The 8th Confession (Women's Murder Club 8)

Wallis’s apartment was on the ground floor, rear.

We flicked on the ceiling lights, closed the door on Mr. Silver, and simply tossed the place. Didn’t take long.

Like a lot of ex-cons, Henry Wallis kept his furniture minimal and his few possessions neat.

Conklin took the bedroom and bath while I searched the small living room and kitchen. We called out to each other from time to time: when Conklin found the plastic-wrapped bricks of pot in the kitty-litter box and when I found a book on tattoos, corners folded down on the pages featuring snakes.

But that was it.

No old newspaper clippings, no new newspaper clippings, no shrines to himself, no trophies from rich people. And most of all no snakes.

No snake figurines, no snake artifacts, no books on snakes.

“No reptiles other than these,” I said, showing Conklin the tattoo book.

He said, “Take a look at this.”

I followed him into the bedroom and checked out his find: a drawerful of XL women’s underwear.

“Unless he had a big girlfriend, and I don’t see any pictures, cosmetics, anything that would indicate that,” Conklin said, “Henry Wallis was a cross-dresser.”

“A cross-dressing drug dealer. Kudos to Sara Needleman for dumping him. Let’s lock this joint up,” I said.

“I live only a few blocks from here,” said Rich as we closed and padlocked the door. “Come have a drink. Talk all this out.”

I said, “Thanks anyway. This has been the longest day of my life, Rich. I need to go home. Get naked. Go to bed.”

Conklin laughed. “Is that an order, Sergeant?”

I laughed along with him as I walked to my car, feeling just a little silly, thinking maybe Dr. Freud was having the real laugh.

“Okay,” I said, one hand on my door, being very careful when I stepped up on the running board. “One drink only.”

Chapter 68

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN Conklin’s place and Henry Wallis’s dump was extreme. Conklin lived on a similar block, both streets lined with unremarkable two- and three-story houses from the ’50s made of cheap and ordinary materials, but once we were inside, Conklin’s place felt lived-in and warm.

His living room was welcoming: good lighting, deep couches grouped around a fireplace, and the requisite bachelor must-have — a fifty-two-inch plasma- screen TV.

Rich stooped down near the entertainment unit, flipped through a stack of CDs, said, “Van Morrison okay with you?”

I said, “Sure,” and looked at the photos on the wall, black-and-white blowups of sailboats on the bay, their spinnakers full of summer wind, light spangling the waves, three different shots, all of them breathtaking.

“You take these, Rich?”

“ Uh-huh.”

“They’re wonderful.”

Van Morrison was singing “Brown Eyed Girl,” a tune that made me want to sing along. I smiled when Rich handed me a glass of wine, and I watched him sit down on the far end of the couch, put his feet up on a burnished hatch cover he’d turned into a coffee table.

I sipped from the frosty glass of chardonnay, kicked off my shoes, and sat on the other side of the same oversize couch. The tension left my body as the wine slid down my throat, cold and dry and good.

“See, what I’m wondering is, how could this be over?”

Conklin nodded, encouraging me to go on.

“A man is dead. There’s going to be fallout that Tracchio and Jacobi just don’t want to see. Wallis is going to have a family somewhere. There are going to be questions, and we both know, Rich, that Wallis didn’t do it. Here’s what I think happened: we just contributed to the death of a red herring.”