“Could be,” Bridger says. “You’ll need a psychiatrist to comment on the significance of that.”
Bascombe rolls his eyes. “What we need is a buyer’s name on that knife.”
“I’ve got another call in to Sam Dearborn, the dealer. He was supposed to get back to me yesterday. I guess I’ll have to pay him a visit.”
As the briefing breaks up, Jerry Lorenz pokes his head in. He scans the room, waiting for a few departing detectives to pass through the door. He raises his eyebrows at me.
“That professor showed up,” he says. “I stuck her in Interview Two.”
“Dr. Hill?” Bascombe asks. “Did you really have to drag her down here?”
“I got tired of making house calls. Since the election’s over, I figured I could bring her in. Did I do wrong?”
He gives me a hard look, then dismisses me with a jerk of the head.
“Can I smoke in here?”
The gravelly voice has lost all its charm. Dr. Joy Hill slouches in her chair, an elbow hitched on the seat back, one leg dangling over the other. She waves a red pack of Dunhills at me. I shake my head. She rolls her eyes-what is the world coming to? — and tucks the cigarettes back into her purse.
“When I heard about Agnieszka, I was devastated.”
“Really?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I thought you’d be thrilled. Agnieszka seduced your husband, after all.”
“Detective,” she laughs. “Anyone could have managed that. And I already told you there were no hard feelings. If there had been, she wouldn’t have come to me Sunday.”
“Why did she visit you?”
“She’d gone to lunch with some girlfriends, and one of them brought up Simone’s death. It was the first she’d heard, and the news really shook her up. Over the phone she started asking me all sorts of questions-what had happened, what did the police think-and thanks to your unannounced visit that morning, I told her you probably suspected me. That confused her and I said, ‘Look, just come over and we’ll talk.’ So she did.”
“How long was she there?”
“Not long. Ten or fifteen minutes, tops. The conversation was awkward. Agnieszka seemed preoccupied, so she’d ask questions, but when I answered it was like she wasn’t listening. I told her about the man who said Simone was pregnant with his child, thinking that would get her attention. All she did was blink.”
“Maybe she knew about that already.”
She shakes her head. “I didn’t get the impression they’d kept in touch. Agnieszka knew Simone casually, and recommended her when I was looking for a tenant. But they weren’t girlfriends or anything.”
“But she seemed very upset about Simone’s death?”
Another nod. “She pushed past me and went out to the pool. She knelt by the edge of the water. She started to cry. I decided to leave her alone for a while, thinking she just needed to say her goodbyes. But her mood passed pretty quick. When I poked my head out, she was already on the phone.”
“Did you hear what was said?”
“Not much.” She lifts her head slightly, like she’s hearing the conversation now. “ ‘I should have stayed.’ She said that. And then she was quiet awhile, listening. She said ‘I was a fool to believe that,’ or maybe ‘It was foolish to believe that.’ With her accent it’s hard to tell sometimes.”
“I assume you don’t know who she was talking to.”
“No idea,” she says. “You’ll just have to trace the call.”
After thanking Dr. Hill for her cooperation and escorting her out, I walk a billing statement from Agnieszka’s phone down to the same non-sworn officer who helped me with Simone’s phone records, asking her to find out who the girl called on Saturday afternoon.
“Leave it with me,” she says, adding my scrap of paper to the growing pile beside her keyboard. “I’ll get to it ASAP.”
From the opposite side of a barred glass door, Sam Dearborn of Dearborn Gun and Blade inspects my badge a bit too long to be polite, then cranks the key, unbolting the lock with a dull thunk. Bells chime overhead as I enter. He’s a portly black-haired man with a goatee and dark hair on his forearms, who wears a gold Rolex, a gold neck chain, and a thin copper bracelet around his wrist. He smells of hair spray and musky cologne.
“You didn’t call me back, so here I am.”
“Come on in,” he says, beckoning me deeper into his shop. “You want some coffee? I was just making a pot.”
“What I want is the name of your buyer.”
“Ah.” He raises a finger, then goes around a glass counter where a stack of papers and receipts is spread out. “Hold on just a second and I’ll find what you need. I was just looking.”
“You said you’d get this for me last night.”
“Yeah,” he says, running a thick finger down a column of figures without looking up. “Sorry about that. I had the best of intentions, but something came up. I wasn’t in the office when you called.”
I’m tempted to let him have it, but I’d rather save the energy. The quicker I can get a name, the quicker I can get out of here.
“Just look it up, okay?”
Through the back office door I can hear a coffee machine burbling, the smell wafting through the air. The small shop reminds me of my uncle’s, the same glass cases, the same racks along the back walls for long arms. But instead of blued, workmanlike weapons-tools of metal and wood-Dearborn presides over an Aladdin’s Cave of collectibles: ornate flame-bladed knives with exotic handles, even a few impractical-looking swords, along with high-end custom handguns and coveted black tactical rifles. There are no price tags on display, but I imagine most anything in the shop would be too expensive for actual use. He told me as much over the phone. His clientele collects weapons; they don’t use them.
“Yep,” Dearborn says, tapping his finger on the glass. “I was afraid of this.”
“Of what?” I ask. “Was it a cash transaction?”
“That’s not it.” He shakes his head thoughtfully, then hands me a credit card slip. “The knife you’re looking for was part of a lot I sold to a local collector. I know for a fact he’s been divesting himself of some nice pieces, because I bought some things off him just last month.”
I study the receipt. The customer’s name is printed DAVID R. BAYARD, with an address I recognize as a downtown office building.
“Tell me about this guy,” I say.
“Dave’s some kind of oil consultant. I don’t know exactly what he does, but he travels a lot to Africa and Scandinavia, places like that. Brings back some interesting stuff, too. I’ve been doing business with him maybe ten years. He collects blades. I’ve tried to get him into firearms, but he’s not interested.”
“You said he’s been selling things?”
“I bought a couple off him for less than he paid, including a couple of Scharfs-but not the one you’re looking for. And I know for a fact he gave some things to another dealer on consignment for sale on the Internet. I can give you that guy’s card.” He goes into the back office and returns with a pair of cards, one for Bayard and another for the consignment seller. “You sure you don’t want any coffee?”
“I’ll be in touch if I need anything else. And next time a homicide detective asks for a favor, don’t let anything distract you.”
“My apologies,” he says. “If it makes any difference, there was a woman involved.”
“It doesn’t.” The door jingles as I exit.
Outside, I can still smell Dearborn’s cologne on my clothes.
From a distance, the skyscrapers of downtown Houston look like so many glass needles aimed at the clouds. Reflecting the sky above and one another, they seem weightless and ethereal. Down on the street, though, walking the long stretch of sidewalk from the brainchild of one famous architect to the next, passing one, two, three abstract sculptures nestled in among the corporate logos, I feel like an ant in a redwood forest, awed by the imbalance of scale.