The widowed mother of Brad Dowd’s Las Vegas victim, Juliet Dutchey, turned out to be a former showgirl herself, a veteran of the old Flamingo Hotel. Mid-fifties and still toned, Andrea Dutchey blamed herself for not discouraging her daughter from moving to Vegas, then switched to squeezing my hand and thanking me for all I’d done. I felt I’d done nothing and her gratitude made me sad.

Dr. Susan Palmer came in with her husband, Dr. Barry Palmer, a tall, quiet, well-coiffed man who wanted to be anywhere else. She started off all business, crumpled fast. He kept his mouth shut and studied the prints on my wall.

Michaela Brand’s mother was too ill to travel from Arizona so I spoke with her over the phone. Her air machine hissed in the background and if she cried, I didn’t hear it. Maybe tears required too much oxygen. I stayed on the line until she hung up without warning.

No relative of Dylan Meserve surfaced.

I phoned Robin at her studio and said, “I’m finished, you can come back.”

“I wasn’t escaping,” she said. “Just doing my job.”

“Busy?”

“Pretty much.”

“Come home anyway.”

Silence. “Sure.”

* * *

I called Albert Beamish.

He said, “I’ve been reading about it. Apparently, I can still be shocked.”

“It’s shocking stuff.”

“They were spoiled and indolent but I had no idea they were fiends.”

“Beyond persimmons,” I said.

“Good God, yes! Alex— may I call you that— ”

“Sure. Mister Beamish.”

He chortled. “First off, thanks for informing me, that was uncharacteristically courteous. Especially coming from a member of the me-generation.”

“You’re welcome. I think.”

He cleared his throat. “Second, do you golf?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Never got into it.”

“Damn shame. At least you drink...perhaps one day, should you have time...”

“If you bring out the good stuff.”

“I only stock the good stuff, young man. What do you take me for?”

* * *

Two weeks after his arrest, Brad Dowd was found dead in his cell. The noose he’d used to hang himself had been fashioned from a pair of pajama pants he’d ripped into strips after lights-out. He’d been on suicide watch, housed in the High Power ward where things like that weren’t supposed to happen. The guards had been diverted by a neighboring inmate pretending to go crazy and smearing his cell with feces. That prisoner, a gang leader and murder suspect named Theofolis Moomah, underwent a miraculous recovery the moment Brad’s body was cut down. A search of Moomah’s cell uncovered a stash of extra commissary cigarettes and a roll of fifty-dollar bills. Brad’s attorney, a downtown court regular who’d defended several gang leaders, express-mailed his bill to the arraignment judge.

Stavros Menas, Esq. called a press conference and bellowed that the suicide supported his claim that Brad had been a “mad Svengali,” and his client an unwitting dupe.