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By Root 731 0

night to check out my alibi for the night of the Satyrn Massacre. Brilliant as she was with little details, she’d remembered to have Oberon chew on the balls a bit, and Geffert was fingering them with distaste while standing in front of the open trunk of her car as I pulled up. Granuaile was standing next to him and rolled her eyes at me by way of greeting. Oberon was lying down on the front porch and gave me a quick update on what he thought I needed to know.

“Ah, Mr. O’Sullivan,” the detective said, tossing a baseball back into Granuaile’s trunk and slamming it closed. “Long time no see.” I said nothing, just nodded to him.

“You arrived at your store earlier on foot,” he said, “but now you arrive here on this bike. Where did that come from?”

“My store.”

“Your store. And why was it there?”

“I left it there yesterday, obviously.”

“Why?”

“Because sometimes I like to walk home.” And sometimes I like to fly home. Detective Geffert eyed me steadily, looking for signs of deceit, and I gave him my most placid expression in return. He broke eye contact first, shoving his hands in his pockets and finding something interesting on the tips of his shoes.

“You know, my ears are actually pretty good. I heard what you said earlier. ‘There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow,’ you said.”

“So?”

“So that sounded to me like something you were quoting. I called in to the station and talked to our dispatcher, who used to be an English major, and she told me that was a line from Hamlet.” His eyes flicked back up to study my reaction.

“Right,” I confirmed, keeping my expression neutral.

“So what are you hiding, Mr. O’Sullivan?”

I shrugged. “Nothing.”

He shook a finger at me. “That isn’t true. Yesterday when we searched your house, you walked around like you didn’t have an IQ above eighty. Today you’re quoting Shakespeare off the top of your head.”

My patience evaporated like a dewdrop in Yuma and my anger throttled my better sense. “ ‘Is’t not enough to break into my garden, and, like a thief, to come to rob my grounds, climbing my walls in spite of me the owner, but thou wilt brave me with these saucy terms?’ ”

Geffert’s eyebrows shot up. “What play is that from?”

“Henry the Sixth, Part Two,” I said.

The detective frowned. “How much Shakespeare have you memorized?”

“All of it. Dude.” I don’t know why I sneered at him; it wasn’t smart to taunt him like that and make busting me a personal crusade. Yet regardless of how wise it wasn’t, I held his eyes recklessly with a testosterone challenge flaring away in mine, and he saw not only that but confirmed the spark of intelligence he’d glimpsed earlier. Then he knew that I’d sold him a bill of goods the day before, played him and all his cronies for fools. His jaw clenched and his shoulders tensed, which Granuaile and Oberon both noticed.

“Will that be all, Detective Geffert, or was there something else?” Granuaile asked.

“That will be just about all,” he said, still holding my eyes. “For now. You have arranged things very nicely, Mr. O’Sullivan. Your girlfriend even showed me the receipt that matches your visit to Target two nights ago. But she could not explain why you were missing your ear in the Target security video but you seem to have one now.”

“I had it in Target too,” I lied.

“The video shows you did not.”

“Then the video is wrong. My ear is real, not prosthetic, and ears don’t grow back overnight, do they? Go ahead and see for yourself, Detective. I give you permission.” I turned my head to the left a bit and gestured up at it.

His eyes shifted to my right ear, and he reached up with his left hand and tugged on it gently, more to discern whether it behaved and felt like cartilage than anything else. Frustrated, he said, “I have an autopsy to attend. Please remain available if I have further questions.”

The three of us said nothing. We simply stared at him until he climbed back into his car