“Joseph Thomas Rimmer.” Lonergan leaned forward, smiling. “You’re a dirty rotten liar.”
Rimmer tried laughing off the formality. “You sound like my mother. When I was in trouble as a kid.” He eyed the cops, all three, who gave him nothing back. “So I was at a bar. That’s not a crime.”
Foster pointed to Birch. “You see what I see?”
“I didn’t know she was there. How could I?”
“A coincidence, then?” Foster said. “Chance.”
Rimmer jumped on it with both feet. “Sure. Yeah. That’s exactly what it was. I was there; she came in. What was I supposed to do, get up and leave? She doesn’t own the city. I have just as much right to—”
Foster consulted her notebook. “She came in first, actually. At five fifty-two p.m. Sunday. You came in at five fifty-five.”
“Start talking,” Lonergan said. “Do not, I repeat, do not waste my time.”
Rimmer swallowed hard, then swiped sweat from his brows with the back of a hand. “I don’t—”
Lonergan held up a hand. “Nope.”
He started again. “That’s not—”
Lonergan slammed his fist down on the table, rattling it, rattling Rimmer. “Try again.”
Foster said nothing and neither did Li, watchful against the wall. Rimmer wouldn’t be the first jilted boyfriend to take the news of his dumping hard and do something about it. As she watched him now, closely, she wondered if he possessed a switch she couldn’t see, a level of mania well hidden beneath a guise of a mellow music man who let things slide, who took things easy. All the while his wild, cornered eyes flitted around the cop room. He looked like he wanted to say something.
“What is it?” Foster asked, her voice calm, patient. “You were following her, isn’t that right? Was it the entire day? It would almost have to be. You’d have had to be at the march, to be tracking her, or how else would you know she walked into Teddy’s?”
Rimmer scooted his chair back and made like he was about to stand. Both Lonergan and Foster braced themselves. Li lifted off the wall. Rimmer froze, then eased back down.
“Whoa. Okay. Everybody calm the hell down,” he said. “Look, I don’t know what you think I did here, but I didn’t kill her. I broke up with her, that’s all.”
Foster shook her head. “No, you didn’t.”
“She dumped you,” Lonergan said. “She’s in college. You’re a do-nothin’ who thinks he’s gonna be the next Elvis. She had no use for ya.”
Foster slid Lonergan a quizzical look. Elvis? But she saw what Lonergan was doing. He was testing Rimmer, wanting to see how long or short a fuse he had. She sat and watched him work.
Lonergan pushed the photo closer to Rimmer. “Start talking.”
After a glance, Rimmer pushed it back. “So I was there. Big deal. But you see I have an alibi.” He stabbed the image of the available blonde. “Right there. You can see her as clearly as you obviously see me, right? I left with her, and when I did, Peg was still there.” Neither Lonergan nor Foster said anything. “You can see that. You’ve got eyes.”
“The blonde have a name?” Foster asked.
“Didn’t get it, or if I did, I can’t remember it now.” He uttered the words as though that were all the explanation they needed.
“What’d you think followin’ Peggy was gonna do for you?” Lonergan asked.
“I went to the march. Okay? That’s my constitutional right. I never saw Peggy there.” He lowered his chin to his chest, lowering his voice too. “I caught sight of her after it was breaking up and everybody was heading in a million directions. I wanted to see where she went, so I followed her.” His head popped up. “But that’s all I did. You got the tape. Run it. You know already she was alive when I left.”
“You coulda dumped the blonde and waited for her outside,” Lonergan said.
“Well, I didn’t. I was with what’s-her-face.”
“All night?” Foster asked.
“Absolutely. Look, can I go now?”
“Not even close,” Lonergan said. “We’re going to toss you into a holding cell and rummage through your life until we find something we can ding you for. That means tracking down your weed-selling buddies and their buddies and their buddies . . . I don’t think that’s going to make you too popular.”
“Your lying to us puts you in a different category now, Mr. Rimmer,” Foster said. “We’ll need to take a closer look.”
“All right. All right.” Rimmer held his head in his hands, ruffling his hair in desperation. “I followed . . . all day. I knew she’d probably be there. She was into the whole activist thing. I thought if I could just talk to her, you know? In a neutral spot, away from her friends, we could, you know, smooth things out. A rock star’s got to have a lady, and we looked hot together. I figured if I just . . . but I never got the chance. She was in the middle of shit all day. Then when she headed to the bar, I just . . . that blonde was a revenge hookup. That’s all I did. I swear.”
Rimmer flipped the photo over so he wouldn’t have to see it. “I never got an opening. And yeah, it steamed me. There she was living it up. It was like she wasn’t bothered at all about us not being together or about missing out on being with somebody who was about to be famous.”
Lonergan laughed. “What?”
Foster pushed on. “The woman you left with?”
“I told you . . . no idea. Maybe Casey or Cassidy or . . . it was something with a C, I’m pretty sure. But I was with her, not Peg. She’s my witness, so I couldn’t have killed anybody, even if I’d wanted to.” He suddenly realized what he’d said. “Um, not that I did. Want to. I didn’t. Besides, you see what the cameras did. I left first and didn’t double back.” He jabbed the photo with an angry finger. His face registered a spark of remembrance. “And the woman. She told me Teddy’s was her place, so me not remembering her name’s no big deal. You want her, ask around there. Somebody’s bound to know who the hell she is. I’m telling you the God’s honest truth here.” He fixed pleading eyes on all three cops. “Ask her; she’ll tell you I was with her. Ask her.”
At her desk, Foster called downstairs to the desk sergeant. No sign of Ashley Tighe, Stella Dean’s study partner. Foster had obviously been stood up. When she hung up, she pulled up Tighe’s driver’s license and ran her address and number.
“What’re you doin’？” Lonergan was watching her from his chair, his fingers laced across his belly.
“Stella Dean’s whereabouts are still unconfirmed. Ashley Tighe was the name she gave us. Her study partner? While you were out, I called her. She agreed to come in and talk.” She looked over at him. “She didn’t show.”
“Dean? You really think she could stab somebody over twenty times?”
Foster stood. “Anybody could, if properly motivated. You coming?”
“Where to?”
“To Teddy’s for the blonde, then Tighe’s for Dean.”