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psychopath.” The profiler removed his spectacles, revealing small blue eyes set in a baleful stare.
    Walter coolly described the presenter as a classic murdering personality who had sex with his employee before he killed him. LeHavre stood at the podium, his face a blank mask, and said nothing.
    The first clue, Walter calmly noted, was that he detected “a grand, slightly overinflated presence in our guest. I picked up what I considered to be a covered, macho effeminate voice, just that clip of language that made me raise my eyebrow and look up at him, notice him as it were, in a new way.” Walter arched his left eyebrow for emphasis.
    “Studying the photographs of the young man who is the victim in this case, as it happens a young and very handsome man, it became clear to me the nature of the friendship the two men enjoyed, at least for a time. It was clearly a biblical alliance—the young, handsome man and the older, powerful but less attractive boss—and the whole issue of jealousy had come into play. And of course in these situations the guy who is the boss controls the money.”
    Walter looked up at the chandelier as if in contemplation. “Now then, many times in such relationships, as one observes them,” he said, “you kiss the hand you dare not bite. But such relationships are notoriously unstable, especially in the homosexual realm. Almost always there comes a time where the young one is unfaithful, untrue, or goes in search of a new alliance, and what we have is punishment coming back—if this guy can’t have him nobody’s going to have him.”
    “This is outrageous,” LeHavre said softly, to no one in particular. He gathered his materials and began to move toward the door.
    “You see, it never made sense that a bouncer or bouncers had killed Allain,” Walter went on. “What’s in it for them? Bouncers don’t kill people; they throw them out of bars.
    “Mr. LeHavre, for the pleasures of power and control, has thrust himself into the police investigation for years,” he added. “He believes he’s smarter than anyone.” He smiled. “He enjoys playing that dangerous game of catch-me-if-you-can. Today we have witnessed an arrogant and vainglorious attempt to brag to a roomful of cops.
    “You see, the first rule of murder is the murder isn’t over until the murderer says it is . . . and you, sir, are attempting to extend the pleasure of murder by exploiting all of us here today. At that, you have failed. You are not smarter than any of us. You are bright but an underachiever, for which the triumph of murder compensates.”
    At the door, LeHavre turned back and said, “You have no proof of this, of any of this, none whatsoever. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”
    Walter spoke over the top of his glasses. “You must have enjoyed it whilst it lasted.”
    “Poor guy didn’t even get his magnifying glass,” Fleisher said as he left the room with his partners. “What did I tell you? I told you it was a case that merited attention,” he added, a huge smile creasing his beard. Bender grinned and Walter glared at his partners.
    “Another Vidocq Society lunch,” Bender said, “another murder solved.”
    Fleisher said he was uncomfortable with his partners’ attack on LeHavre. “I don’t see the evidence for it,” he said.
    “You may want to rethink it, Bill,” Walter said. “The guy didn’t get his jollies this time. The urge is insatiable. If he can’t stimulate himself sufficiently with memory, he’ll kill again.”

• CHAPTER 3 •
    THE KNIGHTS OF THE CAFÉ TABLE
    A fter lunch, the VSMs exited the eighteenth-century tavern and hurried across the narrow and cobbled streets, making connections to Arizona, England, Egypt, France, and beyond; Fleisher, Bender, and Walter walked to a coffee shop on the corner. “Murder will out,” Chaucer wrote in The Canterbury Tales . “This is my conclusion.” But real life, Walter was fond of saying, was never so easy.
    “That’s