He managed, “Do you know who my dad is?”
Will wanted to melt into the floor.
“I do,” she said. “How about answering my question.”
“I know what they are. Can you take off these handcuffs? They’re really uncomfortable.”
She ignored his request. “So tell me what they are?”
“They’re me and Kristen.”
“Kristen Gruber.”
He nodded.
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes.” He stared angrily at her in a face that looked alien to Will.
“Who took them?”
“She did.”
“When?”
He hesitated, then told her: last fall.
“So you knew her?”
“We were friends.”
“Some of these show you naked in her bed,” Henderson said. “Looks like you were more than friends. Why didn’t you tell me this the last time we talked?”
He stared down. She prompted him with his name.
“I was scared,” he said. “She and I had a fling.”
“Last fall?”
“Yeah, last fall.”
Will felt acid boring a hole in his stomach.
“So you picked her up? What? She was a good deal older than you, and a celebrity to boot. Why would she want a kid like you?”
He didn’t answer.
“I’m about her age,” Henderson said, her tone changing from sympathetic to mocking. “I can’t imagine a bigger turn-off than some baby barely out of his acne stage…”
“She picked me up, okay!” He wiggled in the chair, trying to find a comfortable position without success.
“I find that hard to believe.”
“That’s because you’re not Kristen, lady.”
“You can call me Detective Henderson, or detective, or officer.”
“Whatever,” he said. All his sobbing from the night at Hyde Park Square was gone. In its place sat a fuming defiance.
“So why’d she pick you up? You look pretty ordinary to me. Are you some hot lover on the prowl for cougars?”
“As if.” He gave a mordant laugh. “She wanted to deflower me. It excited her.”
Will resisted the involuntary urge to shake his head. He listened to the intonations of John’s voice; could it have been the one he heard behind him the previous night? Then there was John’s pale, short hair: someone might mistake him for bald, especially if she didn’t get a good look. He forced his jaw to unclench.
Henderson sat still for a few beats. “It must have been exciting for you.”
“I wanted somebody my own age. But the girls my age don’t like me. Kristen did. She thought I was mature. She said I had good judgment, that I acted very mature.”
“You’re not showing it so far,” Henderson said. “She’s dead. We have your admission that you were on her boat the night she was murdered and the evidence to back it up. Now we know you were her lover. It’s not looking good. I’d say when you were on the Licking River with your friends and saw her boat. It put you in a rage. While they were passed out, you unlashed the Zodiac, went back, and murdered her.”