“I’ll tell Mac you’re here.”
When she hung up the phone, she told me to go back to the visitor’s office. The small Crystal Haven Police Department didn’t have the expertise or manpower to run a homicide investigation. Whenever something big came up, they sent a detective from the sherriff’s office, which is about twenty-five minutes away. Fortunately, that hadn’t been necessary for many years. Several doors sat closed on the left side of the hallway. The right side opened up into a large workroom where four officers had desks. I glanced in but it was empty. Lisa had said Mac was in the last office on the left.
The door was slightly ajar. I peeked around the corner to get a glimpse of Mac before he spotted me. I saw a gray metal desk with matching file cabinet, and a dead ficus tree, which must have belonged to the office’s previous owner. It had been years since I’d seen Mac. He was four years older than me, so we were never in school together. He’d had Tom Andrews’s current job for most of the time I was in high school. We both left town eight years ago, and I hadn’t seen him since. He looked almost the same: short blond hair, with maybe a few more wrinkles around the eyes. He’d always been muscular, but now he’d become solid, mature, and more imposing. I wondered if he had forgiven me yet.
“Clyde, don’t lurk. Come and sit.” He hadn’t looked up, and I jumped at the sound of his voice.
“Hi, Mac.” I sat in the chair in front of his desk and rubbed my palms on my jeans. I felt like I was visiting the principal.
“Clyde. How have you been?” He tapped a stack of papers into alignment on his desk.
“Um, good. Thanks. You?” I wasn’t sure what to do with my hands, so I held them tightly in my lap.
“Just great.” He sat back and smiled, but it wasn’t his nice smile. His gray-blue eyes were just as intense as I remembered. “Until someone gets murdered and one of my witnesses, who happens to be a trained police officer, strolls off the premises with trace evidence, leaving nothing more than a slip of paper with some dog names on it.”
“I didn’t touch that scene.” Five seconds in the same room and we were already fighting. “And I’m not a witness to anything. We got there after she was dead.”
“The dog, Clyde,” he said, rubbing between his eyes.
“You think the dog is a witness?” I thought maybe Vi had been working on him without telling me. His steely gaze told me I was wrong.
“The dog was all over the house,” he said slowly, as if instructing a new recruit. “Who knows what trace evidence it may have been carrying before you allowed it to become contaminated?”
“Oh.” I glanced down to see what my hands were doing. “I don’t think he would have been very helpful. We found him shivering under the table. He’s not very brave. I doubt he went near the body or the murderer.”
“Just have a feeling about that, do you? Or did it come to you in a dream?” Mac leaned forward.
He might as well have hit me. I sat back and took a deep breath. So. He hadn’t forgiven, or forgotten.
“I don’t have to take this, Mac. I came here to help.” I started to stand but then thought better of it. “You know as well as I do that anything you pull off a dog is going to be contaminated anyway.”
Mac pressed his lips into a thin line.
“I would have thought you’d have gotten over it by now,” I said, and held his gaze.
He stared hard at me and then seemed to pull himself together. He took a deep breath, and I could see the tension release from his face.
“You’re right, Clyde. Let’s start over.”
“Fine.” I crossed my arms and held his gaze until he looked away.
“I need an official statement from you about this morning.” He shuffled through the files on his desk. “Everything you did leading up to and including finding the body.”
“Officer Andrews already has a statement.”
“I need another one. I thought you wanted to help.” He glanced up from his papers. “I also need to interview the boy. Is he old enough to give me anything useful?”
“He’s thirteen.”
“Grace’s kid is thirteen?” He sat back, eyebrows up.
“She got pregnant right after she got married.” I became very interested in a hangnail.
“Still, I didn’t expect him to be that old. . . .” Mac rubbed between his eyes again.
“Mac, I’m really sorry about everything. . . .” I reached out and touched the edge of his desk.
“Ancient history, Clyde.” He sliced across the air with his hand as if that settled it. “I need your help on this case. Let’s not complicate things by dredging up the past. It’s done.”