Tumbledown (17 page)

“Okay.” Sarah nodded but said nothing further, the officer’s threat still fresh in her mind.

Bridie sighed but chose not to push the issue. She opened the file in front of her and uncapped a pen. “I already met with Alex, who gave me a rundown. I just need to go over the salient points before Quinn and the ADA get their hooks into you. Oh, and”―she held up a finger as if to excuse her absentmindedness and pulled a small foil-wrapped package from her briefcase―“Alex sends her love.”

Sarah couldn’t stop herself from smiling as she unwrapped the purple foil. Within it were three squares of Cadbury’s chocolate. She broke them apart and offered one to Bridie.

“No, thank you, but you go ahead. It took me long enough to get it approved by Quinn. Strangely, he couldn’t confirm that you’d been given anything at all to eat since your arrest.”

Sarah bit at the edge of a piece, nibbling daintily in deference to Bridie. When she heard Bridie chuckle, she gave in and put the entire chunk in her mouth.

“I’ll give you a moment, shall I?” Bridie asked.

Sarah spoke around the melting chocolate. “I’m good. Go ahead.”

Bridie nodded, her pen poised at the top of a fresh sheet of paper. “So…tell me exactly what happened on the day that Lyssa Mardell was murdered.”

Quinn pressed the button on the tape recorder and then stated the names of those present in the interview room, the date, and the exact time. It was later than Sarah had thought, which explained the pain just above her right eye. Hours of stress and dehydration had given her a pounding headache, but Bridie’s request for medication had been denied. With Sarah’s arraignment scheduled for the following afternoon, Quinn had refused to postpone the interview, and Sarah, wanting to expedite the inevitable appeals process, had stopped Bridie from objecting.

Sitting beside Quinn, Emerson looked long and hard at Sarah’s wrists before meeting her gaze. Unable to tell whether his concern was disingenuous, she kept her expression blank, leaving him to draw his own conclusions. She had been in the cell for six hours; if he had been so worried about her, why hadn’t he checked on her during that time?

A swish of paper diverted her attention to the woman sitting to Quinn’s right. On starting the tape recorder, he had identified her as Assistant District Attorney Linda Kryger, and he didn’t waste time introducing her formally to Sarah. Most of Sarah’s legal knowledge had been gleaned from television shows where ADAs struggled altruistically for the good of society while private legal practice raked in all the money. Kryger, however, with her expensive tailored suit and beautifully manicured nails, didn’t appear to be laboring on the breadline.

She had taken a series of glossy photographs from a folder and now placed them in front of Sarah one by one, lining them up in a sequential horror show. Transfixed, Sarah stared at the images: a detailed shot of Lyssa’s eyes wide open and lifeless; Lyssa’s blood-soaked body splayed on the ground; Lyssa’s body washed and naked on the slab, with two stab wounds marring the pale skin of her torso. Sarah drew that final image closer and traced a finger over the second wound.

“He stabbed her twice?” she whispered. No one had told her that. She shuddered at the violence implicit in the photograph. The abdominal wound was a wide, thick line just below Lyssa’s navel, obviously deep and, given its proximity to the aortic artery, probably fatal. It explained the massive blood loss evident when Sarah had attempted resuscitation. She had never thought to look for other wounds, and she found herself fervently hoping that Lyssa had died or lost consciousness before she had had time to understand what was happening.

Instead of answering Sarah’s question, Quinn tossed another set of photographs on top of those already laid out. “Explain how you got these injuries, Sarah.”

The images were close-up shots of her own hands, the slash marks and lacerations too numerous to count. She glanced at Bridie for guidance, getting a short nod in return. In their earlier meeting, Bridie had advised her not to go into unnecessary detail and to answer as succinctly as she could.

“The blade was in the way as I did CPR. I cut myself on it.”

“And this one?” Kryger asked, with a pleasant lilt to her voice. She took her pen and separated the photographs, revealing one that Sarah hadn’t noticed. Using two fingers on its margins, Sarah turned it slightly, her heart sinking as she saw its focus. She had no recollection of the photograph having been taken, but the CSI must have zoomed in on the marks while she was documenting the knife wounds.

“Bandit, my cat, he scratched me that afternoon,” she said, knowing how implausible it sounded. The three angry raised welts across her wrist looked exactly like those made by fingernails.

Quinn folded his arms, pushed his chair away from the table, and gave her a self-satisfied, condescending smile. “Did you know Lyssa Mardell was gay?”

“No,” she replied mildly. She was surprised he hadn’t mentioned this before.

“You didn’t know?” His tone made no secret of his incredulity. “All those cozy little afternoon sessions and she never confided in you? Not once?”

“No,” she repeated. “Lyssa wasn’t gay; she was bi.”

“By what?” For a moment, his own ignorance made him falter.

“Bisexual,” she said quietly, trying not to bait him. “She slept with men and women.” Technically, Lyssa had always described herself as a “try-sexual,” as in, she’d try anything once, but that was none of Quinn’s business.

“Were you sleeping with her?” he snapped, clearly embarrassed by his mistake.

“No, I wasn’t sleeping with her.”

He ignored that, warming to his theme. “We have testimony from a number of witnesses claiming you and she were real familiar with each other as soon as Alex’s back was turned.”

He paused, but Sarah refused to dignify his statement with a response. She wasn’t certain she could have kept it civil.

He took one of the photographs and studied it as if giving due consideration to what she had told him. It was a transparent ploy; he was building up to something.

“Don’t you think this CPR story is a little too convenient?” he asked at length, looking at Kryger, who nodded confirmation to his entirely rhetorical question. “It
conveniently
explains away your injuries, injuries that are consistent with defensive wounds. It
conveniently
explains why your fingerprints are all over the blade of the knife.” He put the photograph down and tilted his head at her. “Shall I tell you what I think?”

He was going to do so no matter how she reacted, so she said nothing. He pulled his chair close to the table again.

“I think you and Lyssa were involved,” he said, his deep voice unpleasantly intimate. “You met with her frequently, and at first it was probably only to study, but one thing led to another, as it often does.” He made it sound so reasonable, just something that had happened, something for which no one was to blame. “That afternoon, you take advantage of Alex being away, phoning her at frequent intervals to ensure that you and Lyssa won’t be interrupted unexpectedly. You spend the day with Lyssa. Afterward, she showers and gets ready to leave for work. Maybe you’re already arguing, maybe she wants to tell Alex and you don’t, maybe she’s making threats, but you’re still arguing when you go down to the gate with her, and you need to shut her up.”

Sarah shook her head, half in denial, half in confusion, but he gave her no opportunity to interrupt.

“You already have the knife on you, but Lyssa manages to get ahold of it. There’s a struggle, during which you sustain your injuries, but you get the knife back and lash out with it.” He closed his fist around an imaginary weapon, driving it upward to mimic the abdominal wound and then stabbing down in an arc onto the table. “The handle breaks off, but the blade is stuck. You try to free it, leaving your prints on the metal, but then you start to panic. So you step away and think. You’re medically trained; you know how this should go. You concoct a story about finding Lyssa and attempting to revive her, and I have to admit it’s a good one.” He nodded in exaggerated admiration, before his expression darkened again. “It’s also complete and utter horseshit. Your delay in phoning for help gave you the opportunity to get rid of the blade’s handle, time to get your story straight. Meanwhile, Lyssa is bleeding out. Did you walk away from her while you hid the evidence, Sarah? Did you leave her to die while you tried to save your own hide?”

“No,” she said vehemently. “No, it didn’t happen like that. You’ve got it wrong.”

“How?” he asked. “How have I gotten it wrong?”

“Lyssa had her own key.”

Uncertainty flitted across his face. “What?”

“For the gate.” She put a hand to her aching head. It had taken her far too long to identify the fundamental flaw in his theory. “We had one cut for her. Jenny’s store on Main Street might still have an invoice.”

Quinn and Kryger ignored this latter point, but she saw Emerson jot down a note.

“There was no key found on Lyssa’s person or in her SUV,” Kryger said.

That, unfortunately, made perfect sense to Sarah. “Then whoever killed her took it to let himself out.”

“Then how did he let himself
in
?” Kryger retorted. “Officer Tobin had to cut the padlock when he arrived. It showed no sign of having been tampered with prior to that.”

“I don’t know,” Sarah admitted. “The killer must have picked the lock in the first place. Then I suppose he took Lyssa’s key with him because it made it easier for him to escape.”

“So we’re back to that.” Kryger gave a long-suffering sigh. “Your mystery assailant, who leaves no trace of himself or his vehicle, kills the wrong woman, and disappears into the night.”

“Have you even explored that as a possibility?” The contempt in Bridie’s tone was withering. “It seems to me you have a lot of unsubstantiated supposition, backed up by testimony gleaned from every homophobe in town. What you are lacking is anything for which my client cannot provide a logical explanation. Do you really think she’s capable of stabbing a young woman so violently that the medical examiner has to cut the blade free from the victim’s sternum?”

Kryger gave Quinn a thin smile, as if Bridie had given them the ideal opening for their trump card. The photographs he threw down this time spun repeatedly before coming to rest at odd angles. For a moment, Sarah couldn’t work out what she was seeing. Then she shoved her chair back with a gasp, trying to get as far away from them as she could. Bridie picked them up and looked at each of them in turn before laying them facedown on the table.

“I think your client is capable of quite a lot of things,” Kryger said. “She shot a man and left him to die. I think a jury would be very interested to hear all about that.”

Sarah barely heard Quinn state the time and stop the tape recorder. Nicholas Deakin’s river-battered corpse had loomed large in one of the photographs. In the other, Tanner, the man she had shot in a desperate bid to save herself and Alex, lay unconscious in a hospital bed, his leg in traction and a ventilator breathing for him.

“Her arraignment is scheduled for three thirty tomorrow,” Quinn reminded Bridie as he stood. “We’ll see you there.”

Uncertain what was supposed to happen next, Sarah sat and watched Quinn politely gesture Kryger in front of him as they left the room. She could hear Bridie’s pen still scratching urgently across her notepad.

Emerson’s voice broke the tension. “Do you want something to eat?” Like Bridie, he looked troubled.

“No.” The thought of food tied Sarah’s stomach into a knot. She was coming to realize for the first time how likely it was that a jury would convict her of the murder; how easily, given the evidence as Quinn had just presented it, any regular person—let alone one with ingrained prejudices—would be persuaded of her guilt. She would never be able to go home, never be with Alex again. The room seemed to tilt and she had to put her head into her hands to steady herself.

“It’ll be okay, Sarah.” Bridie’s voice sounded distant and uncertain.

Looking up, Sarah gave her a wan smile. “Thanks,” she said, not wanting her to feel responsible.

Emerson’s chair scuffed the floor as he stood. “I should get you back to your cell.”

“I’ll see you in the morning, to prepare for the arraignment,” Bridie told her. “Try not to worry.”

Sarah knew she meant well, but the reassurance rang hollow. There was only one thing on her mind as she looked at Bridie and Emerson in turn.

“When do I get to make a phone call?”

*

The call was snatched up on the first ring.

“Hello?”

Even suffused with anxiety, Alex’s voice brought a smile to Sarah’s lips.

“Hey, it’s me,” was all she could think to say. She heard Alex laugh brokenly and knew she was crying, even as tears dripped off her own nose and splattered against the dirty plastic of the phone. For the first few seconds, all they did was listen to each other breathe.

“How you doin’?” Alex asked finally.

“I’m okay. Better now.”

“Yeah, yeah, me too.” Another pause as Alex blew her nose. When she spoke again, she sounded stronger, more composed. “How did it go with Quinn?”

“Not too well.” Sarah rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, knowing Alex would be able to tell if she lied and needing her to have an idea of what was coming. “Alex—”

“
Don’t
. Don’t say it. Don’t even fucking
think
it, Sarah.”

“I have to. We both have to.” Her voice caught. “And I need to know you’ll be all right, that you won’t do anything stupid.”

“I’m not going to let you go to jail,” Alex countered. “We’ll find something that proves it couldn’t have been you.”

Sarah shook her head. “Whoever did this is still out there. He knows where we live. You need to be getting yourself to someplace safe, not worrying about me.”

Her words prompted a lengthy silence, broken only when Alex started to laugh despairingly. “Well, aren’t we just a pair of self-sacrificing idiots?” she said, and Sarah could practically see the derisive roll of her eyes.

“We do have a distinct tendency.” The photographs of Deakin and Tanner had once again brought the Cascades and everything she and Alex had had to do to survive there to the forefront of her thoughts. She reminded herself that, in times of crisis, food was a reliable subject on which to fall back. “Are you eating okay? Did you have something for your tea?”