by A. S. French
‘I’m Detective Moore, and I’ll be conducting this interview. Do you need a lawyer?’ Astrid shook her head. ‘You have to say it out loud for the record.’
They stared at her as she considered her options.
‘I don’t want a lawyer.’ She wanted a drink, but none of them had offered her anything. Apart from the lawyer she didn’t need.
Moore continued. ‘Do you know where your passport is?’
‘The last I checked, it was in my pocket before the...’
The Detective inched closer to her. ‘Before what?’
Astrid touched the bruises below her shirt. ‘Before the fight with the woman in the bar last night.’
He peered at his papers. ‘You were in an altercation at the Ranch House shortly before midnight.’ It was a statement, not a question.
‘With singer from the band, Stella Starr.’
He seemed unimpressed with her local music knowledge. ‘What happened between you two?’
Faint shadows lurked inside her brain of another woman and another conflict last night. She scratched at the top of her head, hoping to pick out her missing memories.
‘Her band was terrible, and she sang like a demented poltergeist. So I told her.’
Moore skimmed through his notes. ‘And she heard you through the noise?’
Astrid rubbed dirt from her fingers. ‘I climbed on stage and took the microphone from her. Then I told everyone how shit the group was, especially her.’
His mouth twitched, and she guessed he was fighting a smile.
‘I bet that went down well.’
‘I don’t know; I couldn’t hear above the screaming. I jumped down and barged outside. The next thing I know, the demented banshee grabbed me by the neck and threw me to the ground. By the time I’d wiped the crap from my face, the whole of the bar was whooping and hollering as Starr give me a good kicking. You must have witnesses for that.’
‘Why didn’t you fight back?’
Astrid ran her fingers across her shirt, finding the bruises underneath.
‘I probably deserved it.’
‘Because of what you did on stage?’
‘That and other things.’
Moore returned to his notes. ‘Do you remember what happened next?’
She delved into the wreck of her memories and uncovered the ones submerged from last night. Starr scowled at her as the crowd howled for blood, the shouts of USA, USA, cutting through the cold night with every volcanic syllable. Then they left her in the mud and returned indoors for more shit music and weak beer. Everybody abandoned her, but one.
Caitlin Cruz.
‘You need patching up.’ She reached down to me. ‘We’re not all animals here.’
Astrid stared at Moore. ‘Caitlin took me home.’
‘We know this.’ He fiddled with the papers. ‘You were on first-name terms?’
‘She was polite.’ Astrid pulled up her shirt and touched the bandage around her ribs. ‘She tended my wounds and gave me a drink.’
‘Is that all?’
She scrutinised his face, knowing there was more, but struggling to recall the events.
‘I think we sat awhile and talked, waiting for me to recover before I returned to town.’
Moore scribbled on to his notepad while Chief Colt continued to stare at her.
‘What did you talk about?’
She ran a hand through her hair, her fingers scratching along her scalp in an attempt to remember.
Caitlin.
They were on first-name terms as they drank together. She was dressed in jeans and an oversized checked shirt. A light smattering of makeup covered her face, but was not overdone, while her black hair was pulled into a ponytail. There was something in how Cruz composed herself which confused Astrid, as if she was unsure of where she was. Her gaze moved quickly over everything around her, peering over Astrid’s shoulder and through the window.
‘We agreed on how shit the band was. She said she’d show me a better bar sometime.’
‘Nothing happened between you?’
Her ribs rippled with laughter, and she held back a grimace. ‘What do you mean, Detective Moore?’
‘When Caitlin patched you up and you talked, where were you in the house?’
She narrowed her eyes, wondering where he was going with this.
‘When we got there, she took me into the kitchen. I didn’t go anywhere else.’
‘Not even upstairs?’
‘Nope; only the kitchen.’
‘So, nothing physical happened between the two of you?’
Is that what this is about?
‘She saw me without my shirt on when she bandaged my ribs, but that was about it.’ Astrid smiled at Chief Colt. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you boys, but there was no girl on girl action between Caitlin and me in that house that night.’ Colt didn’t take his eyes off her. ‘And even if it did happen, is that a crime in this town?’ She focused on Detective Moore. ‘Has Bakerstown retreated to a mythical 1950s when men were men and women did as they were told and everything was whiter than white?’
He ignored her question. ‘What happened after she dressed your injuries and your little talk?’
Astrid dug into her brain again like one of those attractions in the amusement arcades where you try to grab a toy using a mechanical digger.
‘Caitlin dropped me at the bar a few hours later.’
‘Why return there?’
‘I had unfinished business with the Poundland Janis Joplin.’
Moore raised his eyebrows. ‘What’s a Poundland?’
‘It’s a shop back home where you can buy the cheapest tat you’d ever want.’
‘Okay. What did you do when you returned to the bar?’
Astrid pressed her fingers into her damaged ribs. ‘It had closed, and the place was empty, so I headed to my hotel. Only I didn’t get there.’
‘Why?’
‘I must have blacked out. Too much booze and a beating can do that to you, Detective. I’m guessing that’s when your lot found me.’
‘Which is why you’re here now.’
‘For being drunk and disorderly?’
‘No, Ms Snow, for murdering Caitlin Cruz and her two children.’
The pain in her ribs sprinted through the rest of her body with a vengeance. Colt’s smile grew so large, she thought it would fall off his face. Moore sat stony-faced.
‘That’s crazy, Detective.’
‘I’m afraid not, Ms Snow.’ He didn’t look afraid to her. ‘You were found passed out near the Ranch House Bar and Grill. Two hours later, you were in a cell here.’
That didn’t sound right to Astrid. ‘I recollect some of your Officers dragging me here in the middle of the night, on some trumped-up charge of disturbing the peace.’
Moore searched through his paperwork again. ‘Things have changed since then, Ms Snow. Officers brought you here at two in the morning.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s now five minutes before ten. Forty-five minutes ago, we found your bloodied passport on the body of Caitlin Cruz. How do you think that happened?’
Astrid’s mind continued to buzz like a swarm of bees drunk on honey.
‘I had my passport with me in the bar. I didn’t trust leaving it in that fleabag hotel, so I took it with me. Maybe it fell out of my pocket during the fight. Or perhaps somebody stole it from me there.’
Chief Colt snorted with laughter as Moore’s expression remained unchanged.
‘Do you think either of those things is possible?’
‘Most things are possible, Moore.’
He placed his hands together. ‘You believe someone stole your passport from you while you were at the Ranch House?’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
Colt didn’t contain himself. ‘We’ve read your file, Snow. You used to be some kind of British spy, and now you’re claiming a hick inside the bar was good enough to steal your passport without you knowing?’
When he put it like that,
it sounded ludicrous. Yet, she couldn’t see how it would have happened any other way.
‘I was drunk.’ The ache in her skull continued to remind her of that. ‘Or perhaps one of those hicks kicked it out of me when I was in the dirt.’
Moore regained control of the interview. ‘Your passport was discovered on Caitlin Cruz’s body, not long after eyewitnesses saw the two of you together after the altercation outside the bar.’
‘I told you, she took me to her place to tend to my wounds.’
‘Are you sure nothing else happened at the Cruz house apart from what you’ve told us?’
Was she sure? Things were missing from her memory, she knew that, but murder wasn’t one of them. Those redacted parts of her mind from her childhood had been joined by blind spots from last night. She put them down to her tiredness on arrival, too much booze, and the beating she’d taken. And she also realised they’d come back, eventually. But, after looking at Colt and Moore’s faces, she wondered if she had the luxury of waiting for them to return.
‘I’m sure, Detective.’
The Police Chief grinned at her while Moore seemed disturbed.
‘Someone murdered Ms Cruz’s children in her house. Their faces were burnt with acid, just like their mother. We discovered your fingerprints in the residence.’
Kids? I didn’t see any children there.
‘What?’
He played with the paperwork again, shuffling the bits around so she glimpsed what he was scrutinising. Then he removed two photos and placed them in front of her. ‘This is what they used to look like. Cathy Cruz was fifteen, her brother, Dale, ten years old.’
Astrid heard his voice, but it was as if the words were echoes vibrating from somewhere far away, drifting in and out of her head like an interrupted radio wave. Her shoulders dropped as she stared at the images of the two murdered kids. Both photographs looked as if they’d come from an official school album: Cathy Cruz had a lop-sided grin which highlighted the braces on her teeth, the pure whiteness of which was in stark contrast to the sky blue of her large eyes. Her dark hair was jet black and hung to her waist. The roundness of her cheeks was replicated in her brother, but his eyes were paler and narrower, his short hair parted on the left and swept from his brow. They appeared as sweet and innocent as she guessed they must have been.
But now they were dead, and the two men sitting opposite believed she was responsible.
‘Were all three murdered the same way? Was it the acid that killed them?’
Detective Moore ignored her questions. ‘Did you see Cathy and Dale while you were in the house, Ms Snow?’
Had she? She couldn’t recollect doing so, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t. Those blind spots from last night, this morning, were still there, so maybe she did see them.
The killer could have been inside, with the four of us, all the time I was there.
‘I don’t remember seeing them.’
Moore leant forward. ‘But you could have and forgot?’ The silent digital recorder seemed to pulse and bleep inside Astrid’s head as it recorded everything he said. ‘Is it possible you spent time with Cathy and Dale, but you’ve blanked out the memories?’
She wanted to shout no at him, but didn’t, instead arching her back further into the uncomfortable chair. The full enormity of what was happening was only just sinking in.
‘While you’re wasting time with me, the actual killer is running around somewhere.’
‘Do you know who that is?’
Astrid searched through her scrambled skull, sifting out the noise from the bar and the band and the fight. The ache in her ribs throbbed again as she pictured staring into Caitlin Cruz’s welcoming face and the hand she held out to her. She took it and let Cruz lead her into the car before they drove to her place. How long was the drive?
That’s another missing memory. I drifted in and out of unconsciousness, more because of the booze than the beating.
But she remembered pressing her head up against the window, the icy touch of the glass trying to keep her awake. There were no buildings outside in the gloom, only the countryside passing them by. There was noise on the radio: some music she hadn’t heard before. It was low and melancholic, with a woman singer telling a tale of betrayal and deceit.
They arrived in the middle of nowhere, with Astrid unsure how long it had taken to get there. She’d pay more attention on the way back, realising Cruz’s place was only twenty minutes from the bar. But before that, she recalled Caitlin leading her into the house and the two of them going into the kitchen. They didn’t go through the front, but the rear, up a set of steps and inside.
The door wasn’t locked. Cruz just pushed it open and took me in.
So anybody could have been waiting for them. As that possibility stabbed at her heart, Detective Moore repeated his question.
‘Do you know who murdered Caitlin, Cathy and Dale Cruz, Ms Snow?’
Astrid shook a single word from her mouth. ‘No.’
‘Did you see Cathy and Dale Cruz in the house, Ms Snow?’
‘No.’
‘Did you see the children outside the house, front or back, Ms Snow?’
‘No.’ She would have remembered seeing two kids there.
Wouldn’t I?
‘Did you go upstairs, Ms Snow?’
‘No.’
‘But the kids could have been there, and you wouldn’t have known it?’
‘Of course. It was late, so I’d expect kids to be asleep then.’
‘What time did you get to the Cruz house?’
Astrid had a good idea of that. The band came on stage at nine and were near the end of their ninety-minute set when she harassed them. That meant she was getting a kicking outside the bar at about ten forty-five. If that were over by eleven, she would have been inside the Cruz kitchen around thirty minutes later.
‘About eleven-thirty.’
As she answered his questions, Moore continued making notes. Chief Colt sat and picked at his teeth, with his unflinching gaze fixed on her throughout the interview. Then the Detective surprised her by changing tack.
‘Your passport is British, but where are you from, Snow? What’s your background?’
Astrid sucked in the air as if it was a three-course meal and she hadn’t eaten for days. Whatever this nonsense was, she wasn’t getting away from it soon.
Don’t volunteer any information you shouldn’t.
That’s what they’d instructed her at the Agency. But now she felt like talking.
‘I was born in a small village in the north of England, which you’ve probably never heard of. My mother was a teacher, my father, a copper.’
Moore stopped making notes and stared at her. ‘He’s retired?’
‘You could say that.’ Most people lose their jobs when they’re discovered hurting one of their kids, even a high-ranking Police Officer. ‘I have an older sister who hates me.’
‘Why does she hate you?’
‘It’s complicated.’ Made more so by the niece she loved who could have died because of her. ‘I ran away from home, hooked up with a gang, nearly went to prison but was rescued by a socially conscious group of adults.’
Moore raised his eyebrows. ‘Who were these people who helped you?’
‘They’re a charity organisation.’
They were a clandestine government intelligence outfit called the Agency.
‘Why did you come to the US?’
This was the tricky part. ‘I wanted to see the sights. Then I forgot about the date on my visa.’
She’d come to return a kidnapped kid to her mother in England before getting talked into another rescue mission in the States. But she still couldn’t work out why she hadn’t returned home yet.
Perhaps it’s because I don’t have a home.
‘Why haven’t you left?’
‘It’s a big country, Moore; there’s lots more to see.’
He put his pen down. ‘Why did you kill the kids? Starr beat you badly i
n front of dozens of people, which must have wounded your pride and your body. Then Caitlin Cruz played the Good Samaritan and took you home to sort out your injuries. Perhaps in your pain and embarrassment, you lashed out at her, looking for revenge on Starr. I guess that’s possible, I get that, but you didn’t have to hurt those children.’
Astrid shook her head. What he claimed to have was circumstantial, but he and his cronies could drag it out forever. If the authorities were that incompetent or corrupt, it might even make it to court. She let out a long, irritating groan.
‘This is pointless.’
Moore curled his lips in satisfaction. ‘Have you realised the seriousness of the situation?’
Astrid grimaced at him. ‘No, but I might have to contact some people I don’t want to. Am I allowed one phone call?’
‘Sure, but before that, would you tell me why you ended up in this town?’
She racked her mind for the answer, pushing past the alcohol, the bruises and the frustration.
‘I was on my way to see a grave.’
3 Little Miss Disaster
Colt stuck out his ample belly and laughed at her. ‘Were you visiting someone else you killed?’
She peered deep into his frog-like eyes and wondered how many kids he’d eaten for breakfast.
‘I’m passing through Bakerstown on the way to Rochester. Somebody famous is buried there.’
She didn’t know why she told them that, assuming the irritation in her ribs would soon spread through her blood and bones until it banged on her brain and she couldn’t handle it any longer. Perhaps she should take up the offer of a lawyer after all.
Chief Colt tipped his hat at her. ‘I doubt you’ll be seeing Rochester or anywhere else for a long time, lady.’
At least he didn’t call her a girl. ‘Is that all you have: a few eyewitnesses who saw me leave with Cruz and my passport found on her body?’
Colt nearly fell from his chair as he snorted with laughter. ‘That’ll be enough for a jury here, Miz Snow. And even if it wasn’t, your prints and DNA are all over the Cruz house, plus we know how foul your mood was in the bar. And how drunk you were.’