“You don’t want my pardon,” Vince scoffed. “You want to kick me in the balls right now, don’t you? Because I won’t do what you want, and I won’t believe what you want me to believe just because that’s your agenda.

“I’m bigger than you, and meaner than you, and I’m not going to take your bullshit,” he said. “I’m not some little fifth-grade teacher you can push around and try to intimidate.”

Janet Crane’s face was nearly purple, her eyes popping. Vince expected her hair to stand straight up. She pointed to the door.

“Get out! Get out of my house!”

Vince laughed at her. “Or what? You’ll call a cop?” He hooked a thumb at Mendez. “I brought a cop with me. Where’s your witness? Who’s going to testify on your behalf? The child you drugged to make him sleep so he won’t bother you?”

She turned on Mendez. “Aren’t you going to do something?”

Mendez was the picture of disinterest, so unconcerned with her needs he couldn’t be bothered to raise more than one shoulder to shrug. “He outranks me.”

“I’m calling my husband,” she announced, storming down the hall to a beautiful study with two desks and white bookshelves that climbed to the ceiling.

“So you do know where he is,” Vince said.

She glared at him as she snatched up the receiver of the phone. “He has a cellular telephone in his car.”

“Really? What for? So he can be available for all those urgent emergency teeth cleanings?” Vince asked. “That’s an extravagant toy—”

“So what?” she snapped back at him, punching numbers.

“So he works all day in an office ten minutes away from here. Why does he need a cellular telephone? You’re telling us he rarely leaves the house if he’s not working. When is he not at your beck and call?”

“But he’s not here now,” Mendez pointed out.

“True,” Vince said. “But I doubt he and his cronies are playing cards in his car, and why would he lug that phone into his card game with him? You have to carry the damn things around in a suitcase.”

“Doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Mendez agreed. “Unless he’s just that whipped.”

“Is that it?” Vince asked, depressing the plunger on the phone and disconnecting her call. “Do you have your husband that cowed, Mrs. Crane?”

She was so angry now there were tears in her eyes and her mouth was quivering as she tried to hold back the vitriol she wanted to spew at him. She made a strangled gurgling sound in her throat.

“Because that kind of domineering, controlling behavior can create some pretty nasty recoil on the other end of a relationship,” Vince said.

“Edmund Kemper,” Mendez offered.