“Dead? But we agreed—”
“Not me.” He took my hand, pulling me away from my friends, my dorm, the party. “Faraday.”
61
We hurried through the rain under one umbrella, arms linked, Sebastian shivering in his T-shirt, me wrapped in his coat.
“Do you want a scarf? I have three.”
“I was going to ask.”
“Strip poker.”
He leaned closer. “And whiskey?”
“Mary made me puke that night, not the booze.” Part of me had always known this. Not drinking had been a penance, an echo of Hiromi.
The women’s rugby team flowed past, covered in mud, on their usual weekly run. They sang an old marching song about leaving their wives to fight for their country.
“Time of death?” I asked when they’d passed.
“Less than an hour.”
I nodded. No rigor, no lividity yet.
“We dragged her into the pantry,” he said. “None of the housemates know, but Salinger came home as I was leaving. He went straight to his room. Didn’t see a thing.”
“What the hellhappened?” I asked.
“This is all according to Faraday—I was in my room, with headphones on.” Sebastian pulled me a little closer, lowering his voice even in the din of the storm. “Crystal showed up at our door, claiming she worked for Garrett.”
“What the hell?”
“She showed Faraday the paperwork for that light box at the top ofthe stairs. Said there was a problem with provenance, like it’s a forgery, and she had to inspect it in person.”
The light box—the only piece of art that Jessica Anderson had ever sold. The buyer’s name was on the receipt.
“So Faraday let her in,” I said.
“And Crystal starts asking about the woman who sold it to her. Had a picture of you, and Faraday says—”
“ ‘That’s Jessica Morton. She goes here.’ ”
Sebastian nodded.
“How the fuck did that escalate to murder?” I asked.
“Because that’s when Faraday realized she was getting played. This wasn’t about the light box—it was about you. So she decided to be a hero and find out from Crystal what was really going on.”
“To make amends for Oscar Junior,” I said, and began to shiver. Inside Sebastian’s coat I was drenched and shirtless.
“I think Crystal was trying to leave,” he said. “But Faraday grabbed her and started shouting for me. By the time I came out, Crystal was at the bottom of the stairs.”
A gust jerked his umbrella sideways, and fresh rain spattered my face. As Sebastian wrestled with the wind, he held me tight.
“She was still breathing when I got there. I fixed that. We dragged her into the pantry and stuck an electric heater in there, got it close to body temp. Algor mortis won’t show true time of death.”
“You fixed it…”