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Timothy turned away from the kiss. ‘Tricia Fountain,' Timothy said, ‘this is Detective Neiderhoffer. He's investigating my wife Katherine's disappearance.'

She sat down. ‘I thought your wife was dead.'

‘She is,' Timothy said. He realized that he sounded a bit too insistent about this point. So, more gently, he said: ‘But I guess it's still an open case.'

‘Just a formality,' Neiderhoffer said.

‘I see,' Tricia said.

Neiderhoffer studied her. ‘You must be …' He let his voice trail off.

‘I worked with Timothy.'

‘Really?'

‘His secretary. But not anymore.'

Neiderhoffer nodded. ‘I see.'

Timothy expected more – further probing, further testing by Neiderhoffer. But Neiderhoffer shut down. He closed his pad, rose from the table, and slipped his notepad into his jacket pocket. ‘Well, I'm sorry for the intrusion. I know you need to be getting to work.'

‘Yes,' Timothy said. ‘Sure.'

Neiderhoffer started toward the front door. Timothy followed
close behind, leaving Tricia in the kitchen.

‘Nice to meet you, Ms. Fountain,' Neiderhoffer called over his shoulder. Timothy kept walking, hoping that by barreling ahead, he might speed Neiderhoffer's exit, too. ‘I look forward to speaking to you again.'

In the foyer, Timothy opened the front door. He smiled grimly at Neiderhoffer. ‘I guess this doesn't look very good, does it?'

‘Which part?' Neiderhoffer asked. ‘The girlfriend sleeping over just weeks after your wife's death? Or the part where she's wearing the necklace you bought your wife? It
is
the same necklace, isn't it?'

Timothy nodded.

‘I suppose it could be worse,' Neiderhoffer said. ‘There could be blood all over your house, for example.' His eyes darted around the foyer floor, as if to look for just such a clue. He pantomimed wiping sweat from his brow, and said, ‘Phew.' He laughed.

Timothy laughed, too.

‘Well,' Neiderhoffer said, ‘I wouldn't worry about it. In this line of work, you see a lot of things that don't look good at first glance. Usually they mean absolutely nothing.'

‘Okay,' Timothy said. He shook Neiderhoffer's hand. ‘Thanks.'

Neiderhoffer walked out the door, started down the front steps. Timothy was about to shut the door, when the detective called to him.

‘Mr. Van Bender?'

Timothy stopped the door, held it open.

‘It is sort of early to have a new girlfriend, though, isn't it? What's it been? Four weeks?'

‘Five.'

‘Early, right? Unless you were having an affair before your wife committed suicide.'

Timothy did not answer.

Neiderhoffer persisted. ‘So were you? Having an affair?'

Timothy thought about his response. What did Neiderhoffer know? Was he testing him? Wouldn't it appear worse to admit that he had been cheating on his wife before her death? Wouldn't
that suddenly become a motive for killing her, to get her out of the picture without a messy divorce? Or maybe Neiderhoffer thought he killed her without premeditation, in a violent argument about infidelity.

‘No,' Timothy said. ‘I was not having an affair. Good day, detective.' He shut the door.

35

Back in the kitchen, Timothy said, ‘Jesus Christ, Tricia. Did you have to wear that necklace?'

She laughed. ‘You are obsessed with this damn necklace. Here.' She reached behind her neck, unclasped it, and slapped it down on the kitchen table. ‘Take it.'

‘That's not my point.'

‘What does he think? That you killed me?'

‘No, he thinks that I killed my wife. You, he thinks I've been screwing in my office for the past six months.'

‘Well, have you?'

‘No, Katherine.'

‘Tricia,' she corrected.

‘Tricia.' He walked over to the sliding glass doors, looked out into the back yard. A rabbit scampered across the grass. ‘The thing is, it doesn't look right. None of this looks right. You living here with me, so soon after the suicide.'

‘But I'm your wife.'

‘I know that, and you know that. But who's going to believe it? To the rest of the world, you're my twenty-three-year-old secretary. I didn't think that part through. I should have chosen someone else. Someone older.'

‘Somehow that seems unlikely,' Tricia said.

Of course she was right. She knew him too well, even better – sometimes – than he knew himself. He would only have chosen Tricia. He knew he would choose her the moment Dr. Ho explained the procedure. And Katherine, now inside Tricia's body, knew it, too.

Tricia said, ‘Why don't you just bribe him? Don't you always bribe police officers that give you trouble?'

Timothy knew what she was referring to: the incident, years ago, when they were driving to the opera in San Francisco, and he was pulled over for doing seventy on Highway 101, and he flashed two hundred-dollar bills along with his driver's license to the poor working stiff CHP officer who had been demoted to speed trap duty. That had outraged Katherine, offended her sense of fairness and propriety.

‘It's a little different,' Timothy said. ‘Speeding and murder.'

‘Will you stop being melodramatic? You didn't murder anyone. I committed suicide.'

‘But there's no body. The only evidence is the phone call you made to me. And it's only my word.'

‘Well, your word has to be worth
something
, right?'

Timothy turned to look at her. Was that a dig, a little jibe?

She continued: ‘Anyway, the whole thing is absurd. You had no motive for murdering me. You could have just gotten a divorce. We had a prenuptial. Just show him the agreement. It's only one page long.'

Another jibe? Timothy didn't care anymore. He probably deserved it. He had been a terrible husband to her. It was amazing, really, that she had stayed with him for all those years. He sighed. ‘Maybe you're right.'

‘Which leads me to what I really want to talk about,' Tricia said. She rose from the table and joined Timothy at the patio doors. She stood behind him, put her hands on his shoulders and began to massage his tense muscles.

‘That feels good,' he said.

‘Maybe this isn't a good time to bring it up. But … we should get married.'

He turned around to face her. ‘Again, marriage. Why is that so important to you, Tricia?'

‘Because,' she said gently, ‘I'm not Tricia. I'm your wife, Katherine. And because I love you. And because it's strange to be someone else, and to
not
be married to you. And I know you don't understand it, because you can't. But try to imagine: you look in the mirror and see someone else's face. Imagine what that's like. I just feel …' Her voice trailed off as she searched for
the word. ‘Helpless. Like I'm drifting. And I want to go back to how things were. I want to be married to you. At least I can have that.'

‘That's fine,' he said. He was still thinking about Neiderhoffer. The detective would subpoena his phone records. That would at least establish that Katherine had called the morning of her death. Maybe there was nothing to worry about after all.

‘We don't need a big ceremony,' she said. ‘We can go down to San Jose city hall. It'll take ten minutes. We can do it as soon as we get a death certificate.'

‘Okay. You're right. That's fine.' He thought about it. Maybe marrying Tricia would look good, would establish to Neiderhoffer that he loved the young woman, and was not simply having a fling with her. ‘I'm meeting with Frank Arnheim this morning. He can throw something together.'

Tricia looked hurt. ‘What? Who's Frank Arnheim?'

‘My lawyer. We'll just use the old document. Put your name in instead. Once we get a death certificate for Katherine—'

‘What old document? What are you talking about?' She was still smiling, but now it was a hurt and brittle smile.

‘The agreement. The prenuptial. Oh, come on, you're not going to get upset again, are you?'

She shook her head in disbelief. ‘I've been married to you for twenty years. You want a fucking prenuptial agreement?'

‘Tricia, you know—'

‘I know what?' she snapped. ‘I know that you are the biggest …
shit
I've ever met. That's what I know.'

She turned and walked out of the kitchen. In the doorway, she stopped. She returned to the kitchen table, grabbed her necklace, stuffed it in her pocket. ‘I'll take that,' she said, and stormed out.

36

Because of Neiderhoffer, Timothy was late for his eight-thirty meeting.

He pulled out of his driveway at eight-thirty-five and raced up Waverly into downtown Palo Alto. It was a minute-and-a-half commute. He pulled into the underground parking lot of the Bank of America building, grabbed a ticket from the time-stamp machine, and descended two floors to park in the area marked ‘Monthly.'

He climbed out of his car and tapped his remote-control key chain. The BMW alarm chirped. Timothy walked up the steep grade toward the elevators. His heels clicked against the concrete, echoing through the low-ceilinged space. Even though it was eighty degrees outside, the garage was cool and dark, and quiet.

Timothy walked, thinking about Tricia, her insisting on marriage, about his upcoming meeting with Frank Arnheim, about his testimony to the CFTC.

Timothy heard another set of footsteps behind his. They approached rapidly. He turned around.

It was the stringy-haired man, the driver of the Impala that had chased him through Menlo Park the day before. He was heading toward Timothy with a strange smile on his face.

Timothy stopped. He felt a jolt of adrenaline, his heart race, his testicles shrink into cold pebbles.

‘Hey—' Timothy said. It was a tepid word – a half-greeting and half-warning. His voice was hoarse, his mouth dry.

The young man continued walking toward him with the strange smile on his face. His heels clicked briskly on the ground. Timothy looked down to see steel-toed jackboots.

‘Hey,' Timothy said, louder now. At that moment he had a crystalline realization: that he was helpless. During his entire life he had always been in control, using his wealth and his name and his upbringing to command the society around him, to decide what would happen next, to him and to others. But in that instant, as the long-haired man walked toward him in the parking garage, with a sick smile and a taut body promising cruelty, Timothy understood that his own power was ephemeral; it was an illusion, a confidence game; it depended solely on everyone else's agreeing to it, and it vanished the moment it was confronted with something cold and hard – with threat and violence.

Timothy thought about what to say. Words had always saved him. He always figured out what to say at the last moment. This would be the same. The words would come to him, sudden and surprising, a gift from heaven.

The long-haired man walked toward him. Now, up close – ten feet away – he didn't seem like a druggie teenager. He seemed older. He had a long, gaunt face, and sunken eyes. His hair was flat, stringy. He had more serious matters to attend to than hygiene.

He walked to Timothy, and Timothy expected the man to say something, since conflict always began with words, but there were no words. The man simply swung his fist with all his might into Timothy's abdomen. Timothy bent over, grabbing his stomach. He had never been punched before. His mouth opened in a silent ‘Oh' – half pain, half shock. The long-haired man grabbed Timothy's Hermes tie and yanked it downward. Timothy fell to the gray concrete. He held out his hands to break the fall, but his chin still struck the ground hard, and he felt something cold on his face and knew it was blood.

‘If you don't stop fucking my girlfriend,' the man said, ‘I'm going to kill you.'

‘Your girlfriend?' For an instant Timothy was relieved. He had no idea what this man was talking about. So it was all a misunderstanding, after all. He would simply explain there had been a mistake …

The man said, ‘If I see you with Tricia again, next time I won't
use my fist.' He produced a switchblade from his jeans pocket and snapped it open. He waved it in Timothy's direction and then turned and walked off. Timothy lay on the ground, listening to the jackboot footsteps grow distant. Then the footsteps broke into a run and disappeared.

Timothy climbed to his hands and knees. A Jaguar pulled around the corner, with its headlights on. The driver saw Timothy on the ground and stopped. The Jaguar door was thrown open and a middle-aged man got out. He wore a fine dark business suit and an expensive red Ferragamo tie. ‘Hey, buddy, are you all right?' The businessman leaned over Timothy, who was sitting up now, clutching his stomach. ‘Are you okay?'

Timothy nodded.

But the businessman looked helpless. We all are, Timothy thought. Our money and power mean nothing to these men of violence. We are helpless.

Timothy made his way to his office on the thirty-second floor. People in the elevator regarded him curiously. He realized he must have been a sight: his shirt billowing from his pants, his tie loose and disheveled, his chin bleeding. He was a mere step away from the homeless men that visited the Bank of America plaza each afternoon trolling for quarters. Timothy was surprised no one stopped him and escorted him from the building.

He reached the Osiris offices and Natasha, the fat Russian receptionist, greeted him. ‘Timothy! What happened to you?'

‘I was mugged.'

‘Should I call the police?'

Timothy shook his head. He wanted no more interaction with the police today.

The Kid walked into the reception area. ‘Timothy, Frank Arnheim is here for your eight thirty. He's been waiting—' The Kid stopped when he saw Timothy. ‘My God, what happened to you?'

‘Nothing,' Timothy said. ‘Just a little altercation.'