CHAPTER 94

GRANT

We tried to get a statement from Leewood Folcrum before he passed, but we couldn't get anything from him. We had to go live without a statement from him or Grant Wultz, whose attorney had him on a no-contact gag order. So really, all we—or America, in general—had to go on was what little twelve-year-old Sophie Wultz had to say. And that, of course, was a doozy.

—Neil McArthur, broadcast journalist

"I don't understand how this happened. Who set this up?" I spun the small touchpad screen toward me, watching a video of my daughter walking across a stage and taking a seat across from Neil McArthur. The journalist smiled, and I was surprised his teeth weren't fangs. He was going to destroy her. Dig and berate until she was in tears. This was going to be terrible, both for her psyche but also for our case. Sophie didn't realize how much one line, one little bit of information, could sink me. "She's twelve. Doesn't she need parental permission for this?"

Paul Reachen shook his head grimly. "This isn't with the police or the courts. She's speaking publicly. She can do that however she wants. Doesn't matter if it's being recorded. As long as she doesn't defame someone, she's not breaking any laws."

There was someone else with her, a thin young woman with gaunt cheeks. A strip across the bottom of the screen introduced her as Rachel Goodsmith, from a podcast called Murder Unplugged .

I rubbed my hand across my face, wincing when I touched the tender ridge of my nose. "Can you try to call her?"

He didn't say anything, and we both knew how futile a phone call would be at this point. We were lucky he'd caught wind of this in time to get to the jail and get me in a private visitation room. That was something I hadn't expected, all those times I met with Leewood. That one day, I would be on the inmate side of the table.

Sophie had moved past the introductions, and they were now showing a photo of her and Perla, one that had just been taken a week or so earlier by the private photographer Perla had hired. We'd never had a professional photo shoot before, and it was just another example of a red flag I had missed. Stand here, Grant. Smile. Put your arm around me. Dance, monkey. Dance.

"Tell us about your mother, Sophie," Neil urged.

"A lot has been said about my mom this last week." She fidgeted, her hands rolling over each other in her lap. Nervousness was a look I had never seen on my daughter. Not before a dentist appointment, not before a piano recital or a penalty shot in an important game. I frowned, trying to understand it. "I thought it was important that I tell you about the person I knew."

"Oh, this is not what we need," Paul muttered.

"Just wait," I said, curious about what Sophie was about to say.

My daughter turned to the camera and took a deep breath before she spoke. "My mother was wonderful in a lot of ways. She was a lot of fun. She taught me things constantly. She pushed me to succeed and showed me how to be a strong female and stand my ground and demand the best."

"Yeah, a regular Margaret Thatcher," Paul drawled.

"Do you realize that your father is trying to paint your mother as a murderer? He says that she killed her friends when she was your age and had planned to kill you and your friends at your party!" Neil hunched forward, and every time he said the word kill , his voice rose in skepticism. I wanted to kill him.

"My mom did kill her friends." She looked into the camera, and now there was no sign of her nerves. Her face was calm, her eyes steady. "And I have no doubt that she would have killed me, if she'd had the chance."

Whatever Neil had been expecting, this wasn't it. He paused, looked down at his notes, then back at her. "You say that with such authority. Why do you think that?"

"Because it wasn't the first time she tried to hurt me." She pressed her lips together tightly, as if she were close to tears, then inhaled and looked into the camera again. "When I was eight, she tried to drown me in the bathtub. I was clawing at her, screaming under the bubbles, when our housekeeper heard the noise and came in the bathroom. She stopped, and she pulled me out of the water and held me against her chest, and I was screaming and crying, and she told Ana—that was our housekeeper—to go away, to leave us alone, but she whispered in my ear that she would kill me if I didn't stop crying. And when she tucked me in that night, she told me that she'd do it again, would drown me in the pool if I ever told anyone about it. And her eyes ..." Sophie visibly shivered and she hesitated, then started again. "She would get this look in her eyes sometimes. Like she was dead. Like no matter what you said or did, you couldn't get through to her, you couldn't change her mind. That was the look on her face. Both when she pushed me underwater and when she promised to kill me if I talked."

Paul turned to me. "Did you know about this?"

I shook my head but didn't trust myself to speak. I hadn't known about it because it didn't happen. Not that I would put it past Perla, but it didn't happen. And no one would be able to confirm or disprove it with Ana because she was back in Honduras. I looked into the screen, staring into my daughter's beautiful face, and could swear that the corner of her mouth twitched into the hint of a smile.

Maybe this would do it. I looked from her smile to Paul's face. He was grinning, and I felt my own lips curve in response.