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She rolled her eyes and plucked a piece of gauze from the tray table next to the bed, using it to soak up the blood oozing from the wound.

“About as well as you’d think,” he mumbled. “She let me in long enough to tell me off and then she kicked me out. Her son was coming over for dinner, and she didn’t want him to see me there.”

“Were you on good terms with your wife then?” Josie asked Holmes when he turned his attention back to them.

“Which time?”

“Both.”

He sighed. “A week before she was attacked? Yes, I was, but I didn’t go there with any romantic intentions.”

Josie would bet a week’s worth of pay he’d gone there with horny intentions, though. Sylvia had been right to turn him away.

Holmes went on, “When we shared our kiss two years before that? No, at that time I wasn’t. It didn’t matter though.”

“How did you feel about Sylvia rejecting you?” Gretchen said. “After the kiss?”

“Is this really relevant to her murder?”

“Tell us and we’ll decide if it is or not,” Josie said.

He watched the glass patient as she lifted her arm and twisted it in one direction and then the other, taking in the glass shards remaining. Another large piece was wedged in her armpit. “I was upset. Angry. Is that what you want to hear?”

Josie wondered if that rejection—after years of pursuing Sylvia—had tipped him over the edge. Had the culmination of all the times she had rebuffed him unleashed something in him? Had he decided to take his anger and frustration out on innocent women? Then two years later when she rejected him again, on her?

On the surface, he didn’t seem like the type. Then again, as a doctor, he had to be carefully controlled and meticulous. It wasn’t a stretch to think that could bleed into other areas of his life. He’d admitted to being duplicitous. Carrying a flame for his wife’s doula for well over a decade. Attempting to enter into a relationship with Sylvia multiple times, justifying it by the fact that he was separated at those times. Josie was quite certain his ex-wife had no idea of his feelings for Sylvia. She was certain that if they dug deeper, they’d find instances of infidelity in Holmes’s past, despite his assertion he’d never strayed.

Gretchen said, “How did Sylvia react when you visited her after the attack?”

“She was short with me. Wouldn’t invite me in. Through a crack in the door, she told me she was moving to Denton. Getting a fresh start.”

“Is that why you and your wife chose to move here?” asked Josie.

“No, of course not. There was an opening here.”

Josie’s hometown certainly had some breathtaking scenery and a few upscale neighborhoods, but the area wasn’t nearly as opulent as some of the towns on the Main Line. The salary at Denton Memorial, which was a community hospital rather than a teaching hospital, had to be a significant cut from what he was accustomed to. Josie didn’t believe him but she let it go for now. “How often were you in touch with her once you moved here?”

“I wasn’t,” he said. “I mean, I saw her when she brought her daughter-in-law in for a broken wrist. She was shocked to see me. That was about a year ago. I was still married though, and I knew how she felt about that so I didn’t pursue her this time.”

“Why did you get divorced?” asked Gretchen.

A series of bloodcurdling shrieks sounded from the action movie, causing yet another nurse to sprint into the hall. Holmes pointed to the recalcitrant patient and waved her off. She made an attempt to get him to turn it down but he refused.

“My wife and I got tired of trying to make it work,” Holmes said. “There were too many things we simply couldn’t forgive and forget. The kids were older, absorbed in their own lives. It was time.”

“What happened two weeks ago that Sylvia agreed to see you?” asked Josie.

“It marked six months since my divorce. I thought she might finally give me a real chance.”

Josie thought about Sylvia’s call log. In the six to seven months before Fisher stalked her and Holmes in the city park, there had been two or three calls from the hospital. They’d assumed the calls had had to do with doctors’ appointments, since there was a medical office building attached to the main building and any outbound calls showed up on caller ID as the hospital’s main number. There had been one two weeks before Sylvia was killed but no one on the team had thought anything of it.

“You contacted her from here,” Josie said. “Instead of using your cell phone.”

“She was seeing someone,” he said. “She said that he was very possessive and she was afraid he’d been checking her phone when she wasn’t aware. I told her that was a red flag.”

Like he wasn’t a walking red flag. Maybe not in the same way as Fisher but being untrustworthy, emotionally manipulative and selfish were still red flags.

“She told me she would handle him, but she didn’t want to cause unnecessary drama when she still didn’t see a way through for us. She wouldn’t even consider giving things a try until I’d been divorced for six months. Anyway, we met at the park, had a lovely walk, good conversation. She agreed to think about it. That was it. That was the last time I saw her.”