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  “It’s about the death of Elizabeth Knoebel. It’d probably be better if we have this discussion at the station house.”

  Despite Colello’s initial reaction, it was clear that this visit had not come as a complete surprise. “Do I need to call my lawyer?”

  Walker said, “That will be entirely up to you.” Then he nodded at the young officer, who quickly stepped forward and positioned himself beside his superior officer. Kovacevic took out a small card and read Thomas Colello his legal rights.

  “I understand,” Colello said when Kovacevic completed the litany. It was apparent from the look on his face that his legal rights were not his primary concern at the moment. “I’ve got to tell my wife I’m leaving.” He said it as if he was asking the two policemen for their help.

  Walker nodded his understanding. “Just tell her we’re investigating Mrs. Knoebel’s death.”

  “How the hell can I say that?”

  “Tell her we need to speak with you because you’re acquainted with Doctor Knoebel. We know you were in a therapy group together. You can tell her we’ll also be talking with her and some other people who knew the Knoebels.”

  “Is that true?”

  Walker nodded. “Afraid so.”

  “Jesus,” Colello groaned. Then he shook his head and said, “Okay,” although the expression he wore now made it clear he would rather tell his wife the bank was foreclosing on their mortgage. “I’ll need a minute, all right?”

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  When Colello disappeared inside the house, Kovacevic gave Walker a puzzled look.

  “What’s the matter, kid? You think he’s going to scoot out the back door and make a run for it?” Walker smiled. “Trust me. He’s in there giving his wife some bullshit story, maybe even telling her what I suggested. Then he’s calling his lawyer.”

  Walker was correct on both counts. After a few minutes Colello rejoined them on the front steps. He told them he would drive his own car to the police station. It would be unseemly to have his neighbors witness two cops shoving him into the back of their car and driving off with him.

  Walker looked around. There wasn’t a neighbor in sight.

  It would also be more convenient, Colello added, since he could make his own way home afterward.

  Walker gave that a skeptical look too.

  There was a third reason, Colello admitted. He had indeed phoned his lawyer, who demanded they have no further conversation with him until they all convened at the police station.

  A half hour later, in the detectives’ squad room, Walker was prepared to conduct what he regarded as a fairly polite interview, given that Colello was nominally a suspect in a murder investigation. Chief Gill was on hand, and Officer Kovacevic was operating the recorder. Colello’s lawyer, a local criminal-defense attorney named Mark Silverstein, had arrived. He and Walker were acquainted, which was the warmest possible description of their relationship. Silverstein had known Chief Gill for years, and the lawyer realized the situation had to be serious if Gill was sitting in.

  “We’re entitled to a clarification,” said the attorney. “Before we go through any preliminary matters, I would like to know if Mr. Colello is a target of your investigation.”

  “Yes, Counselor,” Walker replied. “He is.”

  “In that case, we should suspend this meeting until I’ve had a further opportunity to confer with my client.”

  “You want a few minutes to talk?” Walker asked, “is that what you’re saying?”

  Silverstein bristled. “Look, Henry,” he said, ignoring Walker and directing himself to Gill, “I don’t like the way this is being handled. Your man barges into my client’s home without a warrant, and now he wants to bulldoze us into this interrogation.” He stood up, making it clear that he and his client were ready to walk out.

  Before Gill could respond, Colello placed his hand on the lawyer’s arm. “Take it easy, Mark. We’re going to get to this eventually.” He turned to Walker. “Go ahead and ask your questions. I didn’t kill Elizabeth.”

  “All right,” Walker said, avoiding the glare directed at him from Mr. Silverstein. He figured, given Colello’s statement, the best plan was to jump right in. “You and Elizabeth Knoebel were lovers, that right?”

  “That’s right,” Colello said without hesitation. “We were.”

  Now Silverstein collapsed, rather than sat in his chair, but when he tried to protest again Colello shut him up. Walker simply ignored him.

  “How long?” the detective asked.

  “A few months. Not long.”

  “Where did you first meet her?”

  “At a bar, near my office. Lots of singles and cheater action there.”

  “Uh huh. And this was a few months ago?”

  “Right.” Colello took a deep breath. “A Wednesday night, I think. Maybe it was Thursday, I can’t remember.”

  “How many times did you see her after that?”

  “Not sure. Five times, maybe six.” He tried to sound casual about it, taking a moment to smooth back his dark hair.

  “Which was it?” Walker asked with a skeptical look. He had already concluded that an evening with Elizabeth Knoebel was not something a man was likely to forget.

  Colello and Walker stared at each other for a moment. “Six times,” Colello said. “Including that first night.”

  “Did you know who she was when you met her?”

  “You mean, did I know she was Stanley Knoebel’s wife? No, of course not.”

  “What do you mean, ‘of course not’?”

  Colello rolled that one over once or twice before answering. “Knoebel was in my marriage counseling group. If I knew she was the guy’s wife, I wouldn’t have made a play. It wouldn’t be my style, you know?”

  “I think I know,” Walker replied amiably. “But at some point you did learn she was Knoebel’s wife, right?”

  Colello nodded.

  “When?”

  “I think it was the fourth time we were together.” When Walker responded with another dubious look, Colello said, “The fourth time.”

  “Uh huh. And where were you together?”

  Silverstein didn’t care much for Walker’s tone and said so, but his client talked right through the interruption. “We arranged to meet in that same bar the first couple of times. From there we’d go to a motel.” He paused, then added, “It didn’t start off as an affair of the heart, if you catch my drift.”

  Silverstein tried to stop their colloquy again. “Just hold on, Detective Walker.” Turning to his client he asked, “Don’t you think we should talk this over?”

  Colello said, “We already talked it over, Mark,” the admission in front of the police only further infuriating his counsel. “I didn’t kill the woman, but they already knew I was seeing her. Isn’t that right, Detective?”

  “That’s the information we have,” Walker agreed pleasantly.

  “Who gave you the information?” Colello wondered.

  Walker smiled. “You save your questions for the end. I’ll do the asking for now, okay?” He looked from Colello to his lawyer, then back to the suspect. “So Mr. Colello, at some point you did learn that she was married to Stanley Knoebel, correct?”

  “Right.”

  “A man you knew from your group therapy.”

  “Right.”

  “And by then you also knew Elizabeth Knoebel was in your wife’s therapy group, correct?”

  “Yeah. At that point I knew exactly who she was.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  Colello chewed at his lower lip for a moment. “She told me.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “She spelled the whole thing out. Said she knew who I was, right from jump street. She came looking for me, or at least that’s how I had it figured by then. Said the things my wife told them about me in their group made me sound interesting.” Colello gave them a nervous imitati
on of a smile. “She said I sounded interesting, can you imagine? Meanwhile, Fran would come home and tell me about this bitch in her group that she hated.” He looked slightly embarrassed about mentioning his wife. “You don’t need all the details, do you?”

  “Details are helpful.”

  “Elizabeth handed me all this crap about how Fran made me sound like a man’s man. How she thought my wife didn’t understand me.” He began laughing. “That’s supposed to be the guy’s line, right? ‘My wife doesn’t understand me.’ Elizabeth snowed me like a Colorado avalanche.”

  “But you did go on seeing her after that?”

  “After what?”

  “After you knew she was Knoebel’s wife.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted with a sigh. “Yeah, I did.”

  Walker played with the papers on his desk, then looked up at Colello. “You were at her house the day she was murdered, isn’t that right?”

  This time, when Silverstein spoke up, Colello and Walker both remained quiet. They listened as the lawyer went back and forth with the police chief about Colello’s rights, whether they were charging him with murder, and the Fifth Amendment. Their argument became increasingly heated, until Colello held up his hand.

  For a moment everyone was silent. Then Silverstein said to his client, “It’s time for you to stop talking Thomas.”

  But Colello shook his head and looked at Walker. “I told you I didn’t kill her, and that’s the truth. But I was there that day. You want details, right?”

  “Right.”

  The attorney tried one last time to stop him, but Colello told him to forget it. “The only way to clear myself here is to tell the truth, Mark. They already know I was at the house that day.” He turned back to Walker. “That’s why you brought me in here, right?”

  Walker nodded. “That’s certainly a big part of it.”

  “Okay. It was late in the afternoon. Elizabeth called me that morning, asked me to come over, said she would be alone.”

  “You know we can check the phone records on that,” Walker said.

  “Why would I lie about it?” Colello asked. Then he became quiet.

  They all watched as he shook his head, remembering.

  “I need something to drink. Could I get a cup of coffee?” Colello asked. “Black.”

  They all waited as Kovacevic got him a cup and Colello took a sip.

  “Where was I? Oh yeah. Elizabeth called me, told me her husband would be in New York till the next day, I should meet her at the house.” Colello stopped again. “What a complete numb-nuts I was. I mean, what if Stanley came home early? Or someone else stopped by to see her? It was totally idiotic on my part, I know that now. But you’ve got to understand something about Elizabeth. She was the kind of woman who made you do stupid things. Even after I knew who she was I couldn’t bring myself to stop seeing her. And it wasn’t just because she threatened to tell my wife about us.”

  “Did she make that threat?”

  “Not in those words. She would just drop remarks about how much she and Fran hated each other. How it would kill my wife if she knew about us.” He rubbed his face roughly with the palms of both hands. “She would say things that made it clear she was on some sort of mission. But that didn’t matter to me either. That’s the crazy part. None of it mattered because she was such an incredible woman. I mean, I don’t really want to get into all of that if I don’t have to, but trust me, there is no other word for it. She was incredible.” He paused, lost again in the memory of Elizabeth Knoebel.

  “You were going to her house,” Walker prodded him gently.

  “Right. So I got there and I rang the bell a couple of times and got no answer. So I tried the door and it was unlocked. I figured, what the hell, some more of Elizabeth’s games. So I go inside, just like a lemming upstream, right? A real genius.”

  “Go on.”

  “It’s strange when I think about it now, and I’ve thought about it plenty, believe me. I don’t know why I just didn’t get back in my car and drive away.”

  “Had you ever been in their house before?”

  “Never. I didn’t know if I was walking toward the kitchen or the living room. I’m just standing in the middle of the entrance, the foyer or whatever, and I call out her name. Another good idea, huh? What if someone other than Elizabeth was there? Like her husband, for instance, with a gun or a baseball bat? But there’s no answer. I call out again, still nothing. I tell myself, ‘Thomas, get the hell out of this place.’ But instead I walk upstairs, I figure this is just Elizabeth’s way of testing me, so I call her name a few more times, start looking in different rooms until I got to the bedroom. And we all know what I found there.”

  “No we don’t. What did you find?”

  “She was dead. Naked, on the bed, blood all over the pillow. Jesus, I almost threw up. I just stood there, staring, like I couldn’t move. I just stood there until I realized, hey, what if the killer is still somewhere in the house? Or what if someone heard the gunshot and the police are on their way? So I slammed her door shut, ran down the stairs, jumped in my car and beat it outta there.”

  “I want you to really think about this for a minute. Did you touch anything in the house that day? Anything at all.”

  Colello mentally retraced his steps that afternoon, an exercise he had engaged in countless times during the past week. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Except the front doorknob, I guess. And the doorknob to her bedroom.” He gave Walker a guilty look. “I have to admit, I wiped them both with my shirt tail.”

  Walker nodded. “How did you know she was dead when you saw her?”

  “Jesus, man, I’m no expert, but dead is dead.”

  “What time were you there?”

  “It was five. I’m sure of that. I was supposed to be there at five and I was right on time. I mean it was her house, and she said the housekeeper was off and her husband wouldn’t be back that night. I wasn’t going to take chances with the timing. I said that already, right?”

  “More or less.” Walker looked down at his notes again. “What did you do after you left the house?”

  “What do you think I did? I drove outta there fast, then went for a drink. Several drinks, actually. I told my wife I would be out at a meeting until late that night, so I couldn’t go home. I really didn’t want to go home. There was no way I could face Fran. So I got good and drunk.”

  “Mr. Colello, do you know if Elizabeth Knoebel had other lovers? I’m referring to the period of time when she was seeing you. Did she ever mention anyone else?”

  “No. But now as I look back on the whole thing, it wouldn’t surprise me. You want to know something?” He looked Walker in the eyes again. “Nothing about Elizabeth would surprise me.”

  Walker studied him carefully as he asked, “Did Elizabeth Knoebel ever discuss her diary with you?”

  Colello shook his head, and looked away. “Never.”

  “But you knew she had a diary, is that right?”

  “I didn’t, no. I mean, not then. I just heard about it the other day.”

  “And where did you hear that?”

  “Some guy I know. Jesus, I shouldn’t have said anything, don’t want to get him in a jam.”

  Walker, Gill, Kovacevic and even his own lawyer stared at Colello.

  “Sir,” Walker said politely, “I wouldn’t worry about getting anyone else in trouble right now.”

  Colello shrugged, then tried out a look that was supposed to persuade them he was a tough man to intimidate. It was less than convincing.

  “Tell us about the diary.”

  “A guy I know in Town Hall, said he heard about it from a friend of his in the police department.”

  “The man’s name, please?”

  “Damnit,” Colello said.

  “Tell them,” his lawyer advised him. “You’ve already told them every other bloody thing.”

  “Yeah,” Colello said. “I suppose you’re right.” He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled in on
e blast, then he gave him the name.

  Gill and Walker exchanged a look. That was something they would follow up on later.

  Walker turned back to Colello. “Did you ever tell anyone else about Mrs. Knoebel’s diary?”

  Colello hesitated.

  Walker fixed him with an intense look, his gray-brown eyes seeing through the man. “Mr. Colello, who did you tell about the diary?”

  Colello wilted under the detective’s gaze. “Only one person. Fred Wentworth,” he said. “Guy in my therapy group with Doctor Conway.”

  “He’s the only one?”

  “Oh yeah, Bob Stratford was there when I told Fred, but I had the feeling he already knew.”

  “And that’s it?”

  Colello nodded. “That’s it, I’m sure.”

  “All right,” Walker said, pausing to glance at his notes again. Without looking up he asked, “When did your wife find out about you and Mrs. Knoebel?”

  It was the first question that truly startled Colello. “What do you mean? My wife never found out.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Walker watched as the man’s shoulders sagged, his head lowered slightly and he glanced at his lawyer, who by now was too dumbstruck by his client’s admissions to interrupt. “Sometimes Fran looks at me and I think she knows things she has no way of knowing. We pretend we’re working on our marriage, but it’s all bullshit. I thought I knew Fran better than I ever knew a living soul. Now I’m not sure of anything.”

  “Is it possible Elizabeth Knoebel told her?”

  The thought had occurred to Colello more than once. “What isn’t possible? You tell me.”

  “We’re going to have to speak with your wife.”

  “I realize that now,” he said hopelessly.

  “It’s not my job to give out information and it’s not my purpose to ruin anyone’s marriage.”

  “Like it isn’t screwed already,” Colello said, then looked up at Walker again. “I know it was all wrong. It was even worse to go on once I knew the truth. When I knew she set me up.”

  “Set you up?”

  “She planned the whole thing, like I’m telling you. When she picked me up the first time, that was no casual meeting in a bar. I have the feeling you already know that, right?”