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That’s what
I’m trying to say.”
    “Clueless how?”
    “The guy’s stuck inside
his own world.  He has no idea how the rest of us see him.”
    “The rest of us?”
    “Humanity.”
    “And how are you aware
of this?  You indicated in your report, and here, verbally, that you didn’t
have a relationship with him.”
    “I didn’t, not then,
anyway.  That’s what I’m trying to tell you.  But as I stated, he’d call me at
least once a day.  And if I was—I hate to say it this way—if I wasn’t occupied
at the time, I’d let him talk.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Meaning…slow day.  No
speeders, no domestics to respond to.  Just whenever the stars aligned to keep
things quiet.  Like I said, he was— is —harmless.  After a while, it sort
of became, I don’t know, entertaining to listen to him.  Sort of like how my
four-year-old nephew tells these really tall tales about how he gets into
fights with aliens and dinosaurs in his yard.  You know not a single word of
it’s true, but it’s fun to listen because he tells it with such enthusiasm.”
    “Are you insinuating
that Mr. Pendragon was lying?”
    “What would he be lying
about?  The fact that he’s an oblivious jerk?  I mean, mostly oblivious.”
    “Noted.  What would he
discuss with you?”
    “I’d like to make it
clear that we never had discussions .  Mr. Pendragon talked, I listened. 
That said, he claimed he was worried about Mrs. Parker—Miss Oliver—the victim. 
But he had a huge crush on her, and from the way it sounded, he was jealous
that somebody else already had the territory marked.  He’d talk about his wife
and how she’d somehow driven him to cheating on her.  Eleven times . 
That’s not a one-off.  That’s serial infidelity.  He’d talk about his boss and
how he got fired for sleeping with the man’s wife.  Nothing was ever his
fault.  And the craziest thing?  The guy was nuts over how the mail worked.  I
kid you not, Steve talked about how amazing the post office was for over an
hour one day.  He seems like the kind of guy that everybody loves to hate, but
inside his head, everybody adores him.”
    “Steve?  You’re on a
first name basis?”
    “No, that was—that was
a slipup.  Mr. Pendragon.  My apologies.”
    “No apology necessary. 
We’re simply trying to confirm that your association with Mr. Pendragon didn’t
cloud your judgment.  Dereliction of duty is a severe offense.”
    “ That’s what
this is about?  God, I should’ve known better when you guys showed up.  Here’s
the thing, sir , if helping a guy solve a murder is dereliction of duty,
then somebody has their priorities out of whack.  Here, you can have my badge
and gun if that’s the case.” 
    “We’ll discuss your
future in a bit, don’t worry.  Now that we’ve established a background, what
we’d like to hear is a complete recount of the events following the murder up
until yesterday evening.”
    “What do you want to
know?”
    “What were you and Mr.
Pendragon doing while Detectives Schott and Berger were investigating the
case?”
    “Solving the damn
thing, that’s what we were doing.”
    “And what did you
find?  Details, please.”
    “I guess your question
should be, what didn’t we find?”

CHAPTER 5
    Okay, now, I know this
sounds clichéd and deplorable, but when I walked into Kerry’s bedroom, I had
this miniscule moment of some imaginary choir of angels singing.
    The kind of voice-over
reaction you hear when something amazing happens in an old television show. 
Some low-budget train wreck of a sitcom that you somehow find yourself watching
at four in the morning, in an equally shitty hotel room full of its own sense
of train wreckitude after your wife kicks you out of the house.
    I offered to serve out
my sentence on the couch, but Shayna declined.  Apparently my perfectly
acceptable solution didn’t provide her with enough distance .  The mere
separation by levels wasn’t enough.  Miles