“I could eat something.”
“It just arrived,” she said and led the way into a beautiful suite with dark wood floors, custom Italian leather furniture, and a sweeping view of the Potomac River.
A room-service cart was parked in front of the open sliding doors. On the balcony was a small table with two place settings.
“I ordered scrambled eggs, toast, bacon, fruit, coffee, and juice. Does that work?”
“Sounds good,” I said.
Liu began lifting stainless-steel lids, and the aromas quickly had my stomach growling. After she’d served herself and sat down, I spooned eggs, bacon, and fruit onto my plate and poured a cup of coffee.
I carried it out onto the balcony where a breeze blew and made conversation a little difficult. The book editor had put on sunglasses. She smiled.
“I really appreciate you coming, Dr. Cross.”
“It’s my job,” I said as I took a seat opposite her. “But honestly, I’d appreciate you getting to the point. I’m missing time with my kids.”
Liu’s smile faded a little and she busied herself with her napkin. “Oh, of course. I’m sorry. Okay, where to begin?”
“You said Tull threatened you after you found out something about him.”
“Yes,” she said emphatically. “You can hear the threat for yourself. But let me tell you what made him so angry first.”
“Okay,” I said, taking a bite of delicious scrambled eggs made with melted Boursin cheese.
“Remember when I told you and Detective Sampson that there were things that seemed off during the writing of all three of his books?”
“I do, but you gave no specifics.”
“I admit I blocked the details from my mind because the books were doing so well,” Liu said, and she sipped from her cup.
“And now you’ve recalled the details?”
“And more from my old notes,” she said. “Did you know that Thomas was the one who first told the police that the accidental electrocutions of shop clerks around metro Boston might be the work of one murderer?”
I blinked and shook my head. “That’s not the way it reads in the book. He said he and a detective with the Boston police came to that conclusion about the same time.”
“I know it reads that way, but it turns out it’s not true. Jane Hale, the Boston detective, went to one of Thomas’s book signings when Electric hit the hardcover bestseller list. Hale comes across like a rock star in the book, and she was grateful for Thomas’s depiction. She’d not only become semi-famous; she’d received a big promotion after the killer was caught and convicted. But we all went out after the book signing and had many drinks to celebrate, and that’s when Hale told me that she’d had no idea the electrocutions were connected until Thomas brought the possibility to her attention.”
That was a different story, and Tull’s revision did cause me to pause. “Why would he have done that?”
“I asked Thomas that same question,” Liu said. “He said he remembered things differently. But then again, he was sleeping with Hale for most of the investigation.”
“Is that true?”
“It’s a fact,” she said. “She left her husband for Thomas and they were together for almost a year after the book came out. But by then he was in Germany, working on Noon in Berlin and sleeping with Inspector Ava Firsching of the Berlin criminal police.”
I frowned. “He didn’t mention that relationship in the parts I read.”
“He doesn’t talk about his relationships with female detectives in any of the books,” Liu said. “And I didn’t find out about Inspector Firsching until I was over there for the German-language launch of Noon. You’ll never guess what else the inspector told me.”
CHAPTER 34
I WAS LISTENING CLOSELY by that point. I pulled out a notepad and began jotting down some of her assertions. “It would help if you just laid it out.”
Liu seemed irritated. She took off her sunglasses, looked straight at me, and said, “Did you know Thomas speaks perfect German? His mother was from Munich and he spent many of his summers at a lake in Bavaria.”
“I don’t remember that from the book.”
“Because it’s not mentioned,” she said. “He portrays himself as being out of the loop half the time because of the language barrier.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Exactly. I asked and he said it made him more sympathetic, as lost in the investigation as the reader.”
I said, “It’s odd, but not a crime.”
“There are other inconsistencies, Dr. Cross,” she said. “In Noon, for example, Thomas depicts Inspector Firsching as the one who comes up with the idea of focusing on Berlin Zoo employees because the initial victims were all killed with darts loaded with animal tranquilizer.”
“I remember that.”
“Except that’s not exactly correct,” Liu said. “Ava told me she and Thomas were sleeping together by that point and he was the one who came up with the logic of focusing on the zookeepers.”
I held up my hands. “I apologize because I’ve read only the first hundred pages. Was the zoo really involved?”
“Ultimately, yes. But Firsching did not find that damning evidence until very late in the investigation, after she’d dropped the zoo angle and taken the probe in a different direction, arresting two suspects only to release them.”
“I’ll bite. Who ended up being the killer?”
“A large-animal veterinarian who was an outside contractor. He came to the zoo occasionally to treat elephants, rhinos, and the like. The vet’s wife had cheated on him with various men over the years, all during the noon hour. When she divorced him and took half his money, he got obsessive and then turned homicidal.”
Liu put her sunglasses on again and said that in the book, Tull claimed he was only tangentially involved in the big break in the Noon case. But Firsching told her that it was Tull’s idea to focus on the zoo again, not on staff but on the vendors and consultants.
“Do you see the pattern?” she asked. “Thomas underplays his role when in truth he has a great deal of influence over these investigations.”
“And the investigators,” I said.
“Exactly,” she said.
“What about the third book? I haven’t gotten to it. Female investigator?”
“Heidi Parks with the South Carolina State Bureau of Investigation,” Liu said. “She and Thomas were shacking up within a week of his arrival on the scene, which was shortly after the body of the second doctor was found. Again, I think he downplays his role in the book and gives all the light and praise to Parks.”
“You think?”
“Okay, I have strong suspicions based on the way Detective Parks reacted when I called her yesterday and asked several pointed questions about that investigation. She got quite hostile, so hostile she called Thomas and told him what I was up to.”
“Which led to the threat?”
“Yes,” she said. “Are you finished with breakfast? With this wind, you’ll be able to hear what he said better inside.”
“I’m good, thanks,” I said, putting my napkin on the table and standing up in the stiffening breeze. “Let’s go hear it.”