Speaking in Tongues

half hour? Believe me, Matthews killed Amy and dumped the body on my land. I saw somebody watching the house this morning.”
    “Did you report it?”
    “Well, no, I didn’t.”
    “Why not?”
    Tate remembered thinking, as he stood in the rain-swept field that morning, Hey, looks like the Dead Reb. But it wasn’t. It was Aaron Matthews, waiting until I left the house then tossing the dog a bone, planting Megan’s letters, leaving fast.
    “I just didn’t. Look, he knows I’m after him—Konnie was running a check on the Mercedes. It turned out to be his. That’s not a coincidence.”
    “How do you account for the fact that this girl was murdered with a kitchen knife that had your fingerprints on it?”
    “Because it was probably from my kitchen. Talk to Konnie about this morning. He—”
    “Detective Konstantinatis is in custody and he’s also in no shape to talk to anybody. As I’m sure you know.”
    “Beauridge, then. They were out to my house. Matthews broke in, planted some fake letters that Megan supposedly wrote and he must’ve stolen the knife at the same time. Or stolen it tonight. It’s an easy house to break into.”
    “The cause of death was shock due to blood loss after her throat was slashed and her chest and abdomen punctured thirty-two times. There was some mutilation too.”
    “Fuck of a way to kill someone,” the other detective added.
    Tate’s face grew hot. Megan’s terrified eyes were the most prominent image in his thoughts.
    “We’ve checked out your house and found you’dpacked most of your girl’s stuff away. Her bedroom looked about as personal as a storeroom.”
    “She lives with her mother.”
    “No pictures of her, no clothes, nothing personal. The impression we got was you’d been planning to say adios to Megan for some time. That’s making us wonder about this whole kidnapping story.”
    “There were some witnesses. There’s a teacher . . . Robert Eckhard. He saw—” But he stopped talking when he saw the expression on their faces.
    “You a friend of Eckhard?”
    “I don’t know him,” Tate said cautiously. “I just heard that he’d seen the car that was following Megan.”
    “Have you ever talked to him?”
    “No. I just told you—why?”
    “Robert Eckhard was arrested today on numerous counts of child pornography and endangering the welfare of minors.”
    “What?”
    “Could you describe your relationship with him?”
    “With Eckhard? There is no relationship . . . Jesus Christ. I don’t know him! Please! Just send somebody out to check out this Matthews!”
    A rhetorician never pleads. Tate’s talents were deserting him in droves. Think smarter, he raged at himself. He could talk his way out of this. He knew he could. There must be some way. What would his grandfather, the Judge, have done?
    All cats see in the dark . . .
    Midnight is a cat . . .
    “Officer,” Tate said calmly, offering a casual smile, “you’ve got nothing to lose. Absolutely nothing. I’m notgoing anywhere. If you check him out, if you send a couple officers out to his house then I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Anything. No hassle. We have a deal?”
    One of the detectives sighed. He shrugged and stepped out the door.
    Therefore Midnight sees in the dark.
    Tate pictured Megan, bound and gagged, lying somewhere in a basement. Matthews standing over her. Undressing. It was a terrible image and, once thought, wouldn’t go away.
    “Have you ever had sexual relations with Amy Walker?”
    He tamped down his anger. “I’ve never met her,” he answered.
    “Did you send your daughter off somewhere because she knew you were stalking Amy Walker? And did you fabricate a kidnapping charge?”
    “No, I didn’t do that.” Struggling now to stay calm, to stay helpful. Really struggling. He looked at the doorway through which the other cop had disappeared. Were they sending a hostage rescue team to Matthews’s house? Or just patrol officers? Matthews could trick them. He could lull them into complacency—oh, yes, he had the gift too. Tate now understood.
    You can’t negotiate with someone like Matthews. You need to act—immediately.
    The silence of the deed.
    “Did you kill Amy Walker?”
    “No, I did not.”
    “When was the last time you drove your daughter’s car?”
    “A month or so ago, I think.”
    “Is that how your fingerprints got on the door handle of her car?”
    “It would have to be.”
    “Could we run through the events