In Death 17 - Imitation in Death

observant guy like you, you'd pick up on nuances, on habits, on what people think, how they behave, what they do."
     
     
"Right again."
     
     
"So, being so observant, so in tune with human nature and behavior, you wouldn't have missed the fact that your wife's out having chick sex while you're at home playing horsey with your kid."
     
     
That wiped the smug look off his face as if she'd hit a delete button. What replaced it was the shock that turned the skin shiny white before the heat of humiliation and rage bloomed.
     
     
"You've got no right to say something like that."
     
     
"Come on, Tom, your amazing powers of observation haven't failed you inside your own little castle where a man is king. You know what she's been up to. Or maybe I should say down on."
     
     
"Shut up. "
     
     
"It's gotta be a pisser, doesn't it?" shaking her head, Eve rose, strolled around the table to lean over his shoulder, to speak directly in his ear. "She doesn't even have the courtesy.. to fuck another guy while you're home playing mommy. What does that say about you, Tom? The sex was so boring she decided to see what it was like in the other end of the pool? Doesn't say much for your equipment; does it?"
     
     
"I said shut up! I don't have to listen to this kind of crap."
     
     
Fists balled, he pushed up from the chair. Eve shoved him down again. "Yeah, you do. Your wife wasn't at a meeting the night Jacie Wooton was slaughtered. She was with her lover, her female lover. You know that, don't you, Tom? You know she's been sneaking off, cheating on you for nearly two years. How do you feel about that, Tom? How does it feel to know she wants another woman, loves another woman, gives herself to another woman while you're raising the son you made together, keeping the house together, being more of a wife than she ever was?"
     
     
"Bitch." He covered his face with his hands. "Goddamn bitch."
     
     
"I've got to have some sympathy for you, Tom. Here you are, doing it all. The house, the kid, the career. An important career, too. You're somebody. But you go the professional father route, and that's admirable. While she spends her day in a big office, having meetings about clothes, for Christ's sake."
     
     
Eve gave a hefty sigh, slowly shook her head. "About. what people are going to wear. And that's more important to her than her family. She ignores you and the kid. Your mother did the same. But Jule, she takes it another step. Lying, cheating, whoring herself with another woman instead of standing up and being a wife, being a mother."
     
     
"Shut up. Can't you just shut up?
     
     
"You want to punish her for that, Tom, who could blame you? You want to get some of your own back, who the hell wouldn't? It eats at you.. Day after day, night after night. Makes: you a little crazy. Women, they're just no damn good, are they?"
     
     
She sat on the edge of the table, close, pushing into his space, knowing he could feel her pushing, even as she felt him vibrating.
     
     
"She looks me right in the eyes and lies. I love her. I hate her for that, hate her because I still love her. She doesn't think about us. She puts that woman ahead of us, and I hate her for it."
     
     
"You knew she wasn't at a meeting. Did you stew about that while she was gone? And she came home, and went up to bed. Tired, too tired to be with you because she'd been with another woman. Did you wait until she was upstairs, settled in, before you left the house? Did you take your tools down to Chinatown, imagine yourself as Jack the Ripper? Powerful and terrifying and beyond the law? Did you see your wife's face when you cut Jacie Wooton's throat?" "I didn't leave the house. ".
     
     
"She wouldn't know if you went out. She doesn't pay any attention to you. She doesn't care enough."
     
     
She saw- him flinch when she said it, watched his shoulders hunch as if bracing for hammering blows. "How many times did you go down to Chinatown before you did Jacie in that alley, Tom? A guy like you does his research. How many trips did it take over there to scope out the whores and junkies?"
     
     
"I don't go to Chinatown."
     
     
"Never been to Chinatown? A native New Yorker?"
     
     
"I've been there. Of course, I've been there." He was starting to sweat now, and the cockiness had been replaced by shaky nerves. "I mean I don't go there for... I don't use LCs."
     
     
"Tom, Tom." Eve clucked her tongue and sat across from him again. There was a pleasant