“I thought I’d ask because you work in the English Department. But what stood out to me about your book, Dr. Nye, and this will be the last thing I ask you about because I know you have to get to campus. But what stood out to me was the way Sarah was killed in the book. When we investigate a serious crime like this, sometimes we choose to withhold certain details from the public. You’d be surprised at the number of people who want to call in to a police station and either confess or else turn in someone they know. We get unhappy wives who call in and say their perverted, cheating husbands must have murdered the young woman. Or we get unhappy husbands calling in and saying their pain-in-the-ass wives must have murdered the young woman out of jealousy. We’d spend all our time talking to these crazy people, time we should be spending on finding the real killer. So we hold something back, something only a few people know. And in the case of Sophia Greenfield, we never told the public how she was murdered. We said she died by strangulation, which she did, but we didn’t say whether it was manual. Or with a ligature. You see where I’m going with this?”

“Is this a joke of some kind?”

“I wish it was.”

“So a character in my book, Sarah Redmond, was killed with a scarf,” I say. “A ligature, as you said. So what?”

“It’s funny,” Bowman says, but she doesn’t look like she’s amused. She looks like she just stepped on a tack. “Sophia Greenfield died in exactly the same way. Strangled by a scarf her grandmother gave her. And that’s the detail that’s never been made public before.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I could end the whole thing right now. Five words would do it:

Madeline O’Brien wrote the book.

I could tell Bowman that Madeline was alive, that she’d been here. She’d threatened me and promised to come back. Bowman could then focus her attention on Madeline, hunt her down, and find out what she knows about Sophia Greenfield’s murder. I could forget about a home equity loan or a credit card advance or any other form of blackmail payment.

Five words that flash in my head like a neon sign: Madeline O’Brien wrote the book.

But I don’t say them.

To say them would give everything away. The book, tenure, my job. Any stability I’d clawed to get back over the last five years. No, I couldn’t lose all that.

“It’s not such a big leap to imagine someone being strangled with a scarf, Detective,” I say. “When I was a kid, I saw that Alfred Hitchcock movie. Which one was it? Torn Curtain? No. The one where the guy murders women with his neckties.”

“Frenzy.”