He shrugged. "I don't know. What's it like to be you?"

She made a muffled chuckle. "You wouldn't want to know."

They were silent for a while. Then her hand began to move gently up and down his arm. Then to his back and down, urging him to press closer to her. He did. He could smell the wine on her breath and cigarette smoke in her hair. And through that sugary wisps of Shalimar.

"You're such a sweetie," she whispered, and shifted until her thighs were against his.

He felt himself become tense, as if he were entering forbidden territory. Her breathing became shorter, more rapid as she rubbed circles on his back. "Up," she whispered suddenly.

He jumped off the bed. "What?" His first thought was his father.

But she held up the covers for him to get under. "Come on, it's freezing."

Because she slept with the window open, the room was cold. She closed the covers over them, her body radiating a comforting warmth as she pressed against him, separated only by the material of his pajamas and her nightgown. She put her arms around him and slipped a leg over his, pulling him flat against her front. He froze because he could feel the contours of her body and because he had an erection. He pulled away, terrified that she felt it, terrified that it would pop out of his fly. He made a move to get up, but Lila tightened her grip on him.

"Shhh. It's okay. It's okay," she said dreamily, and reached down and took hold of him with a gasp of delight. "Oh, baby. My sweet Beauty Boy." And gently she began to stroke him.

"No, Mom, don't." He tried to stop her but she persisted.

"It's okay. It's okay." Her voice sounded as if she were in a trance of some kind. And he knew that if the lights were on, she'd have the scary out-of-focus look in her eyes.

"Don't move. Everything's just fine." Her voice was soft and syrupy-a voice she had used in one of her movies. "Don't move."

And he didn't, frozen in a swirl of pleasure and fright.

While his heart thudded wildly, she made him lie flat on his back while she positioned herself against his thigh. Then, in maddening rhythm, she continued stroking him and rubbing herself against him, all the while making soft purring sounds in his ear. Sensations he had never before experienced pulsed through him-deeply satisfying sensations that built to some darkly primitive pleasure point.

In the back of his mind, he suspected that what they were doing was wrong, but she was his stepmother, so just how wrong could it be? So he lay back, scared but excited in anticipation that something big was going to happen. Meanwhile, she was lost in a spell, moving hard against his thigh, which she had leg-locked against her. Her head was back, her eyes pressed shut, her mouth open and panting groans out of some deep place.

And then it happened. At the moment that fluid spurted from him, Lila let out a sharp cry.

"Look what you made me do. Look what you made me do," she screamed, and in the dim light he could see her wiping her hand on her nightgown.

He scrambled out of bed, terrified. The change in her was so sudden, so volcanic that he thought her mind had snapped.

"You little bitch." Her voice was full of gravel. Not even hers. "You made me dirty." She held her hand out in front of her as if it were some foul creature. "You made me do this. You made me dirty. You made me dirty. Now I'll burn in hell and never see Jesus. Never."

"I'm sorry," he whimpered. "Sorry."

"I'll show you sorry." She backhanded him in the face. "Get out of here, you little slut. Get out." And she shoved him out the door.

He stumbled back into his room, crying and terrified and feeling scalding shame in his chest.

He crawled into his bed and prayed that he would die.

34.

By the time Steve pulled into headquarters Neil had gone home. Spent by the interrogation, he had taken the rest of the day off.

But Reardon was in his office. "Pendergast's in central lockup," he said. "Monday he'll be in court, and all's right with the world."

"Did you see the video?"

"The important parts. We got him. He's going down."

Reardon's face was waxed with joy. He had something for the D.A. Steve latched onto his grin like a drowning man to a life vest. "Guess I should take a look if we're going to court."

"Be my guest." From a pile of stuff on his desk Reardon handed him a CD.

Steve went to his office where he could watch it without interruption, his brain still on tilt.

The interrogation, which took place in the interrogation room on the second floor, had begun around nine that Friday morning and ended at one thirty with two brief breaks for Pendergast and Neil to use the toilet and have some takeout lunch.

Early on Neil sat across a small table from Pendergast. But he soon took to his feet, at times pacing and gesticulating with his hands, other times standing directly in front of Pendergast, his face pressed inches away. The tightness of the space created a forced intimacy as well as point-blank menace designed to create emotional confusion for a suspect.

From the onset Pendergast looked tired and distraught, even spacey. At times he didn't seem to understand the questions and asked for repeats. He also muttered responses. At one point when Neil wasn't looking he fingered a pill from his breast pocket and slipped it into his mouth.

Neil got them each a bottle of water. Then without any effort to put him at ease, he went right for the blood spot. "You're on record saying you knew Terry Farina from the Mermaid Lounge. You also said you dated her. I want you to tell me about how many times that was."

"Just once."

"And when was that?"

"About three weeks ago."

"And what did you do?"

"What did we do? W-we went to dinner then to the Regatta Bar in Harvard Square."

"Did you pick her up at her place?"

"Yes. She met me at the door downstairs."

"So you didn't go up to her apartment."

"No. I rang the bell and she came down."

"Was the door locked-the outside downstairs door?"

"I guess. I didn't try it."

"And after the Regatta Bar then what?"

"I drove her home and that was it."

"Did you go up to her apartment?"

"No, I just walked her to the door."

"And said, 'Good night,' but didn't go up."

Pendergast nodded. "Yes."

"And you still maintain that position?"

Pendergast nodded again.

Neil nodded back. "Uh-huh. The reason I ask is that our crime scene technicians found your fingerprints in Terry Farina's apartment, including on a bottle of Oregon Pinot Gris and a wineglass. You want to tell me how they got there?"

Pendergast's eyes fluttered for a moment, then he said, "Okay, I'm sorry, I went up for a glass of wine, but it was no big deal I swear, and it was just that once."

"Well, Earl, I appreciate your being truthful. Thank you." Neil had switched to Sergeant Good Guy. "Now we're being honest with each other, and that's good. Frankly, Earl, I can understand why you held back. I mean, you're a popular professor and noted scholar, and given your situation, you wouldn't want to be seen in the wrong company. If that were me, I'd feel the same way. I wouldn't want it to get out."

Pendergast looked at him with apprehension. "There's no chance of that, is there?"

"If you're innocent you can trust me it won't leave this station."

"I'm innocent."

"Then you're golden. So how many other dates did you have with her?"

"That was it."

"Other visits to her apartment?"

"That was it. She was interested in going to grad school, and I was trying to encourage her."

Neil stared at him hard. "Let me get this straight. You wanted to see her quit the pole, but you're a strip-club junkie and one of her groupies. Isn't that something of a contradiction, Earl?"

Steve could hear the furnace firing up.

"I suppose, but I think she liked stripping but wanted to become a psychologist."

"Why do you think that was? Why dance naked for a bunch of strangers?"

"The money."

"Yeah, the money." Neil rubbed his face as if removing a mask. "Let me ask you this. When you were up there in her apartment, did you ever go into her bedroom?"

"No."

"Never?"

"Yes, never."

"So, you confined your visit to what, the living room?"

"Yeah."

"Did you wander into the kitchen or other rooms, or maybe she showed you around?"

"Maybe the bathroom, but that was it."

"Good." Pendergast took a swig of water and in a sympathetic ploy Neil did also. "The problem is your fingerprints were found on the headboard of her bed where she was murdered."

Pendergast flinched. "That's impossible. I was never in her bedroom."

"Bullshit. You were in there the night she died."

"No, I wasn't. I swear."

Neil bore down on him. "You fucked her, didn't you?"

Pendergast looked more confused than frightened. The news accounts of her death made clear that she had not been sexually molested. "No. I never...had sex with her."

He began to push himself away when Neil slammed the table with the flat of his hand. "Tell me the truth, you little creep, you had sex with her."

Pendergast froze. "N-no, never. I swear."

"How many times?"

"N-never."

Neil hung over him like a boulder. "Look me in the eye and tell me you never had sex with her."

"N-never, and I swear on my life."

"But you were in her bedroom because that's where you killed her."

"No. I was never in her bedroom. And I didn't kill her. I swear."

"You also swore you'd never been to her place. So how am I supposed to believe you now, huh?"

"I-I mean it. But that was weeks ago and nothing happened. We sat on the couch and had wine and talked. That was it. I was there for maybe an hour. If I admitted it, you'd be more suspicious. But I never stepped foot in her bedroom."

"Then you did it on the couch."

"No, we only talked."

"You mean to say you watched her spread her legs a hundred times on the bar and you didn't want to dive in?"

"I was attracted to her, but she said she didn't want to get involved with anyone, that she had broken up with a guy and just wanted to hang loose."