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I shook him off. “It’s okay,” I said. “First of all I’ve got a question for Massa Norris.”

“You speak when you’re spoken to,” he said, fuming. “You don’t have a question for nobody.”

“Yeah, I do. How’s Annabeth Riegel doing? She tell you everything you need to know?”

Klaus and Norris exchanged looks, but neither said anything.

“What kind of trip are you on, Sandy?” Taylor asked. “What does Beth have to do with anything?”

“Beth gave you a nice interview, huh, Taylor?” I said. “I can imagine. And then she got out before you tried to contact anybody from her family. She split in a real hurry. But not because of that fight we had. And not because she was so terrified of getting got by the big bad serial killer. She had to get out before you realized she was phony.”

“Phony?”

“You heard right. Annabeth was some kind of plant, Taylor. She’s a police informant. The Riegels who have all the money, the ones who live in Kenilworth—they don’t know Beth from Janis Joplin. My aunt Ivy made a couple of phone calls to some of her lady friends. One of them is on some committee with Mrs. Riegel, and she has no daughter. Beth is not the heiress to a meat-packer’s fortune. If she’s not a cop herself, then she’s a police spy, and a damn good one.

“Not only was she tracking every one of us, her job had her dealing with freaks day and night. She might overhear just about anything. I bet she was real curious about the haps at Rising Tide. You guys are always doing exclusive interviews with fugitives the FBI is looking for, people going underground, or their comrades or their families. You write about people who cook acid and speed. You’ve got sources inside the police department telling you about the bad shit the cops pull on us. You must have been a gold mine of information.”

I gave Norris another million-dollar smile. “You’re not writing anything down,” I said. “Don’t you want to get my statement right?”

Jack Klaus would not meet my eyes.

I looked at Norris again, using my words as if they were spitballs. “You’ll correct me if I get anything wrong, won’t you, Norris?”

No answer.

So I kept going. “Who owns that farmhouse that was supposed to belong to Annabeth’s father? Is that a property the bank took away from some poor dairyman? Or maybe the FBI uses it for interrogations. Do they take people up there to sweat them? Come on, Norris, you can tell me. Am I being too fanciful here? Maybe it just belongs to your old aunt Ethel, huh?”

I turned to Taylor then. “You know what my aunt would say if she could see you now, Taylor? ‘Close your mouth, dear, before you start catching flies.’ ”

He began to sputter. “You’re telling me that Beth—I mean, all that time—everything she said—”

“Yeah. All lies. The only thing she didn’t lie about was being an actress. Pretty brilliant acting, the way she was all worried about where Dan was, when she knew all along the police had him. Dan was just a pawn in some big game. The real target of whatever the game was, was Wilton. That’s who Beth was really watching. Except I don’t know why.”

“That’s right,” Norris said. “You don’t. You don’t have the answer—for a change.”

“Maybe not. Not yet. But let’s hear your answer to this, you bastard. You know very well who killed Wilton and Mia. And if you say you don’t, you’re a damn liar. Go ahead, deny it.”

Jack looked genuinely shocked at that last bit. He waited for Norris to speak, incomprehension in his eyes.

“I don’t have to tell you shit,” Norris crowed. “It’s time for you to shut your fat mouth.” He beckoned to a couple of uniforms. “Put her in that unit over there,” he said, “before I knock her down. Take them all in.”

Jack Klaus was white with tension, and feeling very caught, I imagined. He didn’t dare take my side against Norris. But on the other hand he must have known I’d tell Woody how he let Norris treat me.

Following the boss’s lead, the cop in the blue zippered jacket handled me as roughly as he could. He didn’t really hurt me, but when he shoved me into the cramped backseat of the squad car, the snow that had collected on his fake fur