“My daughter’s missing and you think the whole thing is a fucking joke,” I said.
“Do I?” Marjorie said. “I think it’s a joke? You give me a story that’s straight out of The Twilight Zone and I’m the one making a joke? Okay, let me ask you something very serious, then, Mr. Blake. Did you make up Yolanda Mills?”
It was like getting hit in the side of the head with a two-by-four.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“You heard me.”
I looked at Detective Jennings. “Is he fucking kidding?”
Jennings held my gaze. “Answer his question, Mr. Blake.”
I said to her, leaning closer to her, “From him, I can accept this kind of horseshit. But you? From the beginning, I’ve always thought you were in my corner.”
“This will all go a lot better, and be over a lot quicker, if you just answer the questions,” she said.
“No,” I said, sitting upright. “I did not make up Yolanda Mills.”
Marjorie said, “You sure? You sure you didn’t make her up, and use Kate Wood to back up your story? Use her as a witness?”
“What the hell did she tell you?” I asked. “There’s something you need to know about Kate Wood. No, two things. First, she’s got it in for me because I didn’t want to see her anymore. And second, she’s a nutcase.”
“Isn’t it possible,” Marjorie said, “that you waited until she came over to discover that first email, then later when you took the laptop downstairs, you sent yourself an email from a bogus Hotmail account in Yolanda Mills’s name, which Ms. Wood discovered upstairs? And then you placed your call to her, but you didn’t really place a call to anyone? That you faked it, all for Ms. Wood’s benefit?”
Now it was my turn to smile. Not with amusement, but astonishment. I said to him, “And you thought my story was inventive. You’re out of your fucking mind.”
Jennings remained stone-faced, but Marjorie’s cheeks flushed red with anger. “That’s not exactly answering the question, Mr. Blake,” Jennings said.
“You have to understand something about Kate Wood. She sees conspiracies all over the place. She thinks everyone’s got it in for her, like everyone gets up in the morning and has a meeting to figure out how they’re going to stick it to Kate Wood today. That’s why I felt I had to call her. Because I know how her mind works.”
“So that’s your defense,” Detective Marjorie said. “She’s a nut.”
“I’m just saying you need to know how she sees the world. Is this really what she believes, or did you lead her this way? Because I know it wouldn’t take much. Does she honestly think I was manipulating her? That I set this whole thing up so she’d corroborate some crazy story?” I looked directly at Jennings. “You saw my house when I got back from Seattle. You saw what they did to it.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “It is possible, in theory,” she said slowly, “that you could have done that before you left for Seattle.”
“Is that what you believe?” I asked her point-blank.
“You have to admit it’s possible,” she said.
“That’s not exactly answering the question, either,” I said. “Is that what you believe?”
She grimaced, as though she didn’t want to have to answer. Was that because she didn’t want Marjorie to know she thought I was innocent, or because she didn’t want me to know she’d given up on me?
“Why would I do something like that? Set up a call from someone who didn’t exist? Tear up my house and make it look like someone else did it? Plant cocaine so you could find it? Where would I get cocaine? And if I could get my hands on some, why would I do that? What possible reason could I have for doing something like that?”
Neither of them said anything. I guess they wanted me to figure it out on my own.
“Mr. Blake,” Jennings said, “what started out as an investigation into your daughter’s disappearance has fanned out in a number of directions. For example, there’s this man named Eric who supposedly was trying to kill—”
“Supposedly?” I said, pointing to my nose. “Does that look like a supposedly busted nose?”
Jennings continued, “And now a second missing girl. Who’s a very close friend of your daughter’s. You know what the common thread in all these incidents is?”
“Yes,” I said. “Sydney.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Detective Marjorie said. “The way I see it, what’s most common is you. You know what I think?”
I waited.
“I think you’re a pretty smart guy, but not smart enough. I think it’s even possible there are some people hunting for you. Maybe you’ve jerked some people around and they’re looking for payback. That part I haven’t worked out yet. But I do think it’s possible you’ve staged some of these things to make it look like your daughter was mixed up in something. Divert the attention away from yourself.”