No, and no.
It’s Isaac, staring at me, looking … not so happy. I mean, he’s not Mr. Sunshine on a good day, but … why shouldn’t he be happy? He should be dancing a jig, the way things are going.
He produces a key from behind his back and opens the door. He walks in and sizes me up. I try to put on a brave front, to look like I’m holding up much better than I really am. But I can’t hide the dark circles under my eyes, and I haven’t showered in two days; my hair is flat and oily. My clothes look exactly as they should—like I’ve slept in them for two nights.
He doesn’t just look unhappy. He looks like he just swallowed a bug.
Why the long face, Isaac?
“You have the right to remain silent,” he says to me. And then he runs through the rest of the Miranda warnings. I could say them backward by now.
“Why are you Mirandizing me?” I ask.
“I want you to acknowledge I’ve made you aware of your rights,” he says.
“Fine. Done.”
But fresh Miranda warnings? Only one reason for that.
He wants to question me on a new topic.
“What happened in 1994?” he asks.
I draw back. Why is he asking me about 1994? When I was just a kid. The year that thing happened, when I disappeared, only to be found on the beach by 7 Ocean Drive. The day my parents whisked me away from the Hamptons, never to return during my childhood.
Seven hours of hell, Aunt Chloe called it.
“There was a missing-persons report that summer,” he says. “It lasted less than a day. I saw it myself. July—”
“I have nothing to say to you, Isaac. Zilch.”
Isaac steps back. He can’t be surprised that I’d clam up. His face turns tomato red.
“I just want you to know,” he says, “that I know you’re behind this. I don’t know what kind of crap you’re pulling here, but I’m going to figure it out. You may have won this battle, but you won’t win the war.”
What the hell is he talking about? What battle did I win? As far as I can tell, right now I’m getting the royal crap beaten out of me.
He opens his hand. “You’re free to leave,” he says.
Oh. Justin came through with the money that quickly? Quicker than he thought he could.
But this doesn’t seem right. Isaac doesn’t have any handcuffs.
There’s a protocol when you bond out. You’re transported to the sheriff, who makes arrangements for your home confinement, gets a list of addresses for doctors and lawyers and grocery stores so they can input the coordinates into the GPS. Then someone fits the ankle bracelet on you.
But until then, you’re still locked up. You’re handcuffed and transported.
“I said you’re free to leave,” he says. “You’re being released.”
“I don’t understand.”
Isaac shoots me a look. He thinks I do understand. He thinks I’ve pulled some kind of fast one, that I’m just playing dumb.
“You’re no longer under arrest for the murders of Dede Paris and Annie Church,” he says.
My head spins, some strange version of hope floating through me.
“The DNA came back on the murder weapon,” he says. “None of the blood on the knife matches those girls. Their stab wounds don’t match up with the knife blade, either. That knife wasn’t used to kill Dede and Annie.”
I stand up for the first time, unsteady, certain I’m not hearing this correctly. A bloody knife, with both Aiden’s and my fingerprints on it, but …
“We did get matches on the blood, though,” says Isaac. “Not Dede or Annie, but two matches. One of the matches was you, Murphy.”
Like the floor has dropped out from beneath me, like I’m spinning, falling …
“My … blood?”
My blood on the knife? My prints and my blood?
“And … who else’s blood?” I manage. “You said … two matches.”
“You know,” says Isaac, fuming. “You damn well know. Tell me, Murphy. Tell me everything.”
But I can’t. I don’t know. I don’t know what the hell is going on.
“That knife wasn’t used to kill Annie and Dede,” says Isaac. “It was the knife used to kill Holden Dahlquist the Sixth, on July 13, 1994. The same day that you went missing for seven hours.”
105
I STUMBLE OUT of the police station with a bag holding my cell phone, wallet, keys.
I don’t know what to do.
I don’t know where to go.
I look at my hand, at the inch-long scar across my palm. The only injury they found on me, Aunt Chloe said, after I went missing for seven hours and then was found on the beach, otherwise unharmed.
That scar must have come from the knife. The knife that had my fingerprints on it. It cut my hand. I must have touched it, too.
My prints, my blood.
On the knife that Holden VI used to kill himself.
On July 13, 1994.
I was there. I was there when it happened.
What the hell happened that day?
Aiden, I think. I need to find Aiden.
But how? And whom can I trust at this point? Not Noah. Not Ricketts, not anymore.