Somebody Else's Music(59)

“Thirty-two,” Kyle Borden said.

“The dog didn’t have a slit in his throat, did he?” Gregor asked.

“No,” Kyle said.

“It would be interesting to know which cut came first, in this case,” Gregor said.

“Why?” Kyle Borden demanded. “And how could anybody know that?”

“A decent forensics lab could make a good guess,” Gregor said patiently. “And why is because it would tell us something about the killer, and about the intent here. I remember Mark saying something to me this morning about how killing the dog was an angry thing to do.”

“You think this was a mistake?” Kyle said. “You think whoever it really was didn’t intend to kill Chris?”

“He or she might not have, at the time it started. Obviously, the intent was there by the time it was over—”

“Thank you for that,” the state trooper said.

“But you can’t simply assume,” Gregor said, “that whoever did this planned it. I’m told that one of the cars in the driveway belonged to the victim—”

“The Volvo,” Kyle said.

“—so let’s say she got here under her own steam. I’m also told that she was intending to invite Ms. Toliver to some kind of social function, apparently in an effort to make up for what went on here all those years ago.”

“Who told you this?” Kyle asked.

“Somebody named Maris,” Gregor said. “Maris Coleman, I presume.”

“There’s only one I know of.” Kyle Borden looked toward the house.

“She was just giving us a rundown as to why Ms. Toliver is the most likely person to have murdered Christine—”

“Chris—”

“Inglerod.”

The state trooper nodded. “I can see that,” he says. “There was a murder here all those years ago, and a bunch of people were involved in it, and most of them have been around the area for years without another murder happening, and then the one that’s been away all that time comes back and another murder happens and—”

“And crap,” Kyle Borden said. “Betsy Toliver was nailed into an outhouse at the time Michael Houseman was killed. Nailed. Literally. They’d taken a hammer and nails and nailed the door shut on her. She was in there screaming her head off when the cops got to the scene and when they did Michael had been dead less than twenty minutes and Betsy had been in that outhouse long enough to have stripped the skin off her arms from pounding on the walls.”

“Oh,” the state trooper said.

“I think the inference would be unwarranted for a number of reasons,” Gregor said. “It’s true that anybody might be capable of anything, but it’s also true that Liz Toliver doesn’t seem to have much of an incentive to commit murder in this case. It’s not enough just to have a motive for murder, there has to be an incentive, something to set it off. What’s the incentive here? Yes, she and this woman did not seem to be friends in high school, but Elizabeth Toliver and Maris Coleman weren’t exactly friends in high school either. If Elizabeth Toliver wanted to kill somebody, or revenge herself on somebody, why not on Maris Coleman?”

“It would have been a better choice anyway,” Kyle Borden said. “Chris was part of that crowd, but she wasn’t a ringleader. Maris was a ringleader. And a nastier bitch you did not want to meet—”

“I got that impression,” Gregor said dryly. “No, my point is, the murder has to be worthwhile for the murderer, or it has to be a spur-of-the-moment, thoughtless thing. That’s why I said that it would be good to know in what order the wounds were inflicted. Because if we have here a spur-of-the-moment, sudden burst-of-passion thing, then Liz Toliver might be a credible suspect. But if we have something planned, something thought out, then I don’t see it. Jimmy Card is in there, making her tea right this moment. The woman teaches at Columbia. She’s got a fullblast public career. What could Chris Inglerod have possibly done to Liz Toliver to be worth the risk of being caught, or even of being definitively suspected, of a brand-new murder?”

“It would make sense if Ms. Toliver had killed the kid,” the state trooper said, “and this woman could prove it.”

“Absolutely,” Gregor agreed. “But that lands us in all kinds of trouble. First being, of course, that one of the few things we know about Michael Houseman’s murder is that Liz Toliver didn’t commit it. The second being that if Chris Inglerod had had evidence of Liz Toliver’s guilt, there’s no reason why she wouldn’t have said so long ago. These women were not friends. It wasn’t a question of one close friend trying to cover up for another. As far as I can tell, Chris Inglerod belonged to a group of girls who would have thrown Liz Toliver to the wolves if they’d been presented with the slightest chance. Since she didn’t do that, I’d say she didn’t have what she needed to do it. If you see what I mean.”