dating, killed by a bullet from the same gun. According to witnesses, earlier that day Naomi and Jensen had had a bitter argument outside Naomi's house, during which she insisted he leave her alone and told him she intended to remarry.
Patrick Jensen was an obvious suspect, and inquiries by Miami Homicide showed he had opportunity and no alibi. A handkerchief near the bodies matched others owned by Jensen, though there was nothing on the handkerchief to prove it was his. However, a fragment of paper in Holmes's hand did match another fragment, found in Jensen's garbage. Detectives then discovered that two weeks before the murders Jensen had purchased a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver, but he claimed to have lost the gun, and no murder weapon was found.
Despite intensive effort by Sergeant Pablo Greene's Homicide team, no other evidence was obtained, and what little they had was insufficient to take to a grand jury.
Patrick Jensen knew it, too.
Detective Charlie Thurston, the lead investigator, told Sergeants Greene and Ainslie, "I went to that arrogant dickhead Jensen today to ask a few more questions, and the fucker just laughed and told me to beat it." Thurston, a seasoned detective, normally mild-mannered and patient, was still burning from the encounter.
"The bastard knows we know he did it," he went on, "and he's telling us, 'So what, you'll never prove it.' "
"Let him laugh now," Greene said. "It may be our turn later."
But Thurston shook his head. "Won't happen. He'll put it all in a goddam book and make a pisspot full of money."
To an extent Thurston was right. Nothing more emerged to connect Jensen with the murders of Naomi and her friend Kilburn Holmes, and he did write a new crime story in which the homicide detectives were incompetent buffoons. But the book did not do well, nor did one more which followed, and it appeared that Patrick Jensen's bestseller days had ended, as so often happens when fresh young writers ascend into literary orbit and older ones decline. At the same time there were rumors that, through bad investments, Jensen had lost a major part of his millions and was looking around for other sources of income. Another rumor was that Jensen and Detective Cynthia Ernst had, for a long time, been having an affair.
Ainslie dismissed the second rumor. For one thing, he did not believe Cynthia would be so foolish, in view of Patrick Jensen's status as a murder suspect. Second, he found it inconceivable that she could conduct two intense affairs at the same time, particularly since Cynthia's relationship with Ainslie frequently left the two of them drained.
Just the same, Ainslie did raise Patrick Jensen's name with Cynthia, trying to make the reference casual. Cynthia, as usual, wasn't fooled.
"Are you jealous?" she asked.
"Of Patrick Jensen! That'll be the day." He hesitated, then added, "Do I have reason to be?"
"Patrick's nothing!" she asserted. "It's you I want, Malcolm and all of you. More of your time, all of your time! I don't want to share you, not with anyone." They were in an unmarked police car, Cynthia driving. The last few words rang out like a command.
He was startled and asked, scarcely thinking, "Are you saying we should get married?"
"Malcolm, get free. Then I'll consider."
The answer, he thought, was typical Cynthia; in the past year he had come to know her well. If he were free, the probability was that she would use him, squeeze him dry, and then discard him. No permanence for Cynthia; on that point she had made herself quite clear.
So there it was. Ainslie had known something like this was inevitable and that a moment of decision had arrived. He knew Cynthia would not like what he would say next, and knew too that her anger could erupt like Vesuvius.
For a moment, postponing the confrontation, he thought back again to David and Bathsheba, the lovers who married after Bathsheba's husband Uriah was disposed of in battle as King David prearranged. But God according to the Bible was personally upset by David's perfidy.
. . . the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. And the Lord sent Nathan unto David . . . And Nathan said to David. . . Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of shine own house, and I will take thy wives before shine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbor, and he shall lie with thy wives. . .
Like so much else in the Bible, it was as scholars saw it highly implausible folk legend, told around the campfires of semi-nomadic Israelites, then two hundred years later written down with a core of reality, plus myths from ten thousand retellings. But the extent of truth and fiction didn't matter; what did was that in human relations there was nothing new under the sun, but only variations of old themes. One variation now Ainslie wasn't going to marry Cynthia and didn't want to "get free" of Karen.
They had been driving on a quiet suburban street. As if anticipating what was to come, Cynthia pulled the car to the curb and stopped.
She looked at him. "Well?"
Reaching out to take her hand, he said gently, "My love, what's happened between us has been magical, wonderful. It's something I never expected, and as long as I live I'll be grateful. But I have to tell you I can't go on, we have to end it."
He had expected an outburst. But it didn't happen. Instead she laughed. "I presume you're joking."
"No," he answered firmly.
She sat silently for a few moments, staring out of the passenger window. Then, without turning, she said with eerie calm, "You'll regret this, Malcolm, I promise regret it for the rest of your miserable life.''
He sighed. "That may be true. I guess I'll have to take that chance."
Suddenly she looked at him with tears on her cheeks and rage in her eyes. Her fists were clenched and shaking. "You bastard!" she screamed.
From that point onward they saw little of each other. One reason was that Cynthia became a sergeant a few days later. She had taken the promotion exam a few weeks earlier and placed third on a list of six hundred.
Upon her promotion she was transferred from Homicide to Sexual Battery as a supervisor. She was put in charge of a team of five detectives investigating rapes, attempted rapes, sexual harassment, peeping toms; the coverage was wide, and Cynthia became outstandingly successful. As in Homicide, she proved adept at developing leads through a web of contacts and informants. A dedicated, natural leader, she worked her team hard, as well as herself, and early on made a notable arrest that resulted in the sentencing of a fifteen-count serial rapist who, over two preceding years, had terrorized women in the city.
In part because of this and an excellent rating in one more promotion exam, Cynthia was made a lieutenant two years later and moved to a new department Community Relations as second-in-command. There she liaised with the public, appeared at town meetings, lectured community groups and sometimes other police forces, and generally put forward a convincingly positive image of the Miami force.
All of this brought her to the attention of Police Chief Farrell Ketledge, and when Cynthia's department head died unexpectedly, the chief appointed her to take over. At the same time, because of the prominence and increasing importance of Community Relations, Chief Ketledge decided it should be headed by a police major. Thus Cynthia attained that senior rank without ever having been a captain.
Meanwhile, Ainslie was still a sergeant, to some extent penalized by the fact that he was a white male at a time when affirmative-action promotions of minorities and women were disproportionately and many thought unfairly large. However, he had passed the examination for lieutenant with distinction and expected to move up soon. From a practical point of view, a promotion would increase his annual sergeant's salary of $52,000 by a welcome $10,400.