Chapter 5: One Bed

At eleven that night we walked into his bedroom together, under the black dome of the camera, and shut the door.

We stood on either side of the bed.

"You can take the bathroom first," Rowan said.

"I'm going to search your nightstand first."

"I thought you might."

He sat on the edge of the mattress and loosened his tie, and watched me cross the carpet in my nightgown and bare feet.

The drawer held a flashlight, a spare steel watch, a pack of mints and a funeral card for a man named Garvey.

His father. Three years dead.

"Nothing," I said.

"I told you."

"You told me nothing. That's different. Nothing is what a clean man keeps and what a careful man keeps."

"Which am I?"

"I haven't decided."

He took off his cufflinks one at a time and put them in a dish.

Plain steel. I looked at them longer than I needed to.

"You could search me too," he said.

The room went very still.

He was looking at his hands, not at me, and his voice was even.

"It's a reasonable request from a detective with a suspect. I'm not hiding anything on me."

"Rowan."

"Paragraph nine is a document," he said. "I'm not a document."

I should have said no. I had a list of reasons, and they were all good ones.

I walked over, and I put my hands on his chest, and I started on the buttons of his vest.

"Stand up," I said.

He stood. Six feet four inches of him, and all of it very, very quiet.

I took off the vest, and then the shirt.

I went over his shoulders and down his arms, looking.

He let me.

On his left side, along the ribs, was a long white scar, thick as a finger.

I put my palm over it.

"Motorcycle," he said. "I was nineteen. I was an idiot."

"You still are."

"Is that a professional opinion?"

"It's a very preliminary finding."

His breath caught when my thumb moved along the scar. I looked up.

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