That was where he made a mistake, because she knew he was lying. She looked him in the eyes. “You don’t want to help me,” she said. “No one wants to help me. No one ever has.”
There was a second of quiet, the tape recorder the only sound. Detective Black actually looked surprised. He’d had a good life, she realized. Parents, maybe even grandparents, who loved him. A sibling or two. She could see it all: track team, stern but loving teachers, kisses behind the bleachers with a pretty girl. A few silly drunken experiences that were written off to high spirits, then losing his virginity to another pretty girl. Eventually, the police academy and making detective when he was barely thirty. He had the lean physique of a man who exercised instead of growing a paunch, and he didn’t smoke. He saw bad things, sure, but he was saving people and putting the bad guys away. Saving the world.
This case was a problem for him, but it was one he would solve. Because in the end, the world always turned out the way he wanted it to.
Beth thought of her empty house, quiet now that her parents weren’t screaming at each other anymore. She thought of the hours sitting alone in her room as a child, her hands over her ears, trying to make it all go away inside her head. She thought of her father’s blood all over the kitchen floor. A lake of blood, deep and red, because it had gurgled out of him as he died. It had taken a cleaning crew three days to remove it. Ransom had made the arrangements while Beth and her mother stayed at a hotel.
And when it was cleaned up, Beth and her mother moved back in.
She always thought the house smelled coppery after that. She saw shadows in the kitchen, smelled her father’s cologne mixed with blood. She was thought to be an improper young lady, because she couldn’t cook, could barely make toast that she washed down with wine. No one had considered that she simply hated the kitchen at the Greer mansion and couldn’t stand to be inside it.
Tell the truth. We’re trying to help you.
Detective Black had never been as angry as Beth was right now.
“Do you own a gun?” Detective Washington asked for the hundredth time. He hated her, but at least his anger was something she understood. When she didn’t answer, he said, “We know your father owned one.”
Under the table, Ransom touched Beth’s knee. Just the side of his pinky finger tapping her once—his keep-quiet signal.
Beth looked at Washington. “Fuck you,” she said, her voice icy-calm.
Washington looked like she’d slapped him, and Ransom sighed. “We’re leaving now,” he said. “This interview is over.”
* * *
—
Outside the police station, there were two photographers this time, plus a reporter shouting questions. Ransom looked unimpressed as he took Beth’s elbow and led her to his car.
“Damn the papers,” he said. “Some hack is writing a line about a ‘lady killer’ right this minute. I swear to God I’d like the world to surprise me, just once.”
Beth got in the passenger seat. “You have nothing to say about what I said back there?”
Ransom got in, the car bouncing with his weight. His seat was set as far back as it would go to accommodate his long legs. “It would have been better if you were a little more ingratiating, I admit,” he said, “but that was a low blow, so I’m not one to lecture.”
That was almost amusing. Ransom was very much one to lecture. “They’re going to hate me no matter what I do,” Beth said. “Don’t you see that? I could be sweet, and those ‘lady killer’ articles are still going to get written.”
Ransom looked thoughtful as he pulled out of the lot, narrowly missing one of the photographers. Beth thought it was probably an intentional near miss. “I do see that,” he said. “People need someone to take their problems out on. You see that a lot when you’re a lawyer. Since you’re young and rich and lovely, you’re as good a target as any. It’s only going to get worse from here.” He signaled and made a turn, heading up the hill to Arlen Heights. “All I ask is that you don’t employ your sailor mouth when talking to the media, and definitely not if you ever talk to a judge.”
“You think they’re going to arrest me,” Beth said.
“They very much want to arrest you. Two men are dead, and you’re their only lead. The ballistics report might convince a judge to sign a warrant, and it might not. That’s the gamble they have to take.”
Beth pressed her lips together, looking out the window. “They’re going to get my handwriting,” she said.
“Sure, but not today. Just stay home, Beth, and don’t let this make you crazy. That’s all you have to do.”
“I can’t stay home,” Beth snapped. “I have things to do.”
“All of that driving around you do? Going nowhere? It needs to stop. Unless you want the press following you.”
Don’t let this make you crazy. Easy for him to say. “What if they’re right?” she asked, Ransom’s holier-than-thou wisdom getting on her nerves. “What if I really shot those men, and by defending me you’re setting me loose to do it again?”
Ransom didn’t even blink. “If you did it, they can damn well prove it, and not by getting you in an interview room and throwing Julian’s murder in your face, trying to make you cry. That was pure bullying back there, so I’m going to remind you, Beth—don’t ever talk to the police without me. That goes for reporters, too, but it goes ten times over for cops. If you talk to them alone, even your money won’t save you.”
There was more lecturing as Ransom drove her home, his version of fatherly advice: Don’t date. Don’t talk to strangers of any kind, because strangers will repeat everything you say to the nearest reporter. Don’t write letters, because they could be intercepted. Be careful what you say on the phone.
Beth listened in silence, watching out the window. The words flowed over her, because she was stuck on one thing he’d already said.
In the interview room, they’d been trying to make her cry about her father’s murder. But she hadn’t felt like crying at all.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
September 2017
SHEA
Sylvia Simpson worked at a law firm in downtown Claire Lake. Even though she was past retirement age by now, she was listed on the firm’s website as the assistant to one of the senior partners. But I definitely had the right Sylvia, which she confirmed when she replied to my Facebook message.
We met on a weekday afternoon. Our offices were only a few blocks apart, and I managed to take a break and slip from behind my desk. “Ten minutes,” Sylvia had written to me on Facebook. “That’s all I’ll give you. Meet me outside my office at three.”
Her firm was one of the nicest in town, the offices in a restored two-story Victorian house close to the ocean. At three o’clock, I stood on the front walk in my scrub top, wondering if I should go inside, when the front door opened and a woman of possibly seventy came out. She was wide and hard as a block of concrete, her white hair pulled back and her eyebrows drawn on in dramatic arches. She wore a gray wool skirt and jacket that were likely very expensive and still managed to look unflattering. She took a pack of cigarettes from her purse and motioned me around the corner of the house without a word.
“Surprised?” she asked me as she pulled out a chair on a small patio. She lowered herself into the chair and pulled out a cigarette and a pack of matches. Her voice was husky and low, intimidating. “An old woman like me, working. Caught you off guard.”
She hadn’t offered an introduction or a handshake. I pulled out a chair for myself and sat, feeling the cool, damp breeze from the ocean breathe past us. “Not really,” I said.
“Huh.” Sylvia lit a cigarette, inhaled, then exhaled, not bothering to blow the smoke away from me. “You’re bluffing, but it’s fine. If you think I’m old, you should see my boss. He’s even older than I am. I’ve been his assistant for thirty-five years, and when he goes, I go. I’m the only person he trusts.”
“That’s nice,” I said, pulling my phone from my bag. “Do you mind—”
“Put that thing away.” Her voice was flat, hostile. I put the phone back. “How old are you, anyway?”