“Your plan, not his.”

“He would’ve been into it!”

The detectives remained in their seats. Tristan glared down at them.

Lamar said, “Sit back down, son.”

“Stop calling me that!”

Lamar rose to his full height. Tristan was unused to looking up at anyone. He flinched.

“Please sit down, Tristan.”

The boy obeyed. “I’m really a suspect?”

“You’re what we call a person of interest.”

“That’s crazy. Fucking crazy. Why would I kill someone I loved?”

Baker said, “Maybe he changed his mind about singing your song.”

“He didn’t,” said Tristan. “But even if he did, that’s no reason to kill someone.”

“People get killed for all sorts of reasons.”

“Not by sane people- anyway, it never happened, he loved my songs. Read my e-mails, everything’s positive, everything’s cool- my laptop’s in the back of my car, it’s out of power but you can recharge it. My passwords DDPOET. Short for Dead Poet.”

“We’ll do that,” said Baker. “But no matter what your e-mail says, it doesn’t mean that Jack didn’t change his mind and decide not to sing your song.”

Lamar said, “People change their mind all the time. And Jack was real moody.”

“He wasn’t moody with me,” said Tristan. “I was important to him. Not like the others.”

“What others?”

“All those loser trailer trash women claiming they had his kids, sending him pictures of their loser kids. And stuff- songs, CDs he never listened to. I was the only one he was sure of. Because he liked my songs and because he remembered the exact day it happened.”

“The day you were conceived?” Baker asked.

“He told you about it?” Lamar questioned.

“It’s in one of the e-mails- if you ever get around to reading the computer. He even forwarded an e-mail she wrote him five years ago, when he was thinking of coming out to see me. She told him that she didn’t want to risk losing Lloyd and that I would never accept him because I was close to Lloyd. That unless he wanted to destroy her and me and everything she’d built with Lloyd, he needed to stay away. And he agreed. For my sake. It’s all in there. And he saved it for years.”

Lamar said, “Mom didn’t want to risk losing Lloyd.”

The kid smirked again. “Didn’t want to risk what Lloyd gave her. Eleventh commandment.”

“Jack had money, too,” said Baker.

“Not as much as Lloyd. Money has always been her first and only love.”

“You have strong feelings about your mama.”

“I love her,” said Tristan, “but I know what she is. You need to talk to her. I’ll give you her number in Kentucky. I know she’s there, even though she didn’t tell me she was headed there.”

“How would you know?”

“She always goes to the horses when she’s disgusted with me. Horses don’t talk back and if you put the time into them, you can eventually break ’em.”

They retrieved an IBM ThinkPad from the backseat of the VW, booted it up, spent an hour with Tristan’s old mail and sent mail. A tech ran a basic scan of the boy’s Internet history.

“Weird,” said the tech.

“What is?”

“Just music stuff- downloads, articles, tons of it. No porn at all. This must be the first teenage boy in the history of the cyber-age who doesn’t use his laptop as a stroke-book.”

Lamar snickered. “We know what you do at night, Wally.”

“It keeps me busy and I don’t have to brush my teeth beforehand.”

The mail between Jack Jeffries and Tristan backed up the boy’s story. There was at least a half year of correspondence transitioning from initial reserve on both their parts, to amiability to warmth to professions of father-son love.

Nothing smarmy or sexual, the letters could’ve been how-to-communicate instructional tools from Dr. Phil, or one of those other preachers with doctorates.

Jack Jeffries praised some of his son’s lyrics, but he never gushed. Criticism of weaker songs was tactful but frank, and Tristan reacted to every received comment with lamblike gratitude.

No indication Jack had ever changed his mind about “Music City Breakdown.”

They spent another hour phoning the new hi-tech penitentiary and finding out the names of the trustees who tended the old prison grounds. Two of the inmates remembered seeing the green VW atop the hill just before water break, and one recalled waving to a distant figure standing near the car.

None of which provided an airtight alibi; the murder had taken place before that, when Tristan Poulson claimed to be working on his song and sleeping and surfing the Internet. No doubt Amelia, the maid, would back him up.

Even without backup, the detectives were starting to doubt Tristan as a prime suspect. The boy had plenty of time to develop a real alibi, but hadn’t bothered. There had been an openness to Tristan’s manner, despite all he’d gone through. If either man had been able to admit it, they would have called it touching.

And as far as the detective could tell, the boy hadn’t lied.

As opposed to his mother.

Baker and Lamar agreed that Tristan’s theory about her was intriguing.

Repeated calls to Al Sus Jahara Arabian Farms were met by a recorded message so brief it bordered on unfriendly.

Lamar Googled the place. It had a thousand acres of rolling hills and big trees and gorgeous horses. Champion bloodlines, big antebellum mansion, paddocks, stables, stud service, cryogenic semen storage, the works. A place that hoo-hah, one would think there’d be a person at the other end, not voice mail.

Unless someone was in hiding.

By day’s end, and after reviewing the situation with Fondebernardi and Jones, they decided Cathy Poulson had grown to the status of “serious suspect,” but they had no easy way to get evidence on her.

Before they went about digging around in Belle Meade social circles, they decided to recontact an eyewitness- of sorts. Someone who’d seen Cathy and Jack, shortly before Jack’s throat got cut.

14

The Happy Night Motel looked no better than it had in its bordello days. Gray texture-coat stucco had flaked, leaving chicken-wire lesions. The green wood trim was bilious. A couple of big rigs were parked in the cracked asphalt motor court. One filthy pickup and a primer-patched Celica made up the rest of the vehicular mix.

The night clerk was an old, crushed-faced guy named Gary Beame- flyaway white hair, grease-stained shirt, ill-fitting dentures, rheumy eyes that jumped all over the place. Maybe a barely reformed homeless guy the owners had hired on the cheap.

He made the detectives right away, rasped through cigarette smoke. “Evening, Officers. We don’t hire out to whores. Mr. Bikram’s a clean businessman.”

It sounded like a rehearsed little speech.

“Congratulations,” said Baker. “Which room is Greta Barline’s?”

Beame’s face darkened. He yanked out his cigarette, scattering ash on the Star magazine spread atop the counter. “That little- I knew she was gonna get Mr. Bikram in trouble.” Scratching the corner of his collapsed mouth, he peered at something, flicked it away. “All that dirty whorin’ and then she stiffs Mr. Bikram for a week’s worth.”

Lamar said, “She was hooking out of here?”

“Not like you’re thinking,” said Beame. “Not waltzing out to the street in them halters and hotpants.”

“Like the good old days.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Beame lied.

“So what, she’d just be here and they’d show up?”

“Who?”

“Johns.”

“I never saw no one sneak in,” said Beame, warming to his falsehood sonata. “Not on any regular schedule, anyway. I’m all alone here, cain’t be bothering to watch all the comings and goings.”