I want to remind Carrie that all of our so-called ethics training is the result of our higher-ups being caught with their pants down around their ankles and their dicks out. But I don’t. I kind of like seeing her frazzled. It’s actually a whole lot better than having sex with her.

“And then there’s the other matter,” she says, dangling what I know is really a threat.

“And what’s that?”

“Your personal problems. You know, the investigation.”

If she were a guy, I’d punch her.

Instead, I reassure her.

“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “But since you’ve never asked, I’ll tell you right now: I didn’t kill my wife.”

She waves her arms again. “I know that, Adam,” she says, though I doubt she thought it until just now. She’s a very literal kind of person. She takes things at face value. I should have told her I didn’t kill Sophie while she was blowing me the other night. Maybe then she might’ve slammed the door in Linda London’s face, and all of this drama between us would have ended right there.

“So are you all right?” I ask.

She shakes her head. I think she’s about to cry. Last time I saw her cry was the second time she was passed over for Manager of the Year. She’s an unfortunate crier, all smears and mascara stains.

“She taped me saying something,” she says. “I’m really sorry, Adam. She just tricked me.”

I’m more than curious about what Carrie said, but I underplay it.

“She’s like that,” I say. “What did you say?”

She takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I told her that there had been talk around the office of an affair.”

“Between you and me?”

“Oh, no,” she says, her eyes now cast downward. “I made it seem like it was some other girl. Maybe in Accounting or something.”

She’s a moron.

“Why would you say that?” I ask, stone cold.

“It just kind of came out,” she goes on. “I thought that if I shifted her to some other storyline, it would get me out of this mess.”

“There is no one in Accounting, Carrie,” I say.

Carrie’s tugging on her creeping hemline. She makes a show of it. Like always.

“Right,” she says. “And if she digs, that’s just what she’ll find. No one. She’ll figure out that it was all office gossip, and at the same time she’ll be glad for my lead.”

Your bogus lead is a trip to nowhere, I think. It won’t placate a reporter on her last legs.

“Don’t get so caught up in this,” I say before swinging the symbolic knife in her direction. “You have as much to do with Sophie’s murder as I did.”