X (Kinsey Millhone 24)

“How long did you date him?”

“A year and a half. The first six months were great, then things started to get weird. Ned’s a photography buff, so he wanted to take pictures of me, which doesn’t sound bad on the face of it, but believe me, there was some kind of pathology at work. He insisted I wear this special outfit, along with a wig and makeup. I could see what he was up to: turning me into someone else. I’m just not sure who. He also had sliiightly kinky taste when it came to sex.”

“Oh please, no details,” I said in haste. “Had to be about control, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely. And that was just the beginning. He became obsessed with what I did and who I saw and whether I talked to friends about him, which I didn’t. I didn’t dare. He checked phone bills and read my mail. If I mentioned someone else at work—male or female—he was all over it. ‘What did you talk about?’ ‘How much time did you spend?’ ‘If everything was so innocent, why wasn’t I included?’ On and on it went.

“He’s the master of escalation. Any protest I made, any step I took to protect myself, he upped the ante. At one point I got a temporary restraining order, and you know what he did? He called the police and claimed I’d thrown a pipe wrench that hit him in the head. He was bloody and he had a knot the size of my fist, but he did it to himself.”

“The police actually showed up?”

“Of course. I was arrested and put in handcuffs. I spent eight hours in jail until I got someone to post bail. After that, at the slightest provocation, he’d threaten me with the cops.”

“And you were still working with him?”

“Uh, no. What happened was I went to my boss and told him what was going on. I got fired. Ned got promoted.”

“Can we talk about the settlement? I don’t mean to put you in an awkward position.”

She dismissed that. “Not a problem. Honestly. I’ve thought about it and I can’t see that I’d be in jeopardy even if you broadcast details, which I don’t think you’d do. At the time, Ned scared the shit out of me, but I see now he was more frightened of me than I was of him. The settlement was seventy-five.”

“Thousand?” I asked in disbelief.

She nodded.

I said, “Oh, man. That’s not good. If you’d told me five grand, I’d have said it was a token payment, Ned trying to get you out of his hair. Seventy-five thousand sounds like a payoff motivated by guilt. He must have thought you had him by the short hairs, or why cough up that much?”

“Not my attorney’s response. He told me it was a good deal. More than I’d have gotten from a jury even if they’d sided with me, which he didn’t think they would. He urged me to take it.”

“I’ll bet he did. He wanted to make sure you could pay his bill, which must have been substantial.”

“He took fifteen thousand off the top.”

“How does Pete fit into this? You said he showed up a year ago.”

“He came to apologize.”

The four words were not what I’d expected. “Apologize? For what?”

“You won’t believe it.”

“Try me.”

“Okay, so here it is: Pete told me Morley Shine got drunk one night and admitted he’d broken into my psychiatrist’s office. That’s how he got the information. He photocopied my file and turned everything over to Ned’s attorney. Of course it was illegal, immoral, and unethical, but what good did that do me? Pete had felt guilty about it for years and he wanted to set the record straight.”

“Too little too late, wasn’t it?”

“Not at all. In a weird way, it helped. I felt vindicated. In some sense of the word Ned ‘won,’ but only by playing dirty.”

“Would have been nice if Pete had spoken up back then.”

“Oh, he did. That’s the point. He went to Ben Byrd and told him what Morley had done. Ben confronted Morley and they had a knock-down, drag-out fight. After that, I gather Ben never spoke to Morley again.”

I closed my eyes and lowered my head. “That’s why the partnership broke up.”

“Basically, yes. Morley blamed Pete for blowing the whistle on him, and I guess Ben blamed him, too, even though Morley was the guilty party. In the end, Pete was left out in the cold. Any work he did afterward was strictly catch-as-catch-can.”

I sat, pondering what I already knew in light of this new information. “So what’s the list of women’s names about?”