Chapter Thirty-One Her
Chapter Thirty-One Her
Present Day
Police headquarters sat on the edge of the main part of town, not far from the rail station. It consisted of a nondescript
grayish stone building connected to the local courthouse. For a fancy real estate area, the inside of the building was decidedly
not fancy. Except for the bulletproof glass and uniformed police officers, it looked like a typical older building with an
open area carved out in front and offices behind.
The space buzzed with activity. All of that stopped when I walked inside. The sudden silence unnerved me. “Am I going to be
arrested?”
Elias answered my whisper with one of his own. “Probably not.”
“You’re not very comforting.”
“Elias. Mrs. Dougherty.” Detective Sessions gestured for us to join him on the other side of the room.
A few officers stepped out of the way, letting us pass. The second we reached Detective Sessions the mumble of conversation
in the room restarted.
We stood in front of a closed door. Elias immediately resorted to his usual lawyer-questioning mode. “What’s going on, Nick?”
“Your client didn’t do a very good job of hiding the bat. The presumed murder weapon.” The detective smiled as he said the
words. His face beamed with self-satisfaction.
“ She didn’t try to hide it.” Only because I didn’t have time, but still. I was standing right there. Talk to me or at least use my name.
“But hiding things is what you do, right?” Detective Sessions clearly didn’t want an answer to his rhetorical question. He
was too busy enjoying the sound of his own voice. “I’m referring to your trips to that diner and the substantial recent withdrawal
of funds from your bank account.”
Elias had called the sum insignificant. The detective thought it was a big deal. Neither of them knew what they were talking
about, but my job wasn’t to cough up answers and make the questioning easier. Elias made that much clear during the car ride
over here.
“The fact she didn’t lie about the diner or the money suggests she has nothing to hide,” Elias said.
“Or it could mean she’s not as smart as she thinks she is. She wouldn’t be the first person to get tripped up by their ego.”
Did they even need me for this conversation?
Elias stepped closer to the detective, cutting off visual access to any nearby gawkers. “What exactly are we talking about?
You know she has an alibi for the time of Richmond’s fall.”
“His murder.” The detective stopped talking to Elias and aimed his comments directly at me. “We’re waiting on the tests on
the bat and other items collected from your house. Standard procedure but I think we all know the bat ties to Richmond’s death
and to you.”
I didn’t say a word. Denying any of this had the potential to bite me in the ass later.
“Mrs. Dougherty should consider this her opportunity to step up and be the first one to talk,” the detective said.
First? A chilling word.
The detective shook his head. “I warned you about the conflict of interest, Elias.”
“I haven’t heard anything that makes me rethink my legal position.”
The detective hadn’t said much of substance. He was too busy preening. But I could feel the boom hovering over my head, waiting
to fall.
“We tracked that checking account withdrawal. It took some time because your client got it in cash, but the videos we collected
from the diner led us to the recipient. She used a debit card, making her easy to find. A woman with a pretty sordid history
and more than one dead husband in her past. The kind of woman someone might pay to kill a spouse.”
Boom . The verbal hit vibrated through every part of me.
The only thing more annoying than the detective’s broad smile was his cocky stance. Both signaled trouble. The kind of trouble
I’d been running from my entire life.
“You think she hired someone to kill Richmond?” Elias asked.
“Answer this, Mrs. Dougherty. How quickly do you think your accomplice will turn on you when she realizes she’s caught and
is looking for a way to lessen her prison time?”
The detective didn’t offer more of an explanation or wait for a response. He opened the door behind him. His big ta-da moment consisted of showing off a woman sitting at a table in what looked like a small office.
The detective’s eyebrow lifted. “I believe you two know each other.”
Unfortunately, yes. “Hi, Mom.”