117 Days of James Patterson - Day Seventy-Eight

Day 78, Chapter 78
I had dinner with someone the other night who had never heard of James Patterson.  I can't tell you how refreshing that was.

I called Jacobi from Yuki's office and told him that Marcus Dowling had been having an ongoing relationship with a woman, not his wife, for two years.

"Go get 'em," Jacobi said.

The leaps in logic within this thing are getting pretty ridiculous.  I understand that the police may be doing whatever they can to get a leg up on this case, but there seems to be absolutely no evidence that Marcus had anything to do with Casey's death - especially since the cops bungled the crime scene and the interview of Marcus on the day of the murder.  How does the fact that he has been having an affair prove that he killed his wife?  Even if that were true, there's no physical evidence of it because you let him take a fucking shower after the murder.

Lindsay and Conklin head to Caroline Henley's house to confront her about her affair with Marcus.  She opens the door to her home "wearing her blond hair in one long braid, black tights under a blue-striped man's shirt, a big diamond ring next to her wedding ring."  Just in case you feel that may be relevant.  Sometimes I hope that these descriptions will come back around later, like, a mysterious figure will be seen wearing black leggings and a man's shirt and only those of us who've been paying attention will know that it was Caroline Henley.  But, no that never happens.

Conklin has consistently proved that he can get any woman to spill her guts, so once we were ensconced in overstuffed furniture, I turned the floor over to him.

That may be the worst sentence in this book.  Or maybe I'm just grumpy this morning.  Or both.  

They tell Mrs. Henley that they know about her affair with Dowling and that they just need her to confirm his "whereabouts" at certain times.  I'm not sure what this will prove, since she wasn't in the bedroom having sex with Marcus when he shot Casey, although I'm sure Patterson tried to work that scene in somehow.

"Casey stifled him. She ground him down with her jealousy and her constant demands. Marc was waiting for the right time, and then he was going to divorce her and I was going to leave Graeme. We were going to get married. That's not bull, that's the truth."

While Conklin listens to Caroline, Lindsay walks around the living room, looking at family photos - all featuring Caroline at the center.

I wondered why she was attracted to an aging movie star twenty years' her senior. Maybe her vanity demanded more of a catch than a stockbroker ordinaire.

Wow.  Bitch.

While talking to Conklin, Caroline realizes that Marcus is a suspect in Casey's murder (how it took this long, I don't know) and wonders aloud if Marcus were capable of killing someone. "You think he killed Casey for me?"

Back out in the car, I said to my partner, "So maybe he wanted out of the marriage but didn't have the guts to tell Casey. The Kitty shows up in his bedroom, for Christ's sake. Dowling couldn't have planned it better."

"Another way to look at it," Conklin said. "Divorce is expensive. But, if you get away with it, murder is dead cheap."

What could I possibly add to that?
How 'bout, Go to Day 79?