Triple Cross

Ali nodded. “Not everyone makes it, which is sad.”

“I’m sure,” I said. “Listen, I’ve got to get some work done tonight, so you’re on your own for bedtime. Jannie?”

“Ten sharp,” she said. “And don’t worry, Dad, I’ve got this.”

“I have no doubt. See you both in the morning. Love you.”

“Love you too, Dad,” they both said, their eyes back on their show.

I climbed up to the attic, which I’d long ago converted into a small office. I often went up there just to think, but that night, when I flipped on the light and weaved around stacks of old case files, I was on a mission.

I sat down at my desk and picked up Electric by Thomas Tull. My plan was to skim through the book, looking for the kinds of discrepancies or holes his editor said I might spot.

Except Tull had this compelling, propulsive narrative style that sucked me in and made the story come alive with three-dimensional characters who were constantly surprising me and twists I never saw coming. He also had a knack for interpreting the evidence and describing the way each of the murders must have happened.

Tull opened the book with the fourth victim, the one he’d known personally.

A year after an unwanted divorce had left her heart-broken and alone, Emily Maxwell was looking forward to her customary hot bath after a day on her feet seeing to the needs of Boston readers. She was usually home in her apartment in Cambridge’s Ward Two neighborhood by six thirty in the evening, and after she fed her Siamese cat, Jimbo, and ate, she’d take her bath.

That evening, Emily picked up a Caesar salad with salmon at the Whole Foods near work. After feeding the cat, she ate the salad and had a glass of white wine before filling the tub. She checked the locks on her doors and then the thirty-nine-year-old felt safe enough to pour herself a second glass of wine and go to her bathroom for what she called a “full decompression session.”

The music went on first, a playlist on her iPod that featured soft-rock hits by bands like the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac, tastes she’d inherited from her parents. She connected the iPod to a black JBL portable speaker plugged into the wall about two feet from the tub and sang, “You can go your own way!” as she climbed into the hot water.

Poor Emily Maxwell would not get out of the tub alive. Somewhere between seven thirty and nine o’clock that evening, the plugged-in speaker entered the tub water and sent one hundred and ten volts of electricity shooting through the bookstore clerk.

As the speaker dropped, Emily must have had a moment of clarity and horror before the current blazed through the electrochemical machine that was her body, short-circuiting her broken heart.

“The Boston PD said Emily’s death was an accident,” Tull wrote, “but my gut said it was murder.”

My cell phone rang. Bree.

“How’s New York?” I asked.

“Making headway, actually,” she said. I heard the sounds of a restaurant in the background. “But having a dinner here isn’t half the fun it would be with you.”

“Well, I wish I were there,” I said. “Where are you eating?”

“La Grenouille,” she said. “My target often eats here, but not tonight.”

“What are you having?”

“Haven’t ordered yet, but I’m thinking the saffron lobster bisque to start, then the oxtail in burgundy sauce, and a lemon tart with meringue for dessert.”

“You’re liking this whole expense-account thing.”

“I am.” She laughed. “One of the best perks of this job. How was your day?”

I told her in general terms about the visit from Thomas Tull’s editor and her contentions about the author and his previous three books.

“You’re going to read them all?” Bree said. “They’re doorstops, aren’t they?”

“Close,” I replied.

“Anything jump out at you yet?”

I looked at the cover of Electric. “Maybe. He sells it as pure nonfiction, but some of the details and the way he describes the murders seem fictionalized to me, or at least speculative.”

“How so?”

“At times, he kind of zooms in and puts you right there in the scene as the crime unfolds. But of course, that can’t be an exact replication.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Bree said. “He’s probably extrapolating from the available evidence, and that’s always a somewhat subjective call.”

“I’m going to take a look at the other books before I snooze. Got to be up early for Jannie’s race.”

“She excited?”

“Actually, she’s calm, cool,” I said. “Nana, Ali, and I will be nervous wrecks. And Damon’s coming!”

“Oh, a family reunion without me.”

“I’m FaceTiming you the race.”

“Not the same, but it will have to do.”

“I’ll call you when they’re heading to the blocks,” I promised. “Around eleven a.m.”

“Oh, here comes my waiter. Love you.”

“Love you too,” I said. I hung up and glanced at the wall clock before picking up Tull’s second book.

CHAPTER 22

CERTAIN ASPECTS OF Noon in Berlin echoed Electric.