IN THE early afternoon, when it became clear that no guests were going to show up, Adam’s mother paused the movie she’d been watching, Notting Hill, and put away the bagels and cream cheese and other food. Although Adam had been sitting next to his mother, he’d been very distracted, not paying any attention to the movie, getting up every few minutes or so to pace.

When his mother returned from putting the food away, she said, “Okay, you can unpause it now.”

“Go ahead, I’m not watching,” Adam said.

“Are you feeling okay? Do you want to lie down?” “I’m fine, just watch.”

“I can tell, since Marissa and Xan left, you seem very upset about something.” Adam hadn’t wanted to discuss it with his mother, partly because he was confused and wasn’t sure there was anything to discuss, and partly because he

knew that if he told her she would flip out and cause a whole scene.

But he really needed to talk to somebody about this, and maybe she’d have some advice or a rational opinion. In his current state he didn’t trust his ability to make decisions.

“I’m concerned about something,” he said. “About what?”

“Did you hear the way our neighbor’s dog, Blackie, was barking before?”

“I knew it had to do with that dog. What about it?”

Adam told her that he’d heard Blackie barking when he’d found the note from Tony and that JoAnne Miller had reported that her dog had started barking like crazy the night Dana was killed.

“So what does that have to do with the dog barking before?”

“The dog was barking at Xan and Marissa, but Marissa has known the dog for years, she used to walk him when the Millers went on vacation.”

“So you think the dog was barking at Xan?” “I have no idea what I’m saying,” Adam said.

“Didn’t I tell you about Xan?” his mother said.

Adam knew his mother would use this to get in an I-told-you-so jab.

“I just think it was strange the way the dog was going so crazy like that, that’s all,” he said. “I’ve known that dog for years, and I’ve never seen him bark like that, just at somebody on the sidewalk for no reason. I mean, reporters have been out there for the past couple of days, and you didn’t hear the dog barking at them, right?”

“So the dog doesn’t like Xan,” his mother said. “Smart dog. I don’t like him either.”

“I don’t think you get what I’m saying,” Adam said.

His mother stared at him, then said, “You think the dog was barking other times at Xan.”

“I’m sure I’m being ridiculous, but—” “But you said the note was from Tony.”

“It was from Tony. It was the same writing, on similar paper, as another note I got, I think from Tony, that was kind of threatening.”

He told his mother about the other note, and then she said, “So you’re saying you think Xan could’ve left both notes and not Tony?”

“I don’t think that . . . I’m just wondering, that’s all.”

“Why would he do that? And how would he even know that Tony and Dana were having an affair?”

“I don’t know. That’s why it doesn’t make any sense.”

“I said I didn’t like Xan, but I didn’t say I think he killed Dana.” “I don’t think that either.”

“Of course you think that. That’s why you’re bringing this all up.”

Adam, suddenly hyped up, full of energy, said, “Xan is not a killer. Tony killed Dana. His alibi’s gonna fall apart, you’ll see. This is probably just a ridiculous waste of time.”

“I don’t think it’s such a waste of time. I think you should call the police anyway just to let them know.”

“Let them know what? That a dog started barking at my daughter’s boyfriend?

They’ll think I’m insane, more insane than they already think I am.” “I’m worried about Marissa.”

“There’s nothing to be worried about.” “What if you’re right and Xan’s a killer?”

“Can you stop it? He’s not a killer, all right? I wouldn’t’ve even started thinking about this if you didn’t put the idea in my head.”

“So now you’re blaming me?”

“No, I’m just saying there’s no basis to it. He had no reason to want to hurt Dana. They got along great, and she liked him a—”

He had a realization, a sudden moment of clarity, and his mother noticed the change in his expression.

“What is it?” she asked.

“She liked him a lot,” he said. “So? What’re you talking about?”

“The other day, after Xan came to dinner and we met for the first time, Dana and I had an argument. Well, not really an argument, just a little spat, you know? It seems ridiculous now, but she told me that she thought Xan was handsome, and I got jealous about it. But the real reason I was jealous was because of the way they were acting the night before at dinner. Xan, you know he’s a smooth guy, you know, a charmer, likes to compliment everyone, play up to people, that’s just his style. But I could tell how much Dana liked the attention.”

“Oh my God,” his mother said. “So you think they were having an affair?” “No, that’s impossible,” Adam said.

“Why is it so impossible? She was having an affair with that other guy.” This was a good point—and Xan was a younger guy, just like Tony.

Feeling sick, realizing he couldn’t totally rule this out, Adam said, “I don’t think she’d do that, not with Marissa’s boyfriend. She wouldn’t do that to Marissa.”

“You never know what somebody’ll do,” his mother said, letting the implication hang there.

Adam was shaking his head. “No, she wouldn’t do that, I’m positive.” He wasn’t positive at all, actually, but it made him feel better to say it. Then he added, “But I guess that doesn’t mean he felt the same way.”

“You mean you think he—”

“I’m just saying, what if Xan was interested in her? I mean, more interested in her than she was in him.”

“Then why would he kill her?”

“Maybe he came over here hoping to find her alone. Maybe that was why JoAnne next door heard her dog barking like crazy, probably around the time Dana was killed.”

“Call the police,” his mother said, panicked.

“No, wait, that doesn’t make any sense,” Adam said. “Xan was at the movie that night with Marissa. And just because he and Dana were flirting a little, if you could even call it flirting, doesn’t mean he’d come over here to try to sexually assault her. I’m taking a huge leap there. There was no sign of sexual assault; the police would’ve jumped on that right away. All of this is ridiculous, really, when you think about the facts. There’s no basis for any of it.”

“Call the police anyway,” his mother said. “Let them decide if it’s ridiculous or not.”

“Maybe, I’ll have to think about it,” he said. “It all seems very confusing right now.”

Adam went upstairs, even more stressed out than earlier. He took a hot shower, thinking the whole thing through every which way. While some parts of it seemed to fit, he still couldn’t come up with any logical motive for Xan to come over to kill Dana, a woman he hardly knew. Only a total psychopath would do something like that, and Xan wasn’t a psychopath. If Xan was mentally unstable or had psychopathic tendencies, Adam certainly would’ve noticed it immediately. Detecting abnormal behavior was his profession, after all. And Adam wasn’t even sure if it was physically possible that Xan could’ve done it. Would he have had time to kill Dana and then meet Marissa at the movie theater? Probably not. Adam tried to forget about the whole thing, think about something else, but the dog barking so ferociously at Xan kept nagging at him, and what his mother had said earlier about how Xan was basically a total stranger kept repeating in his mind as well.

When he got out of the shower, just to reassure himself, he went online to see what he could find out about Xan Evonov. He expected to find a lot of information, even Xan’s own Web site—the guy was an artist, after all—but a Google search for the phrase “Xan Evonov” turned up zero results. Adam thought this was pretty strange. Why wouldn’t an artist have any information online? He’d said he hadn’t exhibited his work yet, but it seemed like everybody marketed themselves online nowadays, especially people in the arts—and didn’t he say he had a benefactor? There were hundreds of results for “Alexander Evonov,” but they were mostly in Russian, and the few in English had nothing to do with Xan.

Adam was trying another search engine when the doorbell rang. He figured it was reporters again, harassing him, and several seconds later when his mother called, “Adam!” he mumbled, “Goddamn it.” He’d told her not to answer the door for reporters under any circumstances; what was she doing? He headed downstairs, ready to explode.

It wasn’t a reporter, though. Detective Clements was standing there, and Adam had a feeling that went way beyond déjà vu.

“What’s going on?” Adam asked, hoping there was good news. Maybe there’d been a break in the case—Tony or someone else had been arrested.

But Clements, looking cold and serious, said, “I need to talk to you, Dr.

Bloom,” and Adam thought, Jesus, not again.

Adam said, “If you have news I’d appreciate it if you just told me what it is.

This is a very difficult time for me, obviously.”

“I understand, and I promise it won’t take long.”

“If you’re going to question me I don’t want to do it without my lawyer here.”

“That’s up to you,” Clements said, “but this isn’t formal questioning. I’m just doing some more information gathering. If you want to call your lawyer, you can, but I can’t hang around here waiting for him to show up. You’ll have to come down to the station with me.”

That was all Adam needed—if the reporters saw a detective taking him in for questioning, what stories would they write then? Adam figured he’d see how it went. If they were just basic questions, he’d answer them. If not, he’d call his lawyer.

They went into the dining room and sat in the same seats they’d sat in during Clements’s other interrogations—at the middle of the table, Clements directly across from Adam.

“You’re getting to be a pro at this, huh?” Clements asked. “I guess it’s to be expected when I’m a person of interest.”

Adam’s tone was dripping with sarcasm, but Clements either didn’t get it or wasn’t amused; he didn’t crack a smile.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “you’re not a suspect in the case.”

Adam didn’t believe him. “Really?” he said. “Do the reporters out there know that?”

“Like I said, this won’t take long. I just need to go over your whereabouts on Monday evening, from the time you left your office to the time of the nine-one-one call.”

“Are you kidding me?” Adam said. “We’ve been through all this how many times?”

“I understand, but we’re doing this with everyone involved in the case. We just need to make sure there are no discrepancies.”

“What about Tony’s whereabouts? Are you double and triple-checking his alibi?”

“Yes, we’re still talking to Tony, and we’re talking to a lot of other people. So you said you left your office at around six fifteen, is that correct?”

Adam told Clements pretty much verbatim what he’d told him the other day—he left his office, rode the subway to Forest Hills, stopped at the grocery store, discovered the body, and after several minutes called 911. He gave Clements the same estimated times he’d given during the previous questioning.

“Is it possible you shopped for less than ten minutes?” Clements asked. “No,” Adam said. “It was at least ten minutes, maybe closer to fifteen or

twenty. There was a woman complaining at the checkout counter.”

“So you’re saying that you got home no later than seven twenty-five or seven-thirty?”

“That’s an estimated time, but yes, that sounds about right.” Clements wrote this in his pad.

“Can I ask why my whereabouts are so important if I’m not a suspect?” Adam asked.

“Everything’s important in a murder investigation,” Clements said, not answering the question. Then he added, “We have to create an accurate time line for Monday night. Forensics has given us a probable time of death of between six thirty and seven thirty, so we think your wife was dead for less than an hour before the time you say you discovered her body. We have the reports of your neighbors’ German shepherd barking very loudly at approximately six thirty, which also fits into the time your wife was killed. We’re also talking to your neighbors and other people in the neighborhood to see if anyone saw—”

“I have to talk to you about that,” Adam said excitedly. “About your neighbors?”

“No, the dog,” Adam said. “I think I have some information you might find pretty . . . well, pretty damn interesting.”

He told Clements that the dog had barked at Xan earlier today and when he’d found the note from Tony, and that Xan had flirted with Dana a few nights before she was killed, and that there was strangely no information about Xan on the Internet. As Adam spoke, he thought the whole scenario sounded so flimsy, so outlandish, so circumstantial, that he was convinced Clements was going to laugh the whole thing off.

So he was surprised when he was through and Clements asked very seriously, “So why do you think Xan would forge notes pretending to be Tony?”

“That part I can’t figure out,” Adam said. “I admit there are holes in all of this, but I wanted to tell you anyway because there’re other things that seem . . . I don’t know, it’s just I hardly know this guy. My daughter’s only been dating him for about a week.”

“If I’d known this the other day I would’ve questioned him. He was the long-haired guy who was here when I was interviewing your daughter, right?”

Adam nodded and said, “If I’d even remotely thought about any of this, of course I would’ve told you about it then.”

“Did she start dating him before or after you received the first note?” Adam thought about it for a few seconds, then said, “After, I think.”

“Well, this definitely sounds like something we should look into. It might go nowhere, but throughout my career dogs have sometimes given me my biggest leads. In fact, I used to work for the canine unit.”

“Really?” Actually, Adam couldn’t care less about Clements’s career, but he was glad to be on his good side and not be treated as a suspect, at least for the moment.

“Yeah, for five years,” Clements said. “You really get attached to dogs, and they’re great to work with, a lot easier to work with than the human partners I’ve had, I’ll tell you that much. They’re even easier to get along with than a couple of my ex-wives.”

Adam forced a smile.

Clements went on, “The interesting thing is that Tony has continued to deny writing either of those notes so, yeah, everything’s worth looking into. Where’s Xan now?”

“With my daughter. They should be back at his place in Brooklyn by now.” “Do you have a phone number or an address for Xan?”

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t. But Marissa said he lives in Red Hook.” “That’s okay, we’ll get his info. Can you just spell his name for me?”

Adam spelled Xan’s full name for Clements and told him to also look under the first name Alexander. As Clements was writing that down, Adam said, “So if the same person wrote both of the notes and that person wasn’t Tony, it’s possible that the same person who wrote the notes broke into my house.”

“Anything’s possible,” Clements said.

“So maybe you should see if there’s a connection between Xan and Carlos Sanchez. I think that’s pretty remote, but—”

“Don’t worry, we’ll check out everything,” Clements said, getting up and putting the pad away. “By the way, Dr. Bloom, are you right-handed or lefthanded?”

“Right-handed.”

“Thanks very much, Doctor. I’ll be in touch with you again soon.”

Clements left, but his last question lingered. Adam figured it must’ve been forensics related; maybe they’d figured out, or were trying to figure out, whether the killer was a righty or a lefty. Well, so much for not feeling like a suspect. That had lasted for, what, a minute?

Adam’s mother had been eavesdropping on the conversation from the other room—why wasn’t Adam surprised?—and she said, “See, he doesn’t think checking out Xan is so crazy. I told you, I got a bad feeling about him.”

“What can I say?” Adam said. “Maybe you should become a cop.” “Maybe I should,” she said seriously. “But what about Marissa?” “What about her?”

“I don’t like that she’s alone with Xan.”

“Yeah, me neither, but as soon as the police find his address I’m sure they won’t dilly-dally. They’ll send somebody right over there.”

“I think you should at least call her and let her know what’s going on. Better yet, tell her to come home. Tell her we want her here.”

“How’m I supposed to do that?”

“Please, just do it. I really want her here with us right now.”

While Adam knew his mother was overreacting, he was concerned about her getting too upset, what with her heart condition. Besides, he’d rather have Marissa home with them right now, too.

From his BlackBerry, he called her cell. “Hello,” Marissa said.

“Where are you?” Adam asked. “At Xan’s, what’s up?”

“Is he there with you right now?” “Yeah, why?”

“Can you go into another room for a second please?”

“Why? What’s going on?” There was panic in her voice.

“Nothing bad,” he assured her. “I just need to talk to you in private for a second.”

Marissa took a deep breath, then another. “What is it?” “Are you in another room?”

“Yes.” She was annoyed.

“We want you to come home,” Adam said. “Why?”

“Because Grandma and I want you here, that’s why.” “What for?”

“We just do, okay?”

“Look, I told you, I need some space—”

“Please don’t argue with me about this, Marissa. I want you to come home— without Xan.”

“Why can’t I bring Xan?” “Can he hear you?”

“No, but why did you—”

“Please try to keep your voice down. I just want you here, okay? I want the whole family to be together. Just the family.” He knew this explanation was flimsy, but it was the best he could come up with.

“I’m not coming home, and I can’t believe you. You scared me. I thought there was some emergency or something.”

Adam shook his head and looked at his mother, who stage-whispered, “Tell her.”

“Look, you can’t tell Xan about this, but there’s something going on with the police, okay?”

“Why can’t I tell Xan?” “Keep your voice down.”

“Why’re you being so mysterious?” “They want to talk to him, okay?” “To Xan?”

“Yes.”

After a short silence, Marissa asked, “Why?”

“I’m sure it’ll all be routine, but we’d rather you were here, so please don’t argue with me.”

Adam’s mother said, “Come home, Marissa,” probably loud enough that Marissa could hear.

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Marissa said. “What does Xan have to do with anything, and why’re you both freaking out?”

“We’re not freaking out,” Adam said. “There’re just some things I’ve been concerned about, and—”

“Wait, you did this?”

“I didn’t do anything—”

“What did you tell the police about Xan?” “Can he hear you?”

“You’ll say anything, won’t you? Now what’re you trying to do, say that Xan killed Mom?”

“I said keep your goddamn voice down,” Adam said, raising his own voice. “You’re pathetic, you know that? I can’t believe you’re doing this.” “There’re things you don’t know, okay? Things that seem very strange—” “Strange, that’s a good one. You know what seems strange to me? You. Yeah,

you. The way you acted last week, on your big ego trip, then everything that happened with Mom, and now trying to blame my boyfriend, who I’m in love with. You’re the one I should be staying away from.”

“Marissa, plea—”

“Just leave me the hell alone.”

“Marissa . . . Marissa? . . . Marissa?” He realized she wasn’t there. “Damn it.”

“What is it?” his mother asked. “She hung up on me.”

“Call her back.”

Adam tried but got her voice mail. “Shit. Goddamn it.”

“What?”

“I think she turned her phone off.”

“Oh my God, so now how’re we supposed to get in touch with her?” “Okay, let’s try to stay rational here. You’re getting very carried away, okay?

There’s nothing to panic about. It’s not like she’s in any danger.” “How do you know?”

“Let’s just wait, okay? Clements is probably on his way over there. The police have ways to—”

Adam’s landline rang. The display read restricted. “Who is it?” Adam’s mother asked.

“I don’t know,” Adam said. He picked up and said, “Hello?”

“Dr. Bloom.”

“Hi, Detective Clements,” Adam said so his mother would know who was calling.

“Is it possible Xan has a roommate or uses another name besides the one you gave me?” Clements asked.

“Not that I know of,” Adam said. “Why?”

“We can’t find any listing for him in the entire city. There’s an Alexander Evonov in Brighton Beach, but you said he was living in Red Hook, right?”

“That’s what I understood.”

“It’s probably a different guy, but we’ll check it out. In the meantime, can you call your daughter?”

“I’m trying to reach her.”

“When you do, can you get Xan’s address and let me know it right away?” Adam said he would.

With his mother hovering over him, Adam called Marissa several times and kept getting her voice mail before the first ring. There was no doubt her phone was off.

“Okay, let’s not panic, okay?” Adam said. “It didn’t sound like Clements was panicking. He probably knows that this whole idea of Xan having anything to do with any of this is very far out.”

“And what if you’re wrong? What if Xan killed Dana? What if he’s some kind of maniac?”

“Don’t worry, she’ll be fine,” Adam said. “I’m absolutely sure of it.”