Chapter Sixteen

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Detective Beam was smoking a cigarette. I’d watched him pat his pockets, then set the pack of cigarettes on the table between us. I’d watched him produce a plastic lighter from a different pocket. Finally, I’d watched him light the cigarette and smoke it.

They’d split us up this time. Detective Quentin had taken Eddie, while Detective Beam took me. He had thinning brown hair and a belly that mildly strained the front of his shirt. He was decent enough, and he was probably a good detective, but he didn’t interest me. The cigarettes interested me.

He’d left the lid of the pack flipped open, so I could see the ends of the cigarettes. I could see the edge of the ripped foil. I stared at that foil, knowing exactly how it would feel against my fingers, the way it crumpled so easily and softly that it was a little creepy. There was nothing else in the world, I realized, that felt quite like cigarette pack foil.

“Mrs. Carter, are you listening to me?” Detective Beam asked.

I shook my head. My mother had smoked cigarettes nonstop on that first long drive out of California, that frantic escape. She’d lit one after another. The stench had made my eyes water, but I’d sat in the passenger seat in silence, trying not to cry as the car’s air-conditioning blew an imprecise and unpredictable stream of air somewhere near my face. I’d had my first cigarette at thirteen.

Eddie didn’t smoke, and I’d quit long before I met him. I both loved and hated cigarettes in equal measure. I loved them because of the primitive hit they gave my brain. I hated them because they made me just like my mother.

A headache was pounding softly, almost lovingly, behind my eyes.

“Let’s go over it again,” Beam said.

My mouth was dry as I said, “We saw a truck we recognized from last night. We followed the truck. There was a backpack in the back of the truck. A man attacked Eddie and Eddie fought him off.”

Beam ground his cigarette out in the ashtray next to his elbow. How long had we been here? There were no windows. It must be night by now. There had been waiting—so much waiting. For the paramedics to check Eddie out. For the police to bring us here. For the questioning to start. And now, more waiting. My eyes felt like they had been rubbed with sandpaper, and my stomach folded in on itself with hunger.

“Neither of you mentioned a truck in your original statement,” Detective Beam said.

I was silent.

He waited for a minute, and then he said, “Okay. So you didn’t mention a truck to us, which would have been important information. But you saw the truck today, and you followed it.”

“Yes,” I said, my gaze dropping to the cigarettes again.

“Do you want a cigarette?” he asked, following my gaze.

“No, but thank you for asking.”

“Okay, then. So there was a backpack. And a man attacked your husband. And that’s the end of the story.”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“We’re not being recorded in here, Mrs. Carter. No one can hear what you tell me.”

I decoded that. It meant no one will know what you say, but no one will know what I say, either. I braced myself.

“You know what I think?” Detective Beam asked.

I didn’t answer. Hungry or not, did he think I couldn’t sit here all day? I had nowhere else to be.

“I think that between you and your husband, he’s the nice one.”

I snapped my gaze up to his.

He had my attention now, and he leaned back in his chair, making it creak softly. “It’s possible that what you say is true,” he said. “It’s also possible that after attacking Rhonda Jean Breckwith, the two of you stashed her backpack somewhere along Atticus Line. You went back today to pick it up so you could dispose of it. You saw Max Shandler’s truck, maybe, and you followed him home. Or maybe you just picked his driveway at random. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you planted the backpack in his truck bed, but he caught you, and he and your husband got in a scuffle. It didn’t go quite as you planned.” He leaned forward again, his eyes on mine. “It didn’t go quite as you planned.”

I kept my expression blank as I revised my opinion of Detective Beam. Quentin was the star detective, the one that everyone was terrified of, while Beam was middle-aged, a little puffy, the workmanlike second fiddle. But Beam was better at this than he let on.

He was wrong. But he was so, so close. Closer than he knew. Because if it meant my own survival, or mine and Eddie’s, I would plant a backpack of evidence in someone’s truck. And Eddie would rather die than do that.

“Your husband is an open book,” Beam said. “We know everything about him—his parents, his military record, everything. But you?” He shook his head. “You, April Carter, formerly April Delray, are something of a mystery. There isn’t much paperwork on you at all. We can’t even find a birth record. Where were you born?”

“California.” When telling lies, stay as close to the truth as you can so they’re easier to remember. I was better at this part than he was.

“Where are your parents?”

“Dead.”

“What were their names?”

“None of your business.”

“How did they die?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Not to me.”

He sighed and rubbed a hand over his jaw. I heard the familiar rasp of a man who needed to shave. “You got your first driver’s license when you were twenty.”

That was true, and it wasn’t. My first driver’s license had been under a different name, because I’d needed to be older than I was. But I’d decided to make April Delray permanent—at least I hoped to—so I’d had to get one in that name as well. It was a lot of work. “Not everyone can afford a car,” I told the detective.

“Something isn’t right about you,” Beam said. “You look like a pretty, unassuming newlywed, but it doesn’t quite fit. Everything about you is murky. I think that the best case is that you’re scamming your husband somehow.”

That made me mad. “I am not scamming Eddie.”

“No? Does he know your parents’ names and how they died? Should I ask him?”

I didn’t answer. They could ask Eddie all they wanted. I’d told him enough, and he would keep my secrets. The ones he knew, anyway.

“The worst case,” Beam went on, “is that you killed Rhonda Jean Breckwith and made your husband, who is smitten with you, help cover it up.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know how else to get it through to you. You’re looking at the wrong people. We ended up here because we took a wrong turn. It was just bad luck.”

“I’ve seen bad luck, and this isn’t it,” he replied. “Something brought you here. Why don’t you tell me what it was?”

I was about to say something—I didn’t know what—when the door opened. Detective Quentin stepped in. His shark’s eyes looked at me for a minute, speculating. Then he turned to Beam. “Detective, can I speak to you outside for a moment?”

Beam complied, but I caught the surprise and frustration in his expression before he covered it up. This wasn’t a bit of police theater; Quentin was truly interrupting him. Without a word, he pushed his chair back and stood, following Quentin from the room.

They were gone for a long time. I was so hungry all I could think about was hot dogs. I had a craving for one. I wondered where to get a hot dog in Coldlake Falls. And an ice-cold Pepsi.

The door opened again. Quentin stood outside, and he didn’t come into the room. “Mrs. Carter, you’re free to go,” he said in that dead voice of his. “We’re sorry to have taken up so much of your time.”

I stood and walked past him into the corridor. I turned the corner to the front room of the Coldlake police station, where there were a few police milling about or talking on telephones. Eddie was already there, waiting for me. He looked sweaty and tired and handsome. He still had dirt smeared on his shirt and his face. He took one of my hands in his. “Are you all right?” he asked me.

“I’m fine,” I said, confused. “I’m hungry.”

“Same here. Apparently, we’re free to leave.”

And go where? How? They had driven us here in police cars. Robbie’s car was still parked next to the black truck, I assumed. We were stranded yet again.

The front door of the station opened and Rose walked in. “There you are,” she said to us. “I came to get you. Let’s go.”

I glanced around. A minute ago, I’d been a murder suspect. None of this made any sense. But I didn’t want to question it. I just wanted out.

“Nice to see you, Rose,” Detective Beam said, his tone sarcastic.

Her glance at him was dismissive. “You shush, Beam. I want Robbie’s car back in my driveway in an hour.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t yes, ma’am me like I don’t know disrespect when I hear it. That car is my property. I know my rights.”

Quentin gave her one of his laser looks. “We have to discuss the fact that you lent the car to two murder suspects, Rose. I’ll be in touch.”

“You don’t scare me, Quentin. Robbie told me plenty about you. About all of you. And they aren’t murder suspects, are they? I could have told you that.” She looked at Eddie and me. “Let’s go.”

Before I followed her, I looked at Detective Beam. He looked back, straight into my eyes.

He was right. I wasn’t the nice one.

Eddie squeezed my hand, and we headed for the door.