“Those were not my pictures,” Harris said.
“But your fingerprints were on them.”
“I know.” Harris took a deep breath. “I can’t help what other people do. There are plenty of guys not on parole at Osprey House, and they can buy whatever magazines they want and keep them in their rooms.”
“But not you.”
“Right. But not everyone can afford to buy magazines, so when people are finished with theirs, they share. Doris, the housekeeper, wouldn’t allow things like that lying around, so guys tear out the pages they like and hide them in the bathrooms.”
“Where you found them.”
“Yes,” Harris said. “I didn’t know what it was at first. I saw the corners of some papers sticking out from under the linoleum, and I pulled them out. Detective Reid, I was shocked.”
“I bet.”
“No, I mean, really. I haven’t looked at pornography in twenty years. Since I was arrested. With all the treatment I’ve been through, honestly, it makes me sick.”
Honestly. Reid kept a straight face.
“So that’s what happened. I saw the pictures, and I put them right back. It was only that one time. I should have reported it to Robin, or even Paul downstairs, but I just wanted nothing to do with it. Wanted to wipe the whole thing from my mind.”
“Mr. Harris, do you think you’re in jail because of those pictures?”
“Yes,” he said, looking confused.
“They’re just the reason we can put you in jail. But the real trouble is, you had that postcard of the art gallery in Black Hall. You know, the one Beth Lathrop’s family owns.”
“I told you I just like pretty towns.”
“Yes, you did tell me that,” Reid said. He opened his briefcase and took out the postcard in a cellophane wrapper. He felt confident but on edge. What Harris had to tell him would make or break the theory that had been growing stronger. “But I’m wondering why you wrote the names Beth, Judy, Alissa, Gennifer, Rose, and Faith on the back? And at the top of the card, the names Pete and Martin?”
Reid stared at Harris as the blood drained from his face. He pushed the postcard, picture side down, across the table.
“That is your handwriting, isn’t it?” Reid asked.
“Hmm,” Harris said.
“Is that a yes?” Reid asked.
“Uh, yes.” The professorial authority had gone from his voice.
“So why do you have Beth’s name at the top of that list?”
“No reason.”
“Those others are the names of the women you were convicted of sexually assaulting, right? Judith Lane, Alissa Fratelli, Gennifer Mornay . . .”
“It’s a coincidence,” he said.
“So, you sexually assaulted every woman on that list except Beth Lathrop?”
Harris nodded, looking miserable.
“We’ll come back to that in a minute,” Reid said. “I see that you’ve put these two men’s names at the top, and you’ve written them in bolder ink. Like you must have really pressed down, to make the names nice and strong. Read me the names, will you?”
Harris coughed. He looked away, then back at the postcard. “Martin and Pete,” he said finally.
“Martin and Pete,” Reid said. “Martin . . . that’s you, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So what about Pete? Who’s he?”
“I guess it’s Pete Lathrop.”
“You guess? Or you know? Considering you wrote it.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s Pete Lathrop.”
“But I thought you said you don’t know him,” Reid said, watching for even a blink that might give him away.
“That’s true. I don’t.”
“Never met him?”
Harris shook his head.
“So what is Pete Lathrop’s name doing on this list you made of the women you assaulted?”
“Except Beth,” Harris interjected. “I did not assault her. We need to be clear on that.”
“Well, let’s say we are. Still, what is Pete’s name doing here?”
Martin Harris glanced at his lawyer. A little color had returned to his face, two pink patches on his round cheeks. His eyes were full of anxiety.
“I advise you not to answer,” Lewiston said.
“But otherwise he’ll think . . . ,” Harris whispered. “And it will be worse.”
Lewiston shrugged. “I’ve given you my advice.”
Harris seemed to make up his mind. He sat taller, folded his hands on the table in front of him.
“I wanted to help you solve the crime,” he said, staring into Reid’s eyes.
Reid tried not to show his disbelief.
“And how would you help me?” Reid asked.
“Unfortunately, from my past behavior, I know too much about people who do . . . things to women. Such as those that were done to Beth.”
Beth. Reid controlled his breathing. He had been careful about what was reported in the case. The department had held back certain details of the crime scene, including the fact that lace impressions had been left by the force of strangulation.
“What things were done to her?” Reid asked.
The pink patches on Harris’s cheeks were turning red. Temperature rising: he’s getting excited, Reid thought.
“Horrible things. Rape things,” he said.
“Like what?”
“Being stripped. The strangling with hands. Hands all over her body, then around her neck.”
Reid watched Harris’s hands unconsciously flexing and unflexing, making an oval as if wrapping around a throat.
“Did you do these ‘rape things’?” Reid asked, chilled as he watched Harris’s hands tighten and release.
“Not to Beth.”
“Did you see someone else do them to Beth?”
He hesitated, started to say something, then changed his mind and shook his head.
“It seems to me like you did,” Reid said.
“Not really.”
“Not really? But sort of?”
He sighed. “I dreamed about it,” he said. “My treatment is working; it is, truly. But I can’t help what I dream.”
Truly. “Of course you can’t,” Reid said. “So, what did you dream?”
“I saw Pete doing it to her,” Harris said. “She was on the bed. So beautiful and dainty, wearing her nightie. Pregnant. And how lovely a woman is at that time. There is a glow—I’ve seen it many times. My own wife . . .”
Did you want to strangle your own wife too? Reid wondered, watching sweat break out on his forehead.
“Right. So you dreamed of Beth on her bed.”
“And Pete, her strong husband, standing over her, very serious.”
Wives are dainty and lovely; husbands are strong and serious, Reid thought.
“What did Pete do?”
“Well, he hit her, of course. That’s what the bruises are from. And he did this,” Harris said, mimicking strangulation with his hands, consciously this time. “Then he would have taken her panties, which he would have removed after he hit her—I left that out—and then he would have wrapped it around her throat, and, well, you can imagine.”