Saffy adjusted the chair, straightened her jacket. She clasped her hands atop the cool metal, a sign of patience, a subtle comfort. Ansel’s expression was barren, utterly empty. She was not surprised: he didn’t recognize her.
“So,” Saffy said. “Let’s talk about Jenny.”
Saffy wished he would fight, or sneer, or laugh at her. She wanted Ansel to flip the game, to argue his own brilliance. Prove it, Saffy dared. A challenge. Prove to me that you are worth all this. His silence was dumb and disappointing. She thought about those TV shows, addictive and misleading—in scenes like these, glossy lawyers hovered over handsome men. Evil geniuses, masterminds who planned horror for the sake of it, angular faces that hid some unmatched cleverness beneath the veneer of their devilry. It was almost pathetic, this distance from reality: Ansel was no evil genius. He did not even seem particularly smart. From across the table, the brilliant psychopath she’d hounded all these years looked to Saffy like an unremarkable man, aging and apathetic, bloated and dull. Some men, Saffy knew, killed from a place of anger. Others killed from humiliation, or hatred, or depraved sexual need. Ansel was not rare or mystifying. He was the least nuanced of them all, a murky combination of all the above. A small and boring man who killed because he felt like it.
“Who are you, anyway?” Ansel asked.
“New York State Police,” Saffy said.
She flashed her badge, let his gaze flicker.
“Why are you here?”
“Why do you think?”
“I can leave whenever I want,” he said.
“Yes,” Saffy said. “But I brought something I think you’ll want to see.”
She lifted her briefcase into her lap, placed a coy hand on the latch.
“You’re playing games with me,” Ansel said.
“I didn’t come all this way to play games,” Saffy said. “Why don’t you tell me about Jenny? She seemed like a good wife.”
Ansel looked down at his hands, an approximation of apology. He was still in control—the anger had burrowed deep. He would make Saffy dig.
“She was a great wife,” he said.
“Until she left you.”
“It was a mutual separation,” he said. “She found a new job in Texas. I told her to take it.”
“That’s not what her sister said.”
Ansel snorted. “Hazel’s always been jealous.”
“Jealous of what?”
“Of me and Jenny, everything we had. I would never hurt her, you have to understand.”
“I understand. Jenny was the only girl for you. The only one you loved.”
“Yes.”
“But there were other girls, too.”
She let him sit with this.
“Blue Harrison,” Saffy offered.
A sudden sharpness, as Ansel folded his arms across his chest.
“How do you know about that?”
“I stopped by the Blue House for lunch. I know Rachel, and I know Blue. I know you were in Tupper Lake, staying in the motel down the road.”
“They needed help. The restaurant was going under. I was fixing up their deck.”
“What I can’t understand,” Saffy said slowly, “is what you really wanted from the Harrisons.”
“They were family,” he said simply.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
And there it was: the flash of realization, angling across his exhausted face.
“It was you,” Ansel breathed. “You’re the reason they sent me away. What did you tell them?”
“You didn’t hurt her.” Saffy ignored him. “You didn’t hurt Blue.”
“Why would I hurt her?”
“She’s the right age.”
This close, Saffy could see every pore on Ansel’s nose. The lines around his eyes seemed to squint, then narrow.
“I spent a long time looking for those girls, you know,” Saffy said. “Izzy. Angela. Lila. They were our age in school. You remember Lila, don’t you? You remember how she used to sing along to the Jeffersons theme song?”
A dazed confusion, as he puzzled her.
“Ah,” Saffy said. “You really don’t recognize me, do you?”
Saffy’s phone lay on the table between them, queued and ready. When she hit play, the opening notes of the song brought a bursting life into the concrete space. They whined, they drifted. As Nina Simone’s rasping voice filled every corner of the room, Saffy waited for the transfiguration. The saxophone moaned, stuttered—I put a spell on you. Ansel blinked fast, his focus captured.