“Yes, see, that’s it. Frenzy. You see, maybe that movie was lodged in my subconscious, and I needed a way for this character to die, and there it was. A scarf instead of a tie.”

“Yes, but her grandmother’s vintage scarf? You just happened to think of that? And the book describes the color and pattern of the scarf pretty accurately.”

“There are only so many ways to kill people in a book. Or in real life.”

Bowman points at me. “I think you’re reaching. But maybe you learned this detail another way. Maybe you wanted to do some research—I love it when writers do a lot of research—and you talked to someone who worked on the case. If that’s so, then I want to know who that person is who was blabbing sensitive information around town that could jeopardize our ability to prosecute someday. That way I can terminate their employment with the police department. Is that what happened?”

“I didn’t talk to any police officers,” I say.

“Then there’s another option.” Bowman scoots forward more, until it looks like her butt is going to slide right off the front of the couch and onto my living room floor. I see crumbs on the floor by her feet. A stain on the upholstery. I need to clean more. “Maybe you know someone who told you this detail. Maybe that person knew something they shouldn’t know.”

Madeline O’Brien wrote the book.

Bowman holds my gaze, like a snake charmer. The moment hangs in the balance like her body on the edge of the couch. Will everything stay up or crash down?

“I made it up, Detective,” I say. “I really did. I’m not sure what else to say, except I’m sorry anyone got hurt.”

“I appreciate you saying that,” she says. “But it wasn’t just the scarf we kept from the public. In the book—your book—you provide a pretty detailed description of the position Sarah’s body is in after she is murdered. Do you remember that?”

“Of course.”

“You wrote that she was slumped over, her head resting against the right side of the steering wheel.”

“Well, but that—”

“And her right hand was resting on the seat. Palm up. And her left hand was hanging limply at her side. The middle nail on her left hand broken from a defensive wound.”

“Naturally she’d have defensive wounds—”

“All of those details were, pardon the pun, deadly accurate. Almost like you’d seen the crime scene.”

My mouth is desert dry. My tongue is mummified.

“I . . . I don’t . . .”

“Of course she’d have defensive wounds,” Bowman says. “Anyone could guess that. But you gave her a very specific defensive wound. On the middle finger of her left hand. Just like the real Sophia. Who you say you don’t know.”

“I don’t.”