The Cold Moon

good. And you might not like it when you find it. But it’s there.”
    “How do I find it? Interrogate myself?”
    “You know, that’s a great way to put it. Sure, what you do is look for the same things I look for: anger, depression, denial, excuses, rationalization. When do you feel that way and why? What’s behind this feeling or that one? And don’t let yourself get away with anything. Keep at it. You’ll find out what you really want.”
    Lucy Richter leaned forward and hugged Dance—something very few subjects ever did.
    The soldier smiled. “Hey, got an idea. Let’s write a self-help book. The Girl’s Guide to Self-Interrogation. It’ll be a best seller.”
    “In all our free time.” Dance laughed.
    They tapped the water bottles together with a ring.
    Fifteen minutes later they were halfway through the blueberry muffins and coffee that they’d ordered from room service when the agent’s mobile phone chirped. She looked at the number on caller ID. Kathryn Dance shook her head and gave a laugh.

    The doorbell of Rhyme’s town house rang. Thom arrived in the lab a moment later, accompanying Kathryn Dance. Her hair was loose, not in the taut braid of earlier, and the iPod headsets dangled around her neck. She took off a thin overcoat and greeted Sachs and Mel Cooper, who’d just arrived.
    Dance bent down and petted Jackson, the dog.
    Thom said, “Hmm, how’d you like a going-away present?” Nodding at the Havanese.
    She laughed. “He’s adorable but I’m about at my livestock limit at home—both the two- and four-legged variety.”
    It had been Rhyme on the phone, asking her, please, could she help them out once more?
    “I promise it’s the last time,” he now said as she sat beside him.
    She asked, “So what’s up?”
    “There’s a glitch in the case. And I need your help.”
    “What can I do?”
    “I remember you told me about the Hanson case in California—looking over the transcript of his statement gave you some insights into what he was up to.”
    She nodded.
    “I’d like you to do the same thing for us.”
    Rhyme now explained to her about the murder of Gerald Duncan’s friend, Andrew Culbert, which set Duncan on the path of bringing down Baker and Wallace.
    “But we found some curious things in the file. Culbert had a PDA but no cell phone. That was odd. Everybody in business nowadays has a cell phone. And he had a pad of paper with two notes on it. One was ‘Chardonnay.’ Which might mean that he’d written it to remind himself to buy some wine. But the other was ‘Men’s room.’ Why would somebody write that? I thought about it for a bit and it occurred to me that it was the sort of thing that somebody’d write if they had a speech or hearing problem. Ordering wine in a restaurant, then asking where the rest rooms were. And no cell phone, either. I wondered if maybe he was deaf.”
    “So,” Dance said, “Duncan’s friend was killed because the mugger lost his temper when the victim couldn’t understand him or didn’t hand over the wallet fast enough. He thought that Baker killed his friend but it was just a coincidence.”
    Sachs said, “It gets trickier.”
    Rhyme said, “I tracked down Culbert’s widow in Duluth. She told me he’d been deaf and mute since birth.”
    Sachs added, “But Duncan said that Culbert had saved his life in the army. If he was deaf he wouldn’t’ve been in the service.”
    Rhyme said, “I think Duncan just read about a mugging victim and claimed he was his friend—to give some credibility to his plan to implicate Baker.” The criminalist shrugged. “It might not be a problem. After all, we collared a corrupt cop. But it leaves a few questions. Can you look at Duncan’s interview tape and tell us what you think?”
    “Of course.”
    Cooper typed on his keyboard.
    A moment later a wide-angle video of Gerald Duncan came on the monitor. He was sitting comfortably in an interview room downtown as Lon Sellitto’s voice was giving the details: who he was, the date and the case. Then the statement proper began. Duncan recited essentially the same facts that he’d told Rhyme while sitting on the curb outside the last “serial killer” scene.
    Dance watched, nodding slowly as she listened to the details of his plan.
    When it was finished Cooper hit PAUSE , freeze-framing Duncan’s face.
    Dance turned to Rhyme. “That’s all of it?”
    “Yes.” He noticed her face had gone still. The criminalist asked, “What do you