Flint took a long breath. “She invited Benson over. She offered him a little demo of what she does for a living. Told him, ‘What the hey, you know what I do, you might as well get the tour.’ Gets him strapped down to that cross thing. Then she kills him.” He ran his index finger quickly across his throat. I shook my head, but Flint continued. “She leaves. She drives around for a while. Calls you. Tells you she’s been out of town, whatever. Arranges to meet you at her place. Makes sure she arrives after you do so you get the idea she’s been away, hasn’t been home for a while. She does this thing at the door, like maybe there’s something wrong with the lock, plants the idea with you that maybe someone broke in. You go inside, everything seems fine, she finds a reason to send you downstairs to get something, the coffee you said. You go down, you find the body. She comes down, acts all surprised. I’ll bet she screamed just right, huh? Made it seem like she was seeing Benson’s dead body for the first time.”

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t an act.”

“Oh, it was an act,” Flint said. “A command performance, just for you.”

“I think you’re wrong.”

“And the beauty of it is, not only does she have you convinced that she didn’t know anything about it, she’s set it up perfectly, making you her alibi. You’re here before she arrives. So how can it be her? She wasn’t even here. And you’re the one who can testify to that fact. And how shocked she was at finding some guy who’s bled to death in her torture chamber.”

Flint adjusted his hat. “She used you to try to get Benson to back off. And now she’s using you to cover up the fact that she murdered him.”

I was going to tell him no one more time, that he had it all wrong. But I wasn’t sure I could say it with complete confidence.

CHAPTER 14

14

When he was done with me, Flint let us both go. Sarah got in her Camry and drove off without saying a word. She either didn’t care whether I got back to the city, or assumed that I would be taking Trixie’s car, since I had the keys to it.

I didn’t know whether Flint was going to want Trixie’s car for his investigation. I couldn’t see why, since the murder hadn’t taken place in it. If it were peppered with incriminating evidence, she’d hardly have left it behind and taken mine.