Charlie had appeared to understand my frustration with Lingo. Though I had, indeed, been venting, he hadn’t treated me like a sleep-deprived toddler.

Our dialogue had been strictly present tense. No mention of past marriages, lost loves, murdered spouses. No discussion of the years between the Skylark and now.

I remembered the wedding picture. Charlie’s expression. What was it I’d seen in his eyes? Resentment? Guilt? Grief for a woman blown up by fanatics?

Not that I wanted to share secrets with Charlie Hunt. I hadn’t mentioned Pete and his twenty-something fiancée, Summer. Or Ryan and his long-ago lover and damaged daughter. Ours had been a mutual, unspoken complicity, both dancing around the edges of our respective pasts. It was better that way.

Ryan.

I hadn’t expected Ryan to call. Yet, arriving home, I’d felt hope on seeing the pulsing red beacon.

Three voice-mail messages. Katy. Pete. Hang-up.

My daughter wanted to discuss Saturday’s shopping excursion. Sure she did.

My estranged husband hoped to arrange a dinner for me to meet Summer. That was as likely as pork chops on Shabbat.

The blades twirled crazily.

Ryan.

Was he happy reunited with Lutetia? Was it really over between us? Did I care?

Easy one.

Should I care?

Pete.

Don’t go there.

Charlie.

Enough.

The Lake Wylie corpse.

What had bothered me about the body? The paucity of maggots, given Funderburke’s statement? The absence of smell or signs of scavenging? The missing head? The symbols carved into the flesh?

Duh, yeah.

Was the Lake Wylie case somehow tied to the Greenleaf cellar? If so, how? The former suggested Satanism. The latter looked like Santería or a variant such as Palo Mayombe.

What had happened to the Lake Wylie kid’s head?

Sudden image. The hunk of brain buried in the cellar cauldron.

Was it human? Note: Ask Larabee.

My pessimist brain cells threw out a thought.

Mark Kilroy’s brain was found floating in a cauldron.

Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo and his followers were an aberration of Palo Mayombe. They were not Satanists.

Kenneth Roseboro.

Was Roseboro being truthful about the house on Greenleaf? His tenant? Where was T-Bird Cuervo?

Cuervo. Wasn’t that Spanish for “crow”? Thomas Crow. T-Bird. Cute.

What story would Roseboro tell in the morning?

The mutilated kid at Lake Wylie.

The cauldron bones.

The school portrait.

Boyce Lingo.

Charlie Hunt.

Pete’s nuptials.

Ryan’s détente with Lutetia.

And on.

And on.

Jumbled images. Confused musings.

But not as confused as they were about to become.

14

THE CMPD IS HEADQUARTERED IN THE LAW ENFORCEMENT Center, a geometric hunk of concrete looming over the corner of Fourth and McDowell. Across the intersection is the new Mecklenburg County Courthouse, site of Boyce Lingo’s most recent performance.

All detective units are on the second floor at Law Enforcement. At 8:00 A.M. I presented ID, passed security, and rode the elevator ass to elbow with cops and civilians gripping cups from Starbucks and Caribou Coffee. Conversations centered on the upcoming long weekend.

Columbus Day. I’d totally forgotten that Monday was a holiday.

No picnic or barbecue for you. Loser.

Kenneth Roseboro presented himself ninety minutes later than Slidell had ordered. His tardiness did not put Skinny in the best of moods.

Nor did the sludge that passed as coffee in the homicide squad room. While waiting, Slidell and I knocked back a full pot. Rinaldi was out showing the cauldron portrait to school photographers, so I was on my own with his partner’s bad humor.

This did not put me in the best of moods.

Slidell’s desk phone finally rang at 9:37. Roseboro was in interrogation room three. The sound and video systems were up and running.

Before entering, Slidell and I paused to view Wanda Horne’s nephew through a one-way mirror.

Roseboro was seated, sandaled feet jiggling, spidery fingers interlaced on the tabletop. He was maybe five-two, a hundred and twenty pounds, with an oddly elongated head that balanced on his neck like a budgie on a perch.

“Nice hair,” Slidell snorted.

Roseboro’s scalp was looped by concentric circles of ridges and furrows.

“He’s got a three-sixty wave,” I said. “Like Nelly.”

Slidell looked at me blankly.

“The rapper.”

The look did not change.

“Jaunty shirt,” I segued. It was lime and large enough to shelter a racehorse.

“Aloha.” Slidell hiked his pants. The belt settled above a roll that masqueraded as his waist. “Let’s sweat this prick.”

Roseboro started to rise when we entered the room.

“Sit,” Slidell barked.

Roseboro folded.

“Glad you could make it, Kenny.”

“Traffic was heavy.”

“Shoulda set out earlier.” Slidell regarded Roseboro as he though he were scum in a drain.

“I didn’t have to come here at all.” Roseboro’s tone fell somewhere between sulky and bored.

“You’ve got a point there.” Slapping a folder onto the table, Slidell dropped into a chair opposite his interviewee. “But an upstanding citizen like you, what’s a little personal inconvenience, right?”

Roseboro shrugged one bony shoulder.

I seated myself next to Slidell.

Roseboro’s eyes slid to me. “Who’s the chick?”

“The doctor helped me clean out your cellar, Kenny. You got something to say about that?”

“How much I owe you?” Smirking.

“You think this is funny?”

Again, the shoulder hitch.

Slidell turned to me. “You hear something funny?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“I didn’t hear nothing funny.” Slidell refocused on Roseboro. “You’ve got problems, Kenny.”

“Everyone’s got problems.” Nonchalant.

“Everyone don’t have a little palace on Greenleaf.”

“I told you. I haven’t been in that house since I was nine years old. Blew my mind when the old lady left it to me.”

“Auntie’s favorite nephew.”

“Auntie’s only nephew.” Still unconcerned.

“No kids of her own?”

“One. Archie.”

“And Archie would be where these days?” Slidell kept his voice set on scornful.

“Cemetery.”

“That’s amazing. I ask where’s Archie, you come back with cemetery. A sidesplitter, right off your head.” Again, Slidell turned to me. “Isn’t he something? Firing off one-liners, just like that?”

“Hilarious,” I agreed.

“Archie died in a wreck when he was sixteen.”

“Condolences for your loss. Let’s talk about the cellar.”

“Best I can remember, there were spiders, rats, rusty old tools, and a shitload of mold.” Roseboro snapped a finger, as though in sudden understanding. “That’s it. You’re busting me for failure to maintain safe housing for my pets. Animal endangerment, right?”

“You really are a scream, Kenny-boy. Bet you’re hoping to make the comedy channel.” Another Slidell lob to me. “What do you think? We’ll be surfing one night, there’ll be Kenny with a mike in one hand?”

“Seinfeld got his start doing stand-up.”

“Only one problem.” Slidell drilled Roseboro with a look that said he was far from amused. “You ain’t going to be standing up, or walking out, or going nowhere, you don’t start making a little effort here, asshole.”

Roseboro’s face showed only indifference.

“Chateau Greenleaf?” Slidell clicked a ballpoint to readiness over a yellow legal pad.

“As far as I know the cellar was used as a laundry and pantry. And I think there was a workshop down there.”

“Wrong answer.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, man.”

“I’m talking about murder, you dumb fuck.”

Roseboro’s apathy showed its first fault line.

“What?”

“Give it up, Kenny. Maybe you skate on freedom of religion.”