by E. C. Diskin
“Why?”
“Well, there was a murder. They’re going to have more questions. But don’t worry. I’m sure it’s no big deal. I need to get in the shower though. We’re supposed to be there in an hour.”
Grace needed a shower too, but she wasn’t sure she could stand up that long. Perhaps she’d take a bath later. She carefully climbed the stairs, her gaze intentionally avoiding the shaky spindles. The closet was empty and there were just a few items in the dresser. She pulled out some jeans that had been folded neatly in a drawer.
The drive to the station took thirty minutes. When they arrived, Lisa helped her out of the car before ushering her into the building. Her ribs weren’t too bad, but her equilibrium was gone and she couldn’t walk without her sister’s help. Hackett and Bishop greeted them in the lobby as they entered.
Hackett stepped to Grace’s side to support her. “Are you feeling okay today?”
She rejected his arm and tried to force a smile. “Thanks, but I’ll be okay. I just get a little dizzy when I stand up sometimes.”
“This way,” Bishop said, and led them to a private room. It was small and white, much like the hospital room, and entering brought with it the thought of crawling back into that hospital bed and closing her eyes, potentially forever.
Hackett pulled out her chair. “We really appreciate you coming in today. We’ll try not to keep you for too long.” She took the seat and Lisa took the one beside her.
Lisa removed her coat and offered to help Grace with hers, but she refused. Bishop and Hackett sat across the table, and Bishop took the lead again. “Any new memories, Grace?”
“I saw my mother,” she uttered, barely above a whisper.
“What?” Lisa said.
Grace looked at her sister and waited a moment for her vision to clear before speaking again. “Last night in the kitchen, it must have been a memory. I saw her at the sink, wearing an apron.”
Hackett leaned forward. “So you’re starting to remember a few things?”
Grace looked at him; the movement caused more blur, so she closed one eye. But even then, she could see something in his expression and his posture. The way he was still, waiting for a response—he cared. “Maybe. It’s almost like I’m remembering feelings as I walk around the house.”
Bishop cleared his throat. “We’d like to share some information with you. Maybe it’ll help all of us.” He nudged his partner, like Hackett needed reminding of their purpose.
“Great,” Lisa said cheerfully.
“There are some things we’ve learned about Mr. Cahill—Michael—at this point.” Hackett arranged his pad and pen, ready to take notes. A white file box sat on the table next to him. Bishop crossed his arms and rocked back in his chair. “For one, Michael seemed to be a drug user. There was a pretty large bag of marijuana in the bedside table.”
Grace wasn’t sure if that was supposed to mean something, but it didn’t.
“Do either of you know anything about that?”
“Don’t look at me,” Lisa said.
They all stared at Grace, waiting for her response. “No,” she said.
Bishop nodded as if he didn’t believe her, as if he’d interviewed tons of murderers and her responses were typical. She suddenly felt desperate to please this man, to say whatever he wanted to hear and help them solve the case, to get him to smile and stop examining her like a lab rat. But she didn’t know what to say.
“We’re also wondering if Michael may have been a gambler.”
Grace looked toward Hackett, pleading for some relief. Lisa piped in. “Why do you say that?”
“His bank records indicate that he never used a credit card. His credit score is pretty low, so we’re guessing he’s had some money troubles in the past.”
“What does that have to do with gambling?”
“Well, nothing directly. But he had pretty regular withdrawals of cash after he’d deposit a paycheck, and every few weeks he took out pretty large sums of money. Every once in a while there were large cash deposits.”
“I don’t see the connection,” Grace chimed in without making eye contact with anyone. It was easier to keep her head still, so her eyes remained on the table in front of her.
Hackett spoke this time. “Honestly, Grace, we’re just keeping the options and ideas flowing at this point. Someone with poor credit is bad with money, someone who gambles is bad with money, someone who takes out large sums of money might gamble.”
Lisa snorted. “Is that all you’ve got? I mean, it’s been a week since you found him. What about a murder weapon? Prints? What about DNA? Was anything taken?”
Bishop rocked forward, bringing all four legs of his chair back to the floor as he responded. “We’re processing plenty of evidence, Miss Abbott. There’s an entire investigative task force assigned to the case, and the state forensics lab is examining several items. Just because it’s a small town doesn’t mean we don’t know what we’re doing. But it’s going to take a little time, particularly to get DNA evidence.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
Bishop cracked a smile. “It’s okay. Everyone seems to think that the lab can get back to us in an hour.”
“Like on CSI,” she said with a grin.
“Right, but you just have to be patient. There’s one lab for the whole state.”
“Then, by all means, please continue,” Lisa said. “I just thought you’d have some real leads to share with us.”
Bishop rolled his eyes at Hackett before continuing. “Well, I can tell you a few things we do know. For one, his car wasn’t stolen. At first, that was a possibility because it wasn’t at the scene, but it turns out he’d dropped it off for an oil change on Friday afternoon.”
Everyone glanced over at Grace, trying to gauge any kind of response. She shrugged. “Okay.”
“And,” Bishop continued, “we hope that you or Grace might be able to shed light on some of this stuff.” He nodded toward Hackett, who reached into the box beside him and pulled out some envelopes.
“This might be a little awkward,” he said to Grace.
She waited for him to say more, irritated that with every sentence, she felt their stares, waiting for the reaction she didn’t have.
Hackett pushed a clear evidence bag across the table. Inside was a large blown-up picture of Michael and an attractive blonde woman, smiling for the camera.
“Do you recognize this woman?” Hackett asked.
“No,” said Grace. “Do you?” she asked Lisa.
“No.” Lisa shook her head. “Where’d it come from?”
“The girl posted it on Facebook on the Friday before the murder. Michael was tagged in the picture and she’d written, ‘Congratulations!’”
Grace glanced at him. The information was meaningless.
“Either of you know what she might have been congratulating him for?”
“No,” she said, and Lisa echoed her.
“Okay, how about this?” Hackett pushed another evidence bag across the table. Grace picked it up and examined the prescription bottle of pills inside: Xanax, prescribed to Grace Abbott by Dr. Bethany Newell.
“These are mine?”
“It appears that way.”
“What does that have to do with Michael?” she asked.
“Well, given the drugs found at the scene, we had the lab rush a toxicology screen. Those pills were in his system at the time of his death,” Bishop said.
Lisa sat forward, her arm stretching in front of Grace like a shield. “What does that have to do with anything? It’s not like this could be about drugs, right? I mean, you said he was shot.”
“That’s all true, Miss Abbott; we’re not sure what it means yet,” Hackett said. “There’s something else though. We found these.” He pulled several more evidence bags from t
he box. Each contained an eight-by-ten picture of two naked people in bed together.
“What’s this?” asked Grace.
“These are not familiar to you either?” Bishop asked, incredulous.
She wanted to scream. It was like beating her head against the wall. Why didn’t he get it? She massaged her temples before resting her forehead in her hands. “Nothing’s familiar to me.”
“Well, we can say for sure that the man is Michael,” Bishop said.
Lisa examined the photos. “It’s not Grace, obviously.” The naked woman on top had her back to the camera; the only thing visible was her long, platinum-blonde hair.
“Yeah, the hair is definitely not Grace’s,” Hackett agreed. “And this doesn’t look to be taken in Cahill’s house, so we’re assuming this is another woman. And see here, there’s a date on the back. December first.”
“What do you make of it?” Lisa asked.
“Don’t know yet,” Bishop said. Grace twisted some of her dark hair around her finger, inspecting its color, wondering if this was a good thing.
“Could this be the same woman from the Facebook picture?” Lisa asked.
“It’s possible,” Hackett said, taking the pictures back and laying them side by side.
“Dick,” said Lisa. Grace looked at her. “I knew he was a dirtbag.”
Bishop raised his brows. “Did you know Michael?”
“Of course.”
“Why ‘of course’?”
“We’ve known him forever. He lived next door when we were growing up. We played together for years. But I wouldn’t say we were friends or anything.”
“Why’s that?”
“Like you said, he got into drugs. He wasn’t a good guy, in my opinion. And he was too old for Grace. He was kind of controlling. So of course that put a strain on things. That’s why Grace and I weren’t all that close in the last few years.”
Finally, Lisa was sharing a little more about their relationship. Grace sat forward, listening intently.
“Any knowledge of him dealing drugs?” Bishop asked.
“No,” she said.
“Okay. Again, we’re simply chasing possibilities. It was a pretty large stash of marijuana. Obviously if someone’s involved in illegal activities, there are dangerous types one’s going to run into.”
“Well, that seems unlikely. I’d hope Grace would not have stood for that.”
“Were you aware of Cahill cheating on Grace?”
Now it was Lisa who seemed taken aback by the cop’s intense gaze. “I didn’t say that.”
Hackett followed up. “Is there anything else?”
Lisa glanced toward Grace again before responding. “I did wonder if maybe that’s why Grace left him, that’s all. I mean, isn’t that the cause of a lot of breakups?”
Bishop nodded noncommittally. “Grace, we’d like to ask you for a couple of things.”
She looked at him but couldn’t maintain eye contact with that piercing gaze. She kept her eyes on the table. “Sure.”
“First, we’d like to get your fingerprints. We have a lot of prints from the scene, but since both you and Michael lived there, we’d like to know which prints are yours and which belong to someone other than you or Cahill.”
“Okay.”
“We’d also like you to take a polygraph.”
“What?” Lisa straightened like a rod.
“It’s standard procedure.”
“She has no memories; how the fuck could she be lying?”
Grace reached out to touch Lisa’s arm, a surprise to both of them. Lisa was obviously trying to help, but it seemed like a mistake to make the police angry.
Bishop raised both hands, palms forward. “We’re not suggesting that Grace is lying. But we’d like to confirm what she might and might not remember.”
“I don’t mind,” Grace said, hoping her own calm would settle her sister. “I don’t know how that will help, but if you say so, fine.”
“That’s great,” Bishop said with a smile. “It will help a lot. We can get the prints from you today. We’ll have to call you back to do the poly on another day.”
“Fine,” she said, satisfied at having extracted a smile. She rose from her chair but then stopped suddenly to brace the table, closing one eye for balance. Hackett came around quickly and offered his arm. He guided her out the door and down the hall to the fingerprinting computer.
“You doing okay?” he asked.
She withdrew her arm from his, regaining her equilibrium, and smiled up at him. “Sure, thanks. You’re a lot nicer than the other one.”
The compliment didn’t get the reaction she expected. Instead, his smile faded.
But when he placed her fingers one by one onto the plastic board, holding them steady as the digital print was taken, he stood so close she could smell his cologne. She knew that scent. “What’s your name?”
“Justin,” he said without looking at her face.
“Justin,” she repeated. “Nice name.”
He looked at her, searching her expression, and she smiled.
“Do you remember something, Grace?”
“Should I?”
He smiled and shook his head. There was something about him, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She didn’t feel hunted by him. She felt safe, even as he took her fingerprints.
When they returned to the room, Bishop watched her as if she were some sort of alien. “Is there anything else you remember about Saturday morning?” he said to Lisa. “Hearing Grace in the bathroom, perhaps, or shutting the door, or the sound of a car leaving? It would really help us establish her whereabouts.”
“We’ve been through this. She was in a car crash.”
“Yes, but the officers at the scene got there a little before nine in the morning. Their investigation concluded that the accident had occurred between thirty minutes and an hour earlier.”
“And when did Michael die?” Lisa asked.
“We can’t say for certain. Given the delay in discovery, the medical examiner has given us a window. It definitely happened in the early part of Saturday, but it could have occurred before or after the time of Grace’s accident.”
Grace sat up and confirmed what everyone was thinking. “So you think it’s possible I did this.”
Officer Hackett shook his head. “We can’t rule anything or anyone out yet. That’s all.”
Lisa’s cheeks flushed. “This is crazy. You don’t know her. It wasn’t Grace. It couldn’t have been. Yes, she was upset, but . . .” She paused, maybe unsure of what might help.
“Can you think of where she might have been going at the time?” he asked.
“I already told you.” Her voice rose again. “Maybe running. Maybe coffee. I don’t know.” She slammed her hand down near the pad of paper where Hackett was taking notes. “Hey, I know what you’re suggesting.” She stood. “I don’t think we should continue this, Grace.”
Grace didn’t move right away. Lisa nudged her. “I don’t want to sit here and help you build a case against my sister simply because she can’t properly defend herself right now.”
“Maybe I should go to Michael’s house,” Grace offered. “Maybe it would help me remember.”
“That would be great,” Bishop said.
“Absolutely not.” Lisa pulled at her arm. “Come on, we’re leaving.”
Bishop stood as well. “Miss Abbott, we’re only looking for help. No one is being accused of anything.”
Grace carefully stood to join Lisa, who was now at the door, holding it open. “I understand you’re doing your job and trying to solve a murder, but I’m trying to help my sister get better. Her doctor told her to take it easy, and now she’s come home to a murder investigation. This must all be very confusing, and I don’t think we should do anything to upset her, c
ertainly not without speaking to her doctors first.”
The officers followed them to the station lobby.
“As far as I can tell,” Lisa said, “there are other possibilities here—gambling, drugs, who knows what else. Maybe Michael messed with the wrong guy at a bar. You don’t know anything yet, and you’d better not just go after the easiest suspect.”
Grace watched the confrontation and giggled. They all seemed very cartoonish—this scrappy, punk-rock chick, dragging a drugged-up basket case out of the room, and these two officers, like keystone cops, shuffling after them.
Bishop was trying to control her sister, who was obviously not going to be controlled. “Okay, Miss Abbott. Let’s give her another couple of days. We’ve got some other things to track down. Do us a favor and stay in town.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Lisa said.
She yanked at the station’s front door, causing it to bounce off its hinges and hit Grace as she trailed behind. It propelled her forward, causing a strain in her rib cage that made her yelp in pain, but Lisa was oblivious as she rushed to the car. Grace followed like an old woman in the ten-degree air.
Once inside the car, Lisa turned to her, deadly serious, her pointy little face scrunched with stress. “Grace, don’t be stupid.”
Grace forgot about her pain and laughed.
“You have no idea what went on Saturday morning. You can’t blindly offer to go back to that house. They’ll be watching your every move, your every reaction or lack of reaction. For all we know, they’re trying to build a case against you. Don’t help them do it.”
“I thought you said I couldn’t have done it.”
“Just because I said that doesn’t mean they’ll believe me.”
Grace’s head began to ache again. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the seat.
“And quit laughing. This isn’t funny. Come on.” Lisa checked her watch. “Let’s go home. You need to be resting and I need to get to work. And until you know what happened, don’t volunteer to help the police, okay?”
Grace agreed.
SIX
HACKETT WATCHED THE WOMEN DRIVE out of the lot. “Why didn’t you mention the casino?” he asked. They already knew the photo with the blonde had been taken at the Four Winds Casino, and the woman’s profile listed it as her place of employment.