“Five more minutes,” Tia said.
“If you upset her again, you will leave.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tia said.
When the nurse left, Tia said to Elise with a tone that was both firm and kind, “Elise, you have two options. You come clean now, and we’ll help you. Cooperation goes a long way with prosecutors. I give you my word, Elise. You tell the truth, and I’ll be by your side for the entire process.”
She didn’t say anything at first, didn’t look at them. Then a little squeak came out. “They’ll kill me.”
“We can protect you.”
Tears leaked from her eyes. “No one can protect me.”
“Who shot you?”
She shook her head.
Tia looked at Lucy. Lucy realized what Tia was doing—Tia was being the good cop, she wanted Lucy to be the big bad federal cop. Lucy didn’t like that role at all—she didn’t want to browbeat this poor girl. But she said in a stern, calm voice, “Elise, we have more than enough evidence to turn over to the prosecution for a first-degree murder charge. You will be tried as an adult. Even if you were granted leniency because of your age and mitigating factors, you wouldn’t see the outside of a jail cell for at least twenty years.”
“It doesn’t matter. They’ll get to me in jail.” She stared at Lucy. “The only way I’ll be safe is if you let me go. I can disappear and they’ll never find me.”
“We can and will protect you if you tell us the truth,” Lucy said.
“You can’t!”
“Then I’ll have to charge you with first-degree, premeditated murder.”
“No, no! It was an accident, he wasn’t—”
She stopped talking. Her eyes darted back and forth between Tia and Lucy. She reached for her water again with shaking hands.
“What was an accident?” Lucy asked.
Elise put the water down and stared at the ceiling, tears streaming down her face. With the back of her free hand she wiped them way. She bit her lip and was obviously weighing her fears—was she more terrified of the people she worked for or the police?
“Okay—just this. It was an accident. It was supposed to be easy. Just—go in, seduce this old guy, take pictures. And if I couldn’t seduce him, well, shoot him up with a little happy juice. He wouldn’t remember anything, and I’d still get the pictures. I didn’t know he would die! I didn’t know, I just thought it was, you know, something that would make him sleepy and forgetful. I didn’t even know he was dead until yesterday, when—” She stopped herself. “Anyway, it was an accident.”
“It’s still murder.”
“It was an accident,” she whispered.
“Did you take pictures?”
She nodded.
“You took pictures of Harper Worthington,” Lucy said specifically.
“Y-yes.”
“Where are they?”
“I gave everything to the person who hired me.”
Everything? That sounded like more than just pornographic photos of Harper Worthington.
“Were you hired to take pictures of anyone else? Anyone other than Mr. Worthington?” Lucy asked. Tia shot a confused glance at her, but Lucy focused on Elise’s reaction.
“I—I—you don’t understand.”
“You’d be surprised at what I understand,” Lucy said. “Who hired you?”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“He’s the one who shot me. And he’s just a middleman, I don’t know who really wanted them.”
“Who is he?” Lucy pushed again.
“I don’t know!”
“We know you got this job through Mona Hill.”
She frowned but didn’t say anything.
“Mona told us that you are new in town and called her up looking for work.” Lucy turned to Tia. Tia nodded. “We have enough to get a warrant to search Mona’s apartment and bring her in for questioning.”
“She doesn’t know anything. I just called Mona because I was bored, and I had to wait around until they told me this guy would be at the motel. They just wanted the porn shots. Probably to blackmail him, I don’t know, I don’t care! I did my part and got paid and that’s all, but—” She stopped talking.
“But?”
“I fucked up, okay? I grabbed his phone because I thought I could sell it, but then I lost it and they were so angry. That’s why they shot me, okay? That’s why I have to disappear.”
“Who.”
“I. Can’t. Tell. You! Leave me alone! Just leave me alone, please?”
The machines started beeping again and the nurse walked in and told Tia and Lucy to get out. “If I see you here again tonight, I’ll have security remove you.”
Tia said to the nurse, “Try it. If we need to talk to her, we will, and I’ll get a warrant to transfer her to a prison hospital.”
Tia turned back to Elise. “Everything I said still holds. Think about it tonight, and we’ll talk in the morning.”
She and Lucy walked out.
Barry approached them. “I listened from the nurses’ station,” he said. “Good job, I think you both got more out of her than anyone else could have.”