12th of Never

quarters. His jacket and button-down shirt were blue, and he wore a pair of khakis with a pleated front.
    He had seemed to be a solid citizen.
    “I was going into Whole Foods on Fourth Street last night,” Judd said. “There was a woman right in front of me and it just happened that I followed her into the store. She said hello to one of the cashiers. I got the feeling she was a regular there.”
    The professor then described the woman in extraordinary detail.
    “She was blond, about two inches of black roots showing. She was about forty, a ‘squishy’ size ten, wore a white blouse with a ruffled neckline and a necklace. Green beads, glass ones.”
    Judd had gone on to say that the woman had been wearing sandals, her toenails painted baby blue.
    Then the professor had gone completely off-road. He began quoting from obscure books, and although Conklin seriously tried to get the connection, the guy sounded psycho.
    Conklin liked to let a witness lay out the whole story in one piece. That way he could shape and sharpen his followup questions and determine from the answers if the witness was telling the truth or talking crap.
    Dr. Judd had stopped talking altogether and was staring into the one-way glass behind Conklin’s back.
    Conklin said, “Dr. Judd. Please go on.”
    The professor snapped back to the present, then said to Conklin, “I was thinking about
The Stranger
. You know, by Camus. You’ve read it, of course.”
    Conklin had read
The Stranger
when he was in high school; as he remembered it, the story was about a murderer who had separated from his feelings. Not like a psychopath who didn’t feel—this killer had feelings, but was detached from them. He watched himself commit senseless murders.
    What could this 1940s novel by Camus possibly have to do with a woman shopper at Whole Foods?
    “Dr. Judd,” Conklin said. “You said there was a murder?”
    “This woman I described went to the frozen-foods section, and I was going there myself to get a spinach soufflé. She reached into the case and pulled out a pint of chocolate chip ice cream. She was turning back when three muffled shots rang out. She was hit in the back first, then she whipped around and was hit twice more in the chest. She was dead by the time she hit the floor.”
    “Did you call the police?”
    “No. I didn’t think to do it until now.”
    “Did you see the shooter?”
    “I did not.”
    “Were there any other witnesses?”
    “I honestly don’t know,” Judd said.
    Conklin was a patient guy, but there were eleven open case files on his desk, all of them pressing, and Perry Judd was a waste of time.
    Conklin said to the professor, “You said you teach writing. You’re also a creative writer, right?”
    “I write poetry.”
    “Okay. So I have to ask you—no offense—but did this murder actually happen? Because we have had no reports of any kind of homicide at any supermarket last night.”
    “I thought I had said I dreamed it last night. It hasn’t happened
yet
,” said Perry Judd. “But it
will
happen. Have you read
Nausea
by Jean-Paul Sartre?”
    Conklin tossed his pen onto the table, pushed back his chair, and stood up.
    He said, “Thanks for your time, Professor. We’ll call you if we need to talk with you again.”
    There was a knock on the mirrored glass.
    Conklin got up, stepped outside the room.
    MacKenzie Morales, the squad’s extremely attractive summer intern, looked up at him and said, “Rich, could I talk to Dr. Judd for a minute? I think I can get to the bottom of this.”

Chapter 9
    MACKENZIE MORALES, A.K.A. Mackie, was twenty-six, the single mother of a three-year-old boy. More to the point, she was smart, going for her PhD in psychology. She was working in the homicide squad for no pay, but she was getting credit and doing research for her dissertation on criminal psychopathy.
    Conklin was finished with Perry Judd, but what the hell. If Morales wanted a shot at making sense out of crap, okay—even though it was still a waste of time.
    Morales took a chair next to Dr. Judd and introduced herself as Homicide’s special assistant without saying she was answering phones and making Xerox copies. She shook Judd’s hand.
    “Do I know you?” Professor Judd asked Morales.
    “Very doubtful. I was going through the hallway,” she said, pointing to the glass, “and I heard you mention Sartre’s novel—”
    “
Nausea.
”
    “Oh, my God, I love that book,” Morales said. “I’m a psych