Free The Law of Similars by Chris Bohjalian Page B

busywork to Margaret; I could see she wanted to start laying the groundwork for a charge of first-degree murder. But first we had to rule out other causes. Then we might see if we could show deliberateness.
    "And see if gunsmiths are regulated," I added.
    Margaret's hair was black as licorice, and for some reason I thought she looked a bit like the doll on the desk. It might have been the nose. Margaret's nose was tiny, too. When she looked down at the notepad on the blotter, as she did that moment, it disappeared completely behind a curtain of bangs.
    "Okay, we will," she said. "Can we do the sexual assault next?"
    "Sure." I saw that beside her notes was the little Ziploc bag of dates she munched through the morning.
    "Attempted, actually. Burlington firefighter, thirty-four years old--"
    "A firefighter? I never expect untoward behavior from fire-fighters."
    "And he's a father. Three kids. But his wife and children were in Boston visiting family, and Dad hired an exotic dancer to come to their house on North Winooski. 'Adult dancing,' it said he was getting on the MasterCard slip."
    "Married father of three was putting it on a credit card?"
    "I'm sure the monthly statement would be discreet."
    "Nevertheless, talk about leaving a paper trail..." I looked down at the napkin in my lap and was astonished to see I'd already managed to scarf down my entire doughnut. And still I was hungry. Worse, I wanted a cup of coffee. Desperately.
    But Carissa had said the coffee bean sometimes interfered with a remedy. That little book on homeopathy had said the same thing. Consequently, I'd made the spontaneous decision that morning not to purchase a cup on my way into work, so that when Carissa called I could say, Look at me: crisp and clean and no caffeine. Make me well, you sexy healer, you.
    Well, I wouldn't say that second thing. But that crisp-and-clean line wasn't an abomination.
    "The firefighter had agreed to a hundred-and-sixty-dollar dance. Apparently that's about five minutes of stripping to lingerie, five minutes in lingerie, and five minutes in the buff."
    "He got a little overexcited?"
    "So it would seem. He asked her to--as the French say--clean his pipe. And she said no."
    "That's what I like: a stripper with morals."
    "He said he'd pay her whatever she wanted, and still she said no. So then he asked how much it would cost if she just climbed on top of him on the couch for a minute--no penetration."
    "And she said no."
    "No, she said yes."
    "Oh, Lord."
    "She says the minute she straddled him, he grabbed her and started trying to slip inside her. And so she slapped him hard on the face."
    "Good for her."
    "Based on the mug shot, it was a really good whack. Then she says she jumped off the couch and grabbed her things. And though she did call her driver, it's clear she wasn't all that frightened: She also took the time to call her boss to get approval for an extra three hundred dollars in charges."
    "And there went the grocery money for the month," I said.
    "You haven't heard the best part. When the driver arrived, the guy flashed some firefighter badge and said he was a cop! He said they could either tear up the credit-card slips or he'd arrest them. For a minute the driver believed him, but then the dancer asked to see more I.D."
    "And it got nasty?"
    "Yup. He took a swing at the driver, missed, and then grabbed the girl. Who knows what he had in mind. The driver--who, I hear, is one very large animal--pulled the firefighter's arms apart and extricated the dancer. Then, as they were leaving the house, a police cruiser pulled up."
    "Who called the cops? A neighbor?"
    "Nope. Dancer's boss. He didn't like how she sounded on the phone, and he got worried."
    I wondered, suddenly, if there were homeopathic aphrodisiacs. Or anti-aphrodisiacs. Something to suggest to that firefighter, maybe, the next time his wife was away. After all, there were certainly a great many conventional drugs that diminished a person's sex drive.
    "When's