Sometimes, by the sheer grace of God, a murder was solved without a grain of concrete evidence falling into the hands of the authorities. It might be in the form of a confession. Even that had its own set of headaches. The crazies, who confessed simply for the thrill of confessing or for some warped attempt at attention and notoriety, had to be weeded out from the innocents who confessed, with the motive of protecting a loved one.
Without those, you tried to solve it with the push. Turn up the heat. Trick the guilty. Let him think he was getting away with it, then with one well-placed kick, knock the props out from under him. Sneaky? Sure. But it could be done.
Jeff was running out of time. He needed to push the killer, get him to prove it. To do that, he needed a plan that would turn up the heat that had fed the fire that had fueled the killer. He needed to put the water back on to boil. He needed to make the kettle whistle till it screamed.
Working on a hunch, Jeff asked Curtis Pettigrew a few more questions. Then he told the old man his suspicions.
They worked out a strategy. After agreeing to meet in the Brighton Pavilion at nine o’clock, Jeff left Pettigrew in the Labyrinth and hurried back to the hotel.
He had a tea party to plan.