CHAPTER 27

 

Mitchell slowly sipped his coffee, his eyes fixed on Slater’s face. “Please remove your sunglasses, Mr Slater,” he said.

Slater pushed them up so that they were perched on the top of his head. “Don’t I get a coffee?” asked Slater.

“No,” said Mitchell.

Slater looked across at Lumley. “Assuming you’re playing good cop-bad cop, how about a cup of joe, Joe?”

“Eat shit and die, Slater,” said Lumley.

“So this is what, bad cop and even worse cop?”

“So now you’re breaking into houses, are you?” said Mitchell.

Slater shrugged.

“You broke into Dr Grose’s house,” said Mitchell.

“Proof?”

“Proof?” repeated Mitchell.

“Proof,” said Slater. “The evidence or argument that compels the mind to accept an assertion as true. That’s the dictionary definition. Where’s your proof?”

“You told a room full of students what you’d done.” Lumley pushed a plastic evidence bag across the table towards him. Inside was a manuscript. His manuscript. “This is the book that you’re working on.”

Slater nodded at the manuscript. “That doesn’t say anything about breaking into Doctor Grose’s house. And you know it doesn’t. Assuming you read it.” He grinned. “Assuming that you can read.”

You left these in the lecture hall when Doctor Grose threw you out.”

Slater folded his arms and slouched in his seat. He sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “This is so old,” he said. “How many times do I have to tell you? It’s a novel. A work of fiction.”

“A novel?” said Mitchell. He tapped the evidence bag. “A novel? Is that what you call it? You talk about stalking a fellow student and killing her. You talk about dismembering the body and hiding the parts all over the State.”

Slater smirked. “I've got a vivid imagination.”

Mitchell looked at him coldly. “I suppose you got that from your father.”

Slater froze and Mitchell felt his heart race. Slater tried to smile, but it was too late, Mitchell knew that he’d touched a nerve.

“This is all a waste of time,” said Slater. “I’m writing a novel. You can’t keep arresting me every time one of my characters breaks the law. What are you planning to do next? Arrest Jeffrey Deaver? Thomas Harris? Patricia Cornwell? Michael Connolly? Are you going to charge them with murder because they write about serial killers?”

Mitchell stared at Slater for several seconds. “Not embarrassed of your father, are you, Slater? A talent like his, I would have thought you’d have been proud to be his son.”

Slater sneered at the sergeant. “So now suddenly you’re the great detective?”

“And you’re the great writer? Like your father?”

Slater glared at Mitchell and then slowly pulled his RayBans down over his eyes.

“Take them off,” said Mitchell.

“Make me,” said Slater.

Mitchell started to reach for the glasses but then stopped. He shrugged. “I don’t need to see your eyes to know when you’re lying, Slater.” He sipped his coffee. “Can’t be easy, living in his shadow. You wanting to be a writer so badly.”

“I am a writer,” said Slater quietly.

Mitchell shook his head. “No, your father was a writer. A great writer. Three Pulitzer nominations and he won it once. All of his books are still in print, which is good going considering he’s been dead for what, ten years?”

“Nine,” said Slater.

“Moved to Los Angeles in the early Eighties,” said Mitchell, leaning forward and lowering his voice. “That's where he killed himself, isn't it?”

Slater’s lips were pressed together so tightly that they had almost disappeared.

“Manic depressive, wasn't he? Ups and downs. Can’t have been an easy man to live with. Is that why you changed your name?”

Still Slater said nothing. He lowered his head so that his chin touched his chest. Mitchell couldn’t tell if Slater’s eyes were open or closed behind the impenetrable lenses.

“Or did you just think that Slater was a better pen name?”

“It’s my real name. It was a legal change.”

“Oh, I know that. Passport, driver’s license. You are Adrian Slater, no doubt about that. But of course there’s no birth certificate and no record of you before you were eighteen. That’s when you became Adrian Slater. Before that you were Adrian Henderson.” Mitchell grinned. “What, did you think we wouldn’t find out? Do you think you could keep your little secret? This isn’t a novel, Slater. This is the real world, and in the real world detectives detect.”

Mitchell sipped his coffee again. Slater looked at his watch.

“We’re not keeping you, are we, Slater?” said Mitchell, putting his coffee back on the table. He sat back in his chair and interlinked his fingers. “Funny that he didn’t leave a note,” he said. “Him being a writer and all. You’d think he’d want to leave some last words. A message to you, maybe. Or his wife.” Mitchell frowned. “Oh, but she was in hospital wasn’t she? When he shot himself in the head.”

Slater said nothing.

“So why do you think he did a Hemingway, Adrian? His books were doing great, he was one of the most sought-after American writers. Was that it, do you think? He wanted to go out at the top? Couldn’t face the long slow slide back into obscurity?”

“I don’t think about it, much,” said Slater quietly.

“Oh come on, of course you think about it. You’re a teenager and your dad kills himself. You’d have to wonder why. Maybe blame yourself a little? Maybe think that if you’d been a better son he wouldn’t have done it. Those sorts of thoughts would only be natural. Understandable.”

There was a long silence as the two men stared at each other.

“What happened to your mother, Adrian?” asked Lumley, breaking the silence.

“I’m sure it’s in the file.”

“I haven’t read it.” She looked across at Mitchell. “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“So this is what? Informed cop and stupid cop? Do these games actually work?”

“This is the first I’ve heard about your mother,” said Lumley. “First I’ve heard of your father, too. Looks like I’m playing catch-up at the moment.”

“Been keeping your cards close to your chest, Ed?” asked Slater. “What’s the problem? Don’t you trust Joe?”

“Tell us what happened to your mother,” said Mitchell. “Or do you want me to? It’s just that I’d hate to get any of the details wrong.”

Slater glared at Mitchell, then turned his head to look at Lumley. “My mother has mental health issues,” he said. “It started when she was pregnant with me and got worse as I was growing up. She was in and out of hospitals. All private, my father paid whatever needed paying to make sure that she got the best treatment.”

“But the treatment didn’t help, did it?” said Mitchell. “Nutty as a fruitcake, right?”

Slater ignored Mitchell and continued to look at Lumley. “She started self-harming after my father died. She hasn’t left the hospital since it happened.”

“It can't have been easy. Your father killing himself and your mother sick like that.”

Slater leaned forward, towards her. “Don’t bother trying to empathize with me. You’re wasting your time. I’m a writer. I spend a lot of time getting into the heads of my characters. So I can see what you’re trying to do and I’m just telling you, it won’t work.”

“There’s no need to be so sensitive, Adrian,” said Mitchell. He pointed at Slater’s head. “I really want to know what’s going on in there. There’s something not quite right, we both know that. It’s probably in the DNA. Your father kills himself and your mother’s a Fruit Loop. With the best will in the world you were never going to turn out right, were you?”

Slater sat back and folded his arms. “I’m done talking,” he said.