“Why don’t you just come out and say it, Juan? You think I killed her, no matter what I say. You think I just go around in the dead of night killing girls.”

Barbaro sat back. His horse settled but remained alert, sensing the tension. “Brody tells me this morning that I need an attorney, that he has hired one for me-Elena’s father.”

“Well, that should narrow down your chances of fucking her,” Walker said. “Too bad for you.”

“I told him no.”

“So you’ll get someone else.”

“No. I will not,” Barbaro said.

Walker digested that, looked down the field at the kids, looked back. “If the rest of us have attorneys and you don’t, that makes it look like we did something and you didn’t. The cops will think they can turn you against us.”

Barbaro said nothing.

“Can they?” Walker asked.

“I don’t want to be a part of this. It disgusts me.”

“Ha! Disgusts you? Like you haven’t done your share of partying. Jesus, you’ve screwed more women than most men ever see in their lifetime. You’ve snorted your share of blow. You never looked to me like anyone was twisting your arm.”

“No one ever died because of it,” Barbaro said.

“Look,” Walker said. “You’re a part of this. You think the cops are going to believe you’re a virgin? Take the damn lawyer. We stick together in this, everyone comes out fine.”

Barbaro rested his hands on the pommel of his saddle and sighed, looking down the field to the kids wearing helmets that seemed bigger than they were. Life was still shiny and new for them, filled with innocence and possibility.

“She was dead when I found her,” Walker said. “I don’t know what happened. I was passed out, remember?”

“You were the last man with her,” Barbaro said. “I remember that. I remember you were angry because of it. I remember Irina making fun of your pouting. I remember you didn’t take it well.”

“So that means I killed her?” Walker asked, offended but not quite able to meet Barbaro’s gaze. “She was a cunt. So what? She could suck the white off rice. That’s all I cared about. That’s all you cared about too.”

“I wasn’t with her,” Barbaro said. “You took her, and I left. Remember?”

Walker narrowed his eyes. “No. I don’t. You were there. I saw you. Everyone saw you. Do you have someone who can say you weren’t there?”

Barbaro let that one go. “Then who killed her? Everyone else had gone by then.”

“Hell if I know,” Walker said.

“Why can you not look me in the eye when you say that, friend?”

Walker didn’t answer.

“If you don’t know who killed her,” Barbaro said, “maybe it is because you don’t remember what you did. You were the last man with her, then she was dead. Maybe you don’t know you didn’t do it. Maybe you think you did. Maybe you did.”

Bennett Walker still wouldn’t look at him.

“Did you choke her during sex?” Barbaro asked. “That is a dangerous game I know you like to play. You were angry. You are always angry with women. You like to get rough-”

“So did she-”

“How do you know you didn’t kill her?”

The seconds seemed to tick past in slow motion.

Finally Walker looked at him. His eyes were flat and cold, like a shark’s.

“What difference does it make?” he said. “The girl is dead. I can’t change that. And I’m not going to prison for it.”

He turned his horse and left the field, leaving Barbaro to stand alone.

Chapter 40

I slipped inside Lisbeth’s apartment and quietly closed the door behind me. “Lisbeth?”

Nothing. Which meant I was free to violate her privacy. I didn’t go looking for anything in particular. I had learned as cop that narrowing my focus too much caused me to ignore things it might prove important later on. That was especially important as a Narcotics detective-the ability to absorb every detail around me, to be aware of everything, no matter how insignificant at a glance. That skill had saved my life more than once and saved a case many times.

Lisbeth owned the usual fashion rags, plus a couple of polo magazines-Barbaro on the cover of Sidelines-and a selection of tabloids. She drank a lot of Diet Coke, had a bowlful of hard-boiled eggs, ate a lot of tuna-solid white albacore packed in spring water. There was a bottle of Stoli in the freezer. She didn’t strike me as a vodka drinker. I pictured Lisbeth drinking a pina colada, a margarita, a drink with a cutesy name that was sweet and colorful.

Irina had been her friend, though. Irina could pound down vodka like a Russian stevedore. Maybe it was for her.

Like so many people, Lisbeth kept a collection of snapshots taped to the refrigerator door. Many looked the same as what had been on Irina’s computer and in her digital camera. Photos from parties, from polo matches, from clubs. Girlfriends, polo players- several of Barbaro, social players-Brody’s crowd.

Only a few photos of Lisbeth herself. One in shorts and T-shirt, a candid of her holding on to a polo pony by a tangle of reins. One of her in a little black dress and Dior sunglasses, looking very glam.

There was the same photo of Lisbeth and Irina sitting side by side on the poolside chaise as had been in Irina’s camera. And another of the two of them at a tailgating party.

There were several of Irina only. Irina in profile, speaking to someone out of the frame. Irina sitting at a bistro table, having a glass of wine. Irina sitting on the lap of a man whose face had been overlapped by another photo. I turned the corner up. Bennett Walker. I put the corner back down.

I stood there for another moment, thinking: Just as Irina had a few too many photographs of Bennett, Lisbeth had a few too many photographs of Irina.

“Girl crush,” Kayne Jackson had said. Hero worship. Irina had been everything Lisbeth was not-sophisticated, exotic, worldly, bold, adventurous. My eyes went from the photos of Irina to a photo of Lisbeth with Paul Kenner and Sebastian Foster, a photo of Barbaro and a couple of other players, back to the photos of Irina.

I moved on from the kitchen, down a short hall. The small bathroom was littered with wet towels. A wadded wet T-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts had been shoved into the wastebasket. They smelled of swamp and vomit.

The bedroom was a comfortable size, the walls painted lavender. The bed was a tangle of sheets. The wastebasket was full of discarded crumpled tissues. From crying, I thought. Lisbeth had lost her best friend, felt lost herself. A good bet: She was scared. She knew more than she was telling anyone. That was a big load to carry for a little girl from Nowhere, Michigan.

Along the far wall of the room stood a portable clothes rack hung with a condensed version of Irina’s designer wardrobe. Her purse sat on the dresser. Inside: her wallet, her cell phone.

Where would she have gone without her wallet? What girl her age didn’t have her cell phone Velcroed to the side of her head?

A sense of unease filled me and trickled down my spine like water. I turned to face the door.

The closet door stood slightly ajar. I pulled it open to reveal more clothes hanging on the rod and piled in a heap on the floor. And staring out at me from the corner, obscured by long hanging garments and covered by a blanket, a pair of blood-red eyes.

I jumped back with an expletive, then caught myself and tried no refocus.

“Lisbeth? Oh, my God, what happened to you?”

I shoved the hanging clothes out of the way and squatted down to meet her at eye level. She looked like something from a horror movie. The whites of her eyes were filled with blood, making the cornflower blue of the irises seem to glow. Her hair was matted in an insane tangle, studded with dead grass and dried leaf fragments. Her face was so swollen, she was all but unrecognizable.

“Lisbeth,” I said again. “Can you hear me?”