Page 84 of Never Flinch

“That’s because Reverend Rafferty didn’t make aB. He made aT. It was his killer who turned it into aB. Then, at the end of the name, he added aGS. He tried to make them look the same as Rafferty’s capital letters and did a good job because capital letters are much easier to forge than cursive. What gives it away—”

“The last two letters are tighter,” Izzy says. “Not much, but a little. And… yeah, thatB couldhave started life as aT.”

“It was never Briggs,” Holly says. “Rafferty’s appointment was with someone named Trig.” Self-doubt won’t be entirely denied. “I think.”

“Yes! Fuck,yes! He must have used the pen that was next to the appointment book on the counter, because the ink matches perfectly.”

“And he didn’t just scratch out his name, because he thought the police lab might have some voodoo technique that could read it through the scratch-out.” Holly considers. “He should have just taken the whole appointment book. He was too smart for his own good. And maybe paranoid. It was a hurry-up job, after all.”

“The Bill Wilson name might also have been too smart for his own good,” Izzy says. “You need to go back to your Program friend and ask if he’s gone to AA or NA meetings with someone who calls himself Trig.”

“Maybe I don’t have to, and neither do you. I think Trig is Alan Duffrey’s lawyer. Russell Grinsted.”

“Not following. Help me out here.”

“Do you have a pad and pen handy?”

“Sure, on the fridge. For shopping lists.”

“Write down his last name. If you take out theE, theN, theS, and theD, what does that leave?”

“G, R, I, T. Grit?”

“Rearrange them, like you’re playing Wordle.”

“Wordle? I don’t know what—”

“Never mind, just do it.”

A pause while Izzy scribbles on her pad. Then: “Ah, fuck. Trig is buried in Grinsted. Isn’t it? Tom was right about you, Holly. That’s some real Agatha Christie shit right there.”

It really is Agatha Christie shit, Holly thinks. It would work in a book as the big reveal in the last chapter, but does it work in real life? The essential unbelievability of the idea nags at her, it feels like a paper boat caught on a twig, but at the same time it’s just so frackingperfect. And if Grinsted has decided he’s some kind of criminal mastermind, like in a Batman movie… someone too smart for his own good…

“At the very least, you need to question Grinsted again,” Holly says.

“No shit, and go at him hard,” Izzy says. “First thing tomorrow. Early. But everyone involved thought he gave Duffrey’s defense his best. How sure are you?”

“Not enough,” Holly says fretfully. “I want to believe it, because it’s so elegant, but it still feels shaky to me.”

“Too perfect?”

“Yes.” And Holly has come to believe that perfection will always be out of her reach. “I’m almost positive about the Trig part, though. He changed it to Briggs. I’ll talk to my Program friend tomorrow. Right now you should go to bed.”

Izzy laughs. “Thanks to you, I’m probably too wired to sleep.”

8

Kate’s stalker in Iowa City was Chris, but she’s Chrissy tonight, wearing a shoulder-length dark wig and parked in her unobtrusive Kia outside the Country Inn & Suites. Her quarry is inside, in Room 302. Chrissy knows this because she was with the scrum waiting on Pershing Avenue. Holly’s efforts at throwing the eBayers off are for the most part useless; the group Chrissy fell in with knows everything about Kate’s stay in this particular quadrant of the Quad Cities.

Chrissy latched onto a scruffy-looking dude in a Hawaiian shirt who called himself Spacer. Spacer had several posters he hoped to get signed, plus some eight-by-ten glossies. He took Chrissy under his wing, probably hoping to take her to bed later on. Chrissy understoodthat even with her best makeup on she was no pin-up queen, but for guys like Spacer, still stippled with adolescent acne although he had to be at least thirty, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

To the motley crew waiting outside the RiverCenter, Kate was prey and Spacer was one of the hunters. He called getting autographs “nailing the celebs” and explained to Chrissy that his group of fellow hunters had a text-and-phone network that included people (ratboys and ratgirls, in Spacer-lingo) at the town’s four or five best hotels (good) and three of the RiverCenter ushers (better). The core group of celeb-nailers paid them either in cash or salable autographs.

“Kate’s especially good, because someone might shoot her,” Spacer told Chrissy. “If that happened her value would go way, way up. It’s what happened when someone stabbed Salmon Rushiddy.”

It takes her a moment to realize he’s talking about Salman Rushdie. “What an awful idea.”

“Yeah, tell me about it, but it’s a contentious fuckin society, my darl… oh jeez, here she comes!” He raised his voice to a foghorn shout Chrissy could hardly believe came from that skinny body.“Kate! Kate, over here! My sister is your biggest fan! She couldn’t come, she’s in a wheelchair!”

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