Spectrum (The Karen Vail Series) Read Free

my wife?’”
    “‘This guy’—you mean Gregor Persephone?”
    “Yeah. I’ve seen him around the neighborhood, but I’ve never talked to him.”
    “You sure you’ve never talked to him before? This isn’t from something that happened a week ago, a month ago—”
    “I never talked to the guy. Ever.”
    “Ever talk to his wife? About anything?”
    “I don’t remember ever seeing her before. And I’d probably remember.”
    “Why’s that?”
    Basil shrugged. “If you saw her, you’d know.” He must have seen the cop’s questioning look, because he added, “She’s real pretty.”
    Livana turned away, shook her head.
    “So,” Kennedy said, “then you can’t say for sure. About talking to her before.”
    Basil took a deep breath and then exhaled, the vapor trailing off into the cold air. “Look, let me put it this way. I’ve never made a pass at another guy’s wife. I’m married. Happily. So it don’t matter who this woman is, or what she looks like. Even if I did talk to her once—which I don’t think I did—I’d never come on to her. I’m not like that.”
    “You’re a good-looking guy and all. But you’re saying this woman you’ve never spoken to just walks up to you, touches you—grabs your crotch? A woman you say you don’t know?”
    Basil shrugged. “That’s about it.”
    Kennedy looked at him. “Does that sound right to you?”
    Basil spread his arms at his sides. “I’m just telling you like it happened. Maybe she had an argument with her husband and was trying to make him jealous, and I was the lucky idiot who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
    Kennedy offered a slight nod, like that would not be the first time he had seen such a thing happen. As he jotted a note, he said, “What happened after that?”
    “I told him, ‘You got it all wrong, it was your wife who came on to me. And I told her to leave me alone.’ He called me a liar and pushed me. I told him I was there with my kids and I didn’t want no trouble. He pushed me again and said I shoulda thought a that before I came on to his wife. I wanted to walk away, but he hit me in the jaw.” Basil brought a hand to his face and palpated the welt.
    “Go on.”
    “After I got back up off the floor, he tried to hit me again. But I got him first.”
    “Then what?”
    “Then … I don’t know. We fought. I was just tryin’ to keep from gettin’ hit. I yelled at him to stop, but he was nuts. Like he really believed I made a pass at his wife.”
    “Basil.” Livana shook her head in disappointment, as if scolding him.
    “What? What was I supposed to do, just let him keep hitting me?”
    “Who else saw what happened?” Kennedy asked.
    Basil rubbed his arms to ward off the chill. “No one else was there. Well, the woman behind the counter, I guess, but I think she was in the back getting our pizzas. Or maybe she was hiding. Gregor’s wife left, or something, I don’t know. I don’t where she was. But I was a little busy.”
    “That it?”
    “The kids were there. My son Dmitri and his friend Niklaus. Fedor’s son.”
    “Did they see what happened?”
    “They were playing around, chasing each other. But once that woman started screaming, yeah, they probably saw it.”
    “Can’t you leave them out of it?” Livana said, “They’re just kids—”
    “First things first,” Kennedy said. “We’re not done. What happened to Mr. Persephone’s face?”
    Basil hesitated. “His face?” he stammered.
    “Yeah. It was bloody, all cut up.”
    “I, uh, I grabbed a Coke bottle, I swung it at him, smashed it across his face. He went down. Knocked him out, I guess, when his head hit the floor.”
    Kennedy waited for more, then scribbled another note on his pad. “Anything else you want to add?”
    Basil’s eyes roamed the dirt-strewn street before coming to rest on the cop. “That’s it, I think.”
    Kennedy reached over and yanked open the fire door. “Wait inside while I sort this out.”
    As