The Alibi

“I can’t tell you.”

“Was it provoking?”

“Do you mean did it make him angry?”

“Did it?”

“If it did, he didn’t show it.”

“It didn’t make him upset to the point of causing a stroke?”

“No. Not in the slightest.”

“Did he seem nervous?”

She smiled at that. “Mr. Pettijohn didn’t strike me as a person who would get nervous easily. Nothing I’ve read about him suggests that he was timid.”

“Was he basically friendly toward you?”

“Polite. I wouldn’t go so far as to say friendly. We were strangers.”

“Polite.” Smilow pondered that. “Did he play host? For instance, did he offer you a seat?”

“Yes, but I remained standing.”

“Why?”

“Because I knew I wouldn’t be there long, and I preferred standing to sitting.”

“Did he offer you a drink?”

“No.”

“Sex?”

Everyone in the room reacted to the unheralded question, but none more violently than Hammond. He jumped as though the wall he had been leaning against had bit him. “What the hell?” he exclaimed. “Where’d that come from?”

Smilow switched off the microphone, then turned toward Hammond. “Butt out. This is my interrogation.”

“The question was inappropriate, and you damn well know it.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Frank Perkins said, his anger almost matching Hammond’s. “Your investigation has turned up nothing to indicate that Pettijohn had a sexual encounter that afternoon.”

“Not in the bed in the hotel suite. That doesn’t preclude all sexual activity. Oral sex, for instance.”

“Smilow—”

“Did you perform oral sex on Mr. Pettijohn, Dr. Ladd? Or he on you?”

Hammond lunged across the crowded room and shoved him hard. “You son of a bitch.”

“Get your goddamn hands off me,” Smilow said, shoving him back.

“Hammond! Smilow!” Steffi tried to step between them and got knocked aside for her efforts.

Frank Perkins was beside himself. “This is outrageous.”

“That was a cheap shot, Smilow!” Hammond shouted. “Even you’ve never stooped that low. If you’re going to take potshots like that, at least have the guts to keep the tape recorder on.”