“I don’t know what happened to the guy!” Ginger growled out. “I was in the back. Okay? I just got there, and then I heard some screaming, so I hid.”
“It would have taken you at least half an hour to get this stuff into the truck,” he pointed out. Duarte tapped at a photo of a truck, its bed partially full with sloppily boxed supplies. “Now, either you had help and someone cut fifteen minutes of that, or you were there a hell of a lot longer than a few minutes. That tells me if you heard screaming, it had to have started while you were ripping your own son off. Let me tell you what I think happened, and I’m cutting you slack on this, Ginger, because I’m going to assume you are telling me the truth and were alone, got it?
“You knew Forest wasn’t going to be around. He’s been staying with a friend while he recovers, so you thought maybe now was a good time to help yourself to a few things in the shop. Maybe you thought he owed you—hell, Marshall probably owed you because you let him have the kid when he asked to adopt Forest. You had it coming to you,” Duarte said.
“Reasonable,” Kiki interjected. “But see, I’d say she heard Collerton come in and hid then, because she didn’t want him to catch her shaking the place down. Am I right? Did you hide when you heard him come in?”
“I thought someone was going to rip the place off—”
“Someone was already ripping the place off, Ginger. That was you,” Duarte pointed out. “But you came in the back door—probably because you got a key from someplace and you guessed the alarm would be off. No one turns on an alarm when the building’s been beat up. Stuff falling, plywood instead of windows—none of the glass connections were working anyway, so the alarm would have kept bumping up with alerts. You knew they’d be off.”
“Marshall gave me a key.” The woman shifted. “I—”
“Let’s say Marshall gave you a key. For whatever reason he’d give you a key,” Kiki said. “And even if Forest did say, hey, Mom, come help me move some stuff, why didn’t you call the police when you heard a man screaming in the front of the shop? You had your phone on you.”
“I didn’t think—” Ginger’s eyes shifted, bouncing between the detectives. “You’re confusing me.”
“Why didn’t you leave out the back? You’ve seen Collerton. He didn’t die easy. You were sitting there and listening to it. Unless you were helping. Maybe it was you who’d spotted Collerton and knew he’d IDed you.” Kiki leaned in. “Is that why you’re covering up for who helped you out? Because the guy who came with you killed for you; then he split? Is all of this on the walls just to cover it up? And then you hid when you heard the door opening again? Or maybe you were scared your friend was coming back for you?”
“I didn’t kill anyone! Fuck, the guy was already there when I showed up. The fucking back door key wasn’t working, and I went to the front. It was already open!” Her lips peeled back from her teeth, and Ginger snarled at Kiki from across the table. “He was already there.”
“So no screaming, then. No opening doors. No one else coming in. Just the cop who caught you red-handed.” Duarte stood up from the table, letting out an exasperated breath. “You walked past a dead man and thought what? Time to go rip my son off? Nothing else? No worries about the man’s life? His family?”
“He was already dead,” she sneered. “Who the fuck cares about that? Not like he was going to get any deader while I was in the back. I was going to call the cops when I was done.”
“See, that’s how I know you weren’t there to help your kid, Ginger.” Kiki’s snarl shoved Ginger back in her chair. “A decent person would have stopped worrying about storing equipment and called for help. A thief would just continue stealing. That’s why you’re being arrested, you piece of shit. For whatever we can pin on you.”
“I want my fucking lawyer,” Ginger screamed at Duarte. “I want my fucking lawyer, and I want someone to call my damned kid. He’ll bail me out. You’ll fucking see, and he won’t press any goddamned charges—”
“See, I don’t need your son to press charges, Ginger,” Duarte said, calmly flicking a bit of lint from his jacket. “You were caught breaking and entering by an SFPD officer, in addition to having already discovered a murder victim and doing nothing. If we can show there was a speck of life in Brian Collerton at any time you were in that shop, I’m going to nail you for accessory to murder. Because you did nothing.”
“You can’t—” Ginger sputtered. “Look, my kid—”
“Might as well start hoping he’ll even pick up the phone when you call, Ginger,” Kiki said as she gathered up the crime scene photos. “Because really, what kind of mother walks past a dying man just to fuck over her own son?”
Chapter 16
Pick up the beat, Sinjun. You’re falling behind.
Fuck you, I’m the goddamned singer. Not the bassist, man.
I already got you a drummer, what the fuck else you want?