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said Mac. “I was asked to be on that panel but I couldn’t clear the time.”
    â€œThat’s right,” Tatum said. “I forgot that you’d been asked. Anyway, I have no doubt that those people who falsely confess are high on the HIP scale. They’re suggestible and always want to please others even when it means being convicted of crimes of which they’re innocent. I think that Sheila Klaus can easily fall into that trap.”
    â€œWhich would be a terrible miscarriage of justice,” Smith said as he refilled their coffee cups. “But why your interest in this particular case, Nic? I gather that you didn’t know Sheila before Dr. Sedgwick’s death and the MPD investigation into it.”
    Tatum shrugged and sipped his coffee. “I can’t answer that, Mac, except that there’s something about her that raises a red flag with me. She traveled to San Francisco with Sedgwick four times using an assumed name, Carla Rasmussen. It appears on the surface that Sedgwick arranged that to keep his affair with her from his wife. But that doesn’t hold water for me. What difference did it make what name she used? If his wife discovered that he’d made those four trips with another woman, the name she’d traveled under is irrelevant. Airline records confirm those trips they took together. They also indicate that she made two additional trips to San Francisco in the past few months using the same assumed name Carla Rasmussen.”
    â€œWith Sedgwick?” Annabel asked.
    â€œNo. She went alone.”
    â€œYou say that she lied about her relationship with Sedgwick,” Annabel said. “Isn’t that consciousness of guilt, lying to authorities?”
    â€œUsually it is,” Tatum agreed, “but I’m convinced that she believes those lies. I’m hoping that if the police do formally charge her I’ll have a chance to spend clinical time with her. I’ve already told the detectives that I want to do that.”
    Smith asked, “How likely is it that she’ll be charged?”
    â€œVery likely,” Tatum responded, “according to what I’ve been told. They’ve questioned her twice more, and she sticks to her story about the relationship. What I was thinking is that because you and Annabel knew her from when she was at GW, you might … well, you might give her a call and see if there’s some way you can help. I know that you’re taking on some cases aside from teaching and—”
    â€œI’d be uncomfortable calling her out of the blue,” Smith said.
    â€œI understand,” Tatum said. “But if she’s formally charged, she’ll need an attorney, someone who understands the sort of personality she is.”
    â€œA Dionysian,” Annabel said.
    â€œIf I’m not mistaken, a very rare Dionysian,” Tatum said. “Just thought I’d raise the possibility.”
    As Tatum and Cindy were leaving, Smith asked how Tatum’s flying had gone that afternoon.
    â€œGreat,” Tatum said. “I’ve been trying to get Cindy to come up with me, but she refuses.”
    â€œYou bet I do,” she said. “You’ll never find me in that stupid little plane.”
    Tatum laughed as the elevator arrived. As the doors started to close, Tatum looked at the Smiths and said, “Going up in that stupid little plane is a lot safer than crossing Virginia Avenue.”

 
    CHAPTER
    12
    SAN FRANCISCO
    Dr. Sheldon Borger stood out among the dozen onlookers at the gym where sparring sessions were taking place in the ring. It wasn’t that he was an imposing physical figure. The fifty-eight-year-old physician was of average height and weight. He was artificially tanned, which provided a contrasting scrim against which a set of gleaming white teeth shone. His gray hair was carefully trimmed and rested close to his pate and temples. Not a hair out of place.
    It was