Dawn: They want to ask me about Mary Ann Demery, the lady who committed suicide? I’m Dawn, a friend of hers.
Ganz: No, you’re not. I’m her friend, you’re her fortune-teller.
Dawn: If you say so.
Ganz: What’s going on?
Dawn: What do you mean?
Ganz: You sit down and shake my hand? What’re we gonna do, get cozy here? You read my mind and I confide in you?
Dawn: I already know things about you.
Ganz: Is that right? From Mary Ann or you look in a crystal ball?
“Dawn doesn’t answer,” Falco said.
Ganz: You read palms?
Dawn: I can. I don’t usually.
Ganz: Here, take a look. Tell me what you see and maybe I’ll confide in you.
Dawn (following a long pause): You’re egotistical.
Ganz: Where do you see that?
Dawn: Your index finger’s longer than your ring finger. Most people, they’re the same length.
Ganz: Amazing.
Dawn: You have trouble paying bills.
“You’ll notice he doesn’t deny it,” Falco said.
Ganz: Which one’s my life line?
Dawn: This one, curving down.
Ganz: All the way to my wrist. That’s good, huh?
Dawn: The length doesn’t mean much.
Ganz: What do you see?
Dawn: A lack of energy.
Ganz: Don’t you see anything good?
Dawn: Well, your fate line-you’re ambitious, you know what you want. The line’s a bit ragged though.
Ganz: You want me to confide now?
Dawn: If you like.
Ganz: What if I tell you Mary Ann didn’t commit suicide, she was murdered?
Dawn: How do you know?
Ganz: It’s why we’re here, isn’t it? I’m a suspect and they want to know what you feel about me, or however you get your messages. If you’re any good you know I didn’t do it. But what if I tell you I know who did?
“The guy isn’t dumb,” Falco said.
Dawn: Do you?
Ganz: Let’s say I know, but I can’t tell the people here. Let’s say for personal reasons I can’t afford to become implicated in any way, the idea I was close to a woman who was murdered. Okay?
Dawn: You want me to tell them who did it.
“She isn’t dumb either,” Falco said.
Ganz: You go in there, you tell them you laid out your magic cards or you touched something Mary Ann gave you… Listen to me telling you how to do it. You’re the pro, you see things, right? You turned over a card and there he was. Or you closed your eyes, went into your clairvoyant mode and you actually saw what happened, the guy picking Mary Ann up and throwing her off the balcony. You hear her scream as she’s falling. The guy looks down, he turns, and that’s when, clairvoyantly speaking, you see his face. You describe the guy to the cops and they go looking for him. Overnight you’re famous, the clairvoyant who cracked a murder case.
Dawn: Get my picture in the paper…
Ganz: In the paper, in magazines, you’re on talk shows. Before you know it they’re lined up to get a reading. Will I ever meet Mr. Right? Is my husband fooling around on me? Pretty soon you have a syndicated column in newspapers…
Dawn: What if they find out the guy I describe didn’t do it?
Ganz: Then you’re fucked. You were gonna go in there and put it on me, and if it turns out I did it, you’re a star. You want to work this mental telepathy shit to make a name for yourself. Okay, go ahead, try it. Only I’m clean, I wasn’t anywhere near Mary Ann’s place that night. As I said before, if you’re any good, if you know what you’re doing…
Dawn: You said Mary Ann screamed as she was falling.
Ganz: Wouldn’t you?
Dawn: She was already dead.
Ganz: They told you that?
Dawn: I told them.
Ganz (after a pause): Are you always right?
Dawn: Often enough. You want a quick reading? I won’t charge you.
Ganz: Sure, go ahead.
Dawn: Give me your hand. (long pause) You make a good first impression, you can turn on the charm when you want to, and can talk people into doing things they’d rather not. At least some people. You could make a lot of money in sales, but you’d have to work and that’s out of the question. So you live by your wits and a high opinion of yourself, for what it’s worth, and so far it hasn’t proved to be worth much at all.
“She’s got him down cold,” Falco said.
Ganz: But I know what I want and I’m ambitious. You saw that in my palm, right? When we’re through here, what do you say we have a drink?
“I think they had that drink,” Raylan said, watching Falco reach over to push the rewind button, “and got to be pretty good friends. She tell you right away it wasn’t Ganz?”
“She said she didn’t think so, but wanted to meditate on it. A couple days later she said she was positive he didn’t do it.”
“After they got to know each other,” Raylan said.
Falco was nodding. “That was taken into consideration. We know she thought the guy had a lot of money, living in Manalapan.”
“Anyone tell her he didn’t?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Why was Ganz your main suspect?”
“We didn’t like anything about him, the guy’s shifty. We know he’d borrowed money from the victim, we see cancelled checks in the amount of two grand, twenty-five hundred, that add up to over twelve thousand. He says he paid her back in cash, if you want to believe that, this born fucking loser-we know he owed bookies in Miami. The theory was, he’s in deep, he asks Mary Ann for another loan and she turns him down. The guy’s desperate, frustrated, they get in a violent argument and he creams her with the bookend, this brass modernistic bull.”
“The one Dawn identified as the murder weapon,” Raylan said, “without having seen it.”
“Right, it was being held as evidence. She did see the other bookend on the shelf; there were two of them. We said, ‘You mean that one?’ She goes, ‘No, the one that was used has blood on it.’”
“Wasn’t it wiped clean?”
“No prints, no, but minute traces of blood around the base, this wood block the bull’s standing on.”
“What about Ganz’s prints?”
“All over the apartment. Listen to this, even on Mary Ann’s checkbook. The only other prints belonged to the cleaning woman. That’s another reason we leaned toward Ganz; there wasn’t anyone else, unless some guy walked in off the street.”
“None of Dawn’s prints around?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Wasn’t she ever a suspect?”
“We checked her out. There was no reason to think she had a motive.”
Raylan gave that some thought before saying, “The two guys that robbed the grocery store, you haven’t picked them up, have you?”
“Not that I’ve heard, no.”
“I think I know who they are.”