“Looks aren’t destiny, Big Guy, but they can be a factor growing up. Even toddlers rate their peers on attractiveness. All other things equal, cuter kids get treated better by children and adults.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Such self-pity,” I said. “Rick showed me your high school yearbook. More all-American than troll.”

“That was good lighting,” he said. “He showed you the damn yearbook? Why? When?”

“One night when Robin and I were over for dinner. You were griping about something, big surprise, and when you went to the bathroom, Rick said you always claimed to be a big outcast and he used to believe you until he found the book. Varsity football and wrestling, ROTC, couple of honor societies. He had the page tabbed with a Post-it.”

“He’s always trying to convince me life rises above the dank bog of Irish doom.” He snorted. “So that’s Fellinger’s defense? He was a poor little ape-boy? Sounds like the pop-psych stuff you hate.”

“Not a defense, just trying to understand him.”

“Because he avoided you in the lobby.”

“No one else noticed me,” I said, recounting the experience. “But he did and while I can’t prove it, I think he made sure to avoid me. I know it’s not much but what else do you have? The elevator grope combined sexuality, cruelty, and manipulation. Which is exactly the kind of person we’re looking for. Cohen also felt it looked like a game that Fellinger and Ursula had played before. That shifted my perspective. I’d imagined the killer as an underachiever. Someone who viewed himself as brilliant but fell well short of success. Fellinger’s an outwardly successful man but feelings of inadequacy can come from all sorts of places.”

“He’s got dough and prestige, snags babes like Ursula. So what, he’s working through his childhood? Even if, how does Hennepin figure in, seeing as there’s nothing connecting her to Fellinger?”

“If she visited Fellinger’s building, she figures in nicely. I photoed down his co-tenants on the seventh floor. If we can tie her to any of them, it’s a big step.”

I showed him the snaps.

“You’ve been a busy lad.”

“Anything for a friend.”

He breathed in deeply. “Ape-Man Meets the Accountant. Speaking of which.” He phoned Katherine Hennepin’s bosses. They were in, agreed to meet. Again.

RM-Accu Accounting operated out of a storefront on Woodman just south of Magnolia. Their strip-mall neighbors were four ethnic restaurants: Mexican, Thai, Israeli, Lebanese. Each one seemed to be thriving, with lines forming outside entrances.

What if food really was love and world peace could be a reality?

The firm was a fifteen-by-fifteen room set up with three desks and half a dozen file cabinets. Interior design consisted of flyers spelling out IRS small-print regulations; surrealism for the twenty-first century.

Ralph Gross boomed, “What, you expected Ernst and Young?”