The Hell Yo - lanyon Josh - Страница 28
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“What did you need?” It came out abruptly. I was angry with Jake, angry to find myself
in this position – and I was apprehensive.
“I’m sure you’re aware that we’ve arrested Angus Gordon?” Rossini said.
I nodded. Glanced at Jake, then looked away. Easier if I didn’t look at him. If I
pretended he wasn’t there at all.
Abruptly, I remembered the first time I’d met him. Even less happy circumstances than
these. We’d sat in this same crowded office with him asking questions about a murder. Today
the other cop – Rossini – did most of the talking. I answered mechanically. They showed
me photos of Kinsey. She was a year or two younger and a lot cleaner in the photographs.
I admitted I had seen her before, that she had come into the store asking for Angus. I
admitted I had given Angus money when he had expressed fear over harassment from fellow
students.
Rossini was inclined to follow this line of questioning. He began to ask about my
relationship with Angus.
“Safe to say, Gordon was more than an employee?”
I opened my mouth, but Jake cut in. “We’ve already established Mr. English’s role.”
This breach of etiquette naturally irritated the other detective. He tapped his pencil on
the edge of the desk as though trying to recover his train of thought.
“For the record, Mr. English, what were you doing last night from the hours of, say, six
p.m. to ten p.m.?”
Ten p.m. So she hadn’t been dead for long when I walked in. I wondered if she had
been killed at the house. Looking back from a safe distance, I thought that – considering
those terrible wounds – there hadn’t been as much blood as you’d expect at the crime scene.
Which isn’t to say that it hadn’t been plenty gory…
Once again I was standing in that dark hallway staring at the broken bloody corpse
lying in the tumbled bed clothes.
I wondered what would have happened if I’d walked into the house forty-five minutes
earlier.
I swallowed hard. “I closed the store around five-thirty. I ate dinner here –”
“What’d you have for dinner?” Rossini interrupted genially.
“Uh…a kind of Lean Cuisine thing.” That was the truth; it was the question itself that
gave me pause.
He didn’t speak, so I went on. “I host a weekly writing group on Tuesday nights. They
met from seven to nine. After that I did paperwork, and at some point Angus called.”
“At what point? What time exactly?”
“Eleven-ish. Eleven-thirty at the latest.”
No comment. He could verify the time, and certainly would, if he was any kind of cop
at all. It didn’t matter; this was all basically true. “I went to bed after leaving the message
with Detective Riordan.”
I thought it was a pretty tight alibi – assuming I actually needed one. Maybe it was
remotely possible that I could have hunted Kinsey down and murdered her in the hour after
Partners in Crime dispersed – or killed her before everyone arrived and then calmly
discussed sentence structure for a couple of hours before carting her corpse over to Angus’s –
but I was betting on Rossini’s commonsense. (Although the guy did wear red socks with blue
trousers.)
Where my story fell apart was after the time of the murder. Hopefully no church ladies
selling raffle tickets or Girl Scouts peddling cookies had turned up banging on my door after I
split for Angus’s. Hopefully, the police had no interest in my actions after the hours of six
and ten.
Rossini made a note.
“The message you left was regarding this phone call from Gordon?”
Jake’s silence was like a fourth person in the room, a formidable presence.
“Right.” It took willpower not to look toward Jake. Why would Rossini ask that?
“Why again did you think Detective Riordan should investigate Gordon’s house?”
He was a smart cop. He had good instincts. He knew something was fishy with my
story, but the fact that Jake, in essence, vouched for me, made it awkward.
“I guess the…fear factor,” I said. “Angus sounded terrified. He sounded in fear of his
life. Besides, Detective Riordan had told me to get in touch with him if he – Angus –
called.”
I cast a look at Jake, wondering if it had occurred to him yet that Angus was unlikely to
back our strangers-in-the-night scenario.
His eyes met mine, sheared off. His lips were tight, all feeling held in check.
“You had no idea why Gordon was terrified?”
We had already been over this, so I wasn’t sure why Rossini was angling around again.
I said, “I thought I had a pretty good idea. I was wrong. I thought he was being
harassed, bullied by other kids. I assumed it was student hazing, something like that. I had no
idea that it might tie into this…thing in the papers.”
This multiple homicide thing in the papers, that is.
“You thought he was the victim of hazing? But he was a grad student. He was working
as a teaching assistant. How likely is it that someone like that would be targeted that way?”
Rossini must not have gone to college. “It happens,” I said.
“Oh, for Chrissake, Rossini,” Jake said, bored. “English acted like a good citizen. Why
are you giving him a hard time? Look, we’ve got places to go and perps to talk to.”
This was so far out of line that Rossini almost couldn’t swallow his anger. He stopped
writing. He didn’t tap his pencil, he didn’t move a muscle. I was guessing that he was the
senior officer in this investigation. He could probably have Jake removed from the case if he
chose.
I said, “I admit I didn’t think it through. I just threw money at the problem.”
Rossini snorted as though this were a common mistake that led to countless cult
murders.
He asked me a few clipped questions about my encounter with Kinsey, which I
instinctively downplayed. Rossini resumed jotting his notes.
There was a lull in the questioning. I said, without thinking, “Do you think any of this
has to do with Gabriel Savant’s disappearance?”
They scrutinized me.
Rossini said, “Gabriel who?”
“The mystery writer who disappeared a couple of days ago,” Jake supplied without
inflection.
“Why would there be a connection?”
I had already explained all this over the phone to the cops handling Savant’s missing
person case. They hadn’t been impressed with my story, and I had to admit, hearing myself
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