T Is for Trespass

room and he saw his chance.”
    “Not to be dense about it, but why would he do that?”
    “He had liability insurance, but no collision coverage. They’d dropped their home-owner’s policy because they couldn’t afford the premiums. No catastrophic medical, no long-term disability. They were totally exposed.”
    “So he deliberately rammed into Lisa Ray’s car? That’s risky, isn’t it? What if Lisa had been killed? For that matter, what if his wife had been killed?”
    “He wouldn’t have been any worse off. Might have been better for him actually. He could have sued for wrongful death or negligent homicide, half a dozen things. The point was to blame someone else and collect the dough instead of having to pay it out. He’d been badly injured himself and a jury awarded him $680,000. They’ve probably pissed it all away.”
    “Jesus, that’s cold. What kind of guy is he?”
    “Try desperate. Hetty Buckwald went after Brannigan tooth and nail and couldn’t get him to back down. Lowell said it was all he could do not to bust out laughing. He thinks this is big. Huge. We just have to figure out what it means.”
    “I’ll go up there again. Maybe the neighbors know something we don’t.”
    “Let’s hope.”

    I returned to the Fredricksons’ neighborhood and started with the two neighbors directly across the street. Their knowledge, if any, probably wouldn’t come to much, but at least I could rule them out. At the first house, the middle-aged woman who answered the door was pleasant but professed to know nothing about the Fredricksons. When I explained the situation, she said she’d moved in six months before and preferred to keep her distance from her neighbors. “That way, if I have a problem with any one of them, I can complain without worrying about someone’s feelings being hurt,” she said. “I tend to my affairs and expect them to tend to theirs.”
    “Well, I can see your point. I’ve had good luck with my neighbors until recently.”
    “When neighbors turn on you, there’s nothing worse. Your home is supposed to be a refuge, not a fortified encampment in a war zone.”
    Amen, I thought. I gave her my card and asked her to call me if she heard anything. “Don’t count on it,” she said, as she closed the door.
    I went down her walkway and up the walk leading to the house next door. This time the occupant was a man in his late twenties, thin face, glasses, underslung jaw with a tiny goatee meant to give definition to his weak chin. He wore loose jeans and a T-shirt with horizontal stripes of the sort a mother would select.
    “Kinsey Millhone,” I said, holding out my hand.
    “Julian Frisch. You selling something? Avon, Fuller Brush?”
    “I don’t think they sell door-to-door these days.” Again, I explained who I was and my fact-finding mission with regard to the Fredricksons. “Are you acquainted with them?”
    “Sure. She does my books. You want to come in?”
    “I’d like that.”
    His living room looked like a display for computer sales and service. Some of the equipment I could identify on sight—keyboards and the monitors that looked like clunky television screens. There were eight computers set up, with tangled cables that snaked across the floor connecting them. In addition, there were sealed cartons I assumed contained brand-new computers. The few cranky-looking models sitting in one corner might have come in for repair. I’d heard the terms “floppy disk” and “boot up” but I didn’t have a clue what they meant.
    “I take it you sell or repair computers.”
    “Little bit of both. What do you have?”
    “A portable Smith-Corona.”
    He half-smiled, as if I were making a joke, and then he wagged a finger at me. “Better catch up with reality. You’re missing the boat. Time’s going to come when computers will do everything.”
    “I have trouble believing that. It just seems so unlikely .”
    “You’re not a believer like the rest of us. The day will come when ten-year-olds will master these machines and you’ll be at their mercy.”
    “That’s a depressing thought.”
    “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. At any rate, that’s probably not why you knocked on my door.”
    “True enough,” I said. I redirected my attention and went through my introduction, which I’d just about perfected by then, wrapping up with a reference to the two-car collision on May 28 of the year before. “How long has Gladys Fredrickson handled your