“She convinced him she’d be worth more clean. She was good at convincing people. AFP sees himself as a businessman. She paid him straight, every week, until she disappeared and came to be with me.”
“Did it bother you that she’d fucked all those men?”
I phrased it as crudely as I could and he stared at the carpet. He was a natural suspect. Jealousy was always a prime motive, wronged spouses and boyfriends always prime suspects.
“All those men, their dicks inside her.” I spoke tawdry fluently. “It would sure bother me. It would bother me to find that my wife had been fucking even one man other than me.”
Trust me. Only every second, splinters under my skin. But the splinters didn’t want to make me kill her.
I said, “I know you’re a nice guy, Tim. But didn’t it get to you? Did you ever think about killing her when you thought about all those men…”
“No!” His face flushed apple-red.
I took my time, studying his expression and body language, and letting the silence work for me, having watched Peralta interrogate many suspects.
Finally, Tim drew up his wiry frame. “That was in the past. She regretted it. I loved her. I’d rather die than hurt her.”
I believed him. He didn’t have murder in him.
“Did she ever talk about a man named Larry Zisman? He used to be a pro football player. Owned a condo downtown.”
“Was that one of her clients?”
I didn’t answer.
“The name doesn’t sound familiar,” he said. “And she didn’t talk about those men. I didn’t want to know and she didn’t tell me.”
“So you guys lived alone here. What about friends?”
“We’d say hi to neighbors. It’s that kind of place. Grace stayed in touch with Addison…”
“Who the hell is that? A man or a woman?”
“A woman. She was her best friend.”
“Did she visit?”
Tim said that Addison had visited several times, but they never left O.B.
“Addison didn’t know anything about Grace’s, you know, business.”
“I need her contact information.” Then I asked when he had seen Grace last.
“The morning of April twenty-second. I had classes. When I came home, she was gone. I never even got a text goodbye. All her stuff is still here. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Are you afraid she’s gone back to the life?”
He shook his head. “She said she was done and I believed her. She got rid of her old phone, even. We were good together.” He sighed. “I wanted to save her from the past.”
Tim Lewis looked like a weak reed of a white knight, but his sincerity was obvious. I had gone through my white-knight phase. Now I was covered with tarnish. I made him go through the day she disappeared in detail. He had gone to classes at eight-thirty that morning. Grace was with the baby at home. When he returned around three that afternoon, she was gone. All she took was her purse and cell phone. She always carried pepper spray and a knife in that purse. Nothing had seemed unusual in their apartment.