"What girl?" Chandler said.
"Emily Cunningham. I had the feeling he ran across me by accident when he pulled up at the lawyer's office. I think he might have been following the girl."
"Maybe he was a rapist." Chandler said. "We did this plot on the show once about this small-town guy who went to the city to commit his rapes. Why not the other way around?"
"Wouldn't it be a lot riskier in a small town?" Tandy said. "Easier to get caught?"
"I need to pee," Laura said.
"As a matter of fact," Noah Chandler said, "so do I."
"You think we can get into our rooms?" Tandy said.
The cops had cut off a wide area with yellow crime scene tape. The area included the rooms of the sisters and Chandler. "I'm sure they'll let you in," I said.
"They'd better," Laura said. "Or I'm going to tinkle behind that car over there."
"She'd actually do that, too," Tandy said.
"See you later." Noah Chandler said. Then he paused and said, "You should find out if he had a rifle with him. He may have been the one who shot at you folks this morning."
"The first thing I'll check," I said, pointing down to the shoes that had left the clear impressions in the woods this morning, "are his shoes."
I drifted over to the crowd. The ranks had increased with the arrival of media from Cedar Rapids. There were two trucks with satellite dishes on them and at least two station wagons with reporters.
"Mr. Payne?"
She was a tall, elegant black woman in a starched pink blouse that looked even pinker against her dark skin. Short hair that fit like a helmet. Her jeans were loose and sloppy, the style of late. She had the graceful, enigmatic features of ancient African womanhood I'd seen on a TV show about African art down the centuries, a kind of stoical, maternal eroticism.
She gave me a long, slender hand, dry and strong to the touch. "I'm Iris Rutledge. Emily Cunningham said you were looking for me this afternoon."
"Oh, right. I wanted to talk to you about Rick Hennessy." She laughed softly. "You and everybody else."
"I'd invite you into my room but the cops have it closed off."
"Well, if you're up for an adventure," she said, "I can give you a ride down to Wendy's, which is about two blocks away."
She had an old-fashioned ten-speed Schwinn. It had a light and a horn and a big red alien-eye reflector on the back of the seat. I'd had a bike just like it in college.
I hadn't been on a bike in a long time. I'd forgotten how bumpy the ride was. But it was enjoyable. A few dozen childhood memories came back, the scents, sights, and sounds available only to bike riders. I sat on the handlebars. She didn't seem to have much trouble steering with me aboard.
Wendy's was empty. Everybody was up at the crime scene. We had coffee and tuna pitas.
"It's a good thing I have the right kind of metabolism," she said.
"This isn't too bad, the tuna. Not much fat or calories."
"No, but when I get home tonight and turn on Letterman, I'll have popcorn and part of a candy bar or something like that."
"You look good to me."
"Thanks. It's pure luck, believe me." Then, "He's innocent." This around a delicate bite of her pita.
"You and Dr. Williams."
"Aaron's a good man."
"Seems to be."
"And he knows what he's doing. You don't get to run a hospital like his without having the right credentials. When he says that the drugs Rick was doing induced a psychotic state, I believe him. I just hope I can convince the jury of that."
"A psychotic state in which he couldn't tell reality from fantasy, right?"
"Exactly. He truly believes that he killed Sandy. But he didn't."
"How do you know?"
Another delicate bite. The face, even in the light of Wendy's, more and more exotically commanding. "You have much faith in hypnotism?"
"Depends on who's doing it."
"Aaron has worked with Rick under deep-hypnosis conditions several times. He's also given him whatever the latest spin on Pentothal is. Rick didn't do it."
"Maybe he's repressed it to the point that he's convinced himself that he didn't do it."
"Pentothal is pretty potent stuff."
"So he didn't do it?"
"He didn't do it."
"Then who did?"
"I've got suspicions, nothing else."
"Is that why Emily Cunningham wanted to see you this afternoon?" She looked irritated that I'd know something like that. "She asked me to give you a message. Said she was willing to talk to you now. About Sandy."
"She actually said that?"
"Yup."
She laughed. "I'll have to tell her about discretion." Then, "I think Sandy's father might have murdered her."
"Her father?"
"He's an amateur photographer. He started taking photos of Sandy when she was very little. Apparently, the wife was upset but wouldn't or couldn't-or thought she couldn't-do anything about it. He kept on taking the photos until Sandy herself threatened to turn him in to the authorities."
"How'd you find this out?"
"Sandy. I went to her high school to speak on Law Day and she came up afterwards and asked me if she could come to my office and talk to me. Three days later, she was dead."
"You ever talk to the father?"
"I drove out there once-they live on an acreage-but he wouldn't let me in. He was pretty nasty. He gave me a little speech about how he wouldn't trust a white lawyer, let alone a black one. Except he said nigger." She smiled. "Unfortunately, that isn't proof he's a killer. The terrible thing is, a lot of people are very nice folks as long as you don't get them on the subject of race."
"Any idea what he did with the pictures he took of her?"
She shrugged. "Not really. But I'd like to get in that house sometime when nobody was home."
"Why?"
"See if he's got any other child porn around the house."
"You think he ever molested her?"
"Not from what she said. He was satisfied with just the pictures, I guess. And then she got too old for him. She said he stopped taking photos of her when she turned eleven. Probably about the time she started having noticeable breasts."
"You never went to the county attorney?"
"No point. Sandy said that if I did, she'd just deny everything. Her mother died of heart disease five years ago. He's all she has-had." We had three cups of coffee. She said, "How'd you get involved with all this?"
I told her about Tandy and the show.
"Oh." Her disappointment was easy to see.
"She's not a fake." I sketched out the two cases I'd worked on. "I just don't believe in that kind of thing, I guess."
"Then how did she locate the bodies?"
"That's the funny thing. I know stuff like that happens. But I can't believe it. My husband buys it, though. He's a psychologist. He thinks that someday we'll all be in touch with our full mental powers." Then, "He's white, by the way."
I smiled. "Good for him."
"I just meant it's a novelty. You still don't see a lot of black women with white guys. I think that's why people here are so nice to us. If it was the other way around-if it was a black man with a white woman-I think we'd get a lot more grief."
"You're probably right."
We finished up our pitas and started on our last cups of coffee. "So you going to see him?"
"Who?" I said.
"Sandy's dad."
"I'll try."
"If you learn anything, will you tell me about it?"
"Sure."
"He really is innocent."
"Between you and Dr. Williams, I'm beginning to believe it."
"Really?"
"Well, maybe a little bit, anyway."
A police cruiser swung into the parking lot. I could see Susan in the windshield. She looked serious, serious but beautiful. You couldn't see the scar from this distance.