Grain of Truth

by V. J. Chambers

  Iain turned back to the closet. “How long?”

  “How long what?”

  He wanted to get angry. To yell or break something. He wasn’t really sure how to be angry, though, so he just stood there. “How long has he been living here?”

  “I don’t know. A few months. Does it matter?”

  “Yeah, it matters.”

  “Why?”

  He shut the closet door, but he didn’t turn to look at her. “Because I want to know how many of the times that you’ve been with me were times when you were going home to be with him.” And now his voice was shaking.

  “Oh, Jesus, don’t be like that.” Harley was disgusted. She headed down the steps, as if she wanted nothing more to do with him.

  He went after her. From the top of the stairs, he called down, “Most men wouldn’t deal with being the guy you screw in order to get him to do your dirty work, you know?”

  “Yeah, well, you’re not most men,” she said.

  He pounded down the steps.

  “And I’m not most women.” She turned to face him as he reached the bottom.

  All of his clothes felt too tight. His skin felt too hot. He wanted to explode in some way. He wanted to hurt something. Maybe he wanted to hurt her.

  But he was repulsed by that notion, so he turned away from her and headed for the front door. He went out on the porch. It was cold, and the air hurt his lungs. He fished around in the ashtray for the cigarette he’d put out earlier. There was a lighter lying on the railing. He lit up.

  The door opened. Her voice was soft. “Come on, Iain, you know that what’s between is… is…”

  He had to get away from her. He started across the porch toward the steps.

  “You know me in a way that no one else does,” she called after him. “And I know you.”

  “And that gives you the right to take advantage of me all the time?” He kept moving. He started down the steps.

  “I need you,” she said. “But you’re not…”

  He pounded over the cold, hard ground to his car.

  “It’s not like you’d move in here with me, you know?”

  He stopped. He turned to look up at her. She was right about that.

  “I wouldn’t even ask.” And her voice was frozen, like the cold, winter air.

  He contemplated his cigarette for a moment, and then he dropped it on the ground and stepped on it. He started back up the steps to her.

  “I didn’t realize this would make you so upset,” she said. “You don’t… I didn’t think you cared.”

  He stopped right in front of her, inches between them. “I care,” he said, and his voice was hoarse.

  She put her hands on his chest. “I’m sorry.”

  He gazed at her. Her eyes were puffy from crying, but he still liked the way she looked.

  She dug her hands into his clothes, gathering up handfuls of his shirt, and she tugged him back toward the door. “It’s cold out here,” she whispered.

  He let her pull him back into the warmth.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “God,” said Rory Gutierrez, “you guys don’t give up, do you?”

  Frankie stood at the doorway to Rory’s office. She clutched her bag, in which she had the kit to take a DNA sample. It was easy enough to do. She’d been trained to do it. It was just a quick swab. Whether Rory could be convinced to give the sample or not, Frankie wasn’t sure. She decided to take a gentle approach. She didn’t want to scare Rory. “Well, I think maybe you got off on the wrong foot with my colleagues. Believe me, I know how much Elke Lawrence can be. Hard to take.”

  Rory cocked her head at Frankie, but she didn’t say anything.

  Frankie gestured to the chair in front of Rory’s desk. “Can I sit?”

  Rory sighed. “What if I told you that I don’t want to talk at all?”

  “Now, why would that be?”

  “You can’t force me to talk,” said Rory.

  “Believe me, I’m well aware of that.” Frankie decided to sit down anyway. She smiled. “I don’t want to force you to do anything. This isn’t supposed to be that kind of a conversation. I just want to chat with you a little bit.”

  “Sure, about where I was the night of the Mukherjee murders. Except I don’t want to talk about that. And nothing you’re going to say is going to make me want to talk about that.”

  “Okay.” Frankie eyed the woman. She made her face look concerned. “Are you afraid of something, Rory?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean, maybe you’re worried about talking to me, and you think something bad might happen to you if you do.”

  “Yeah, okay, well, you’re investigating a murder. You want to put someone in jail for the rest of their life. That’s scary.”

  “We want to put the guilty person away.”

  “Right, but apparently, you got it wrong once already, so your batting average isn’t great. I don’t want to be the next innocent person to go away for this crime.”

  Frankie took a deep breath. “Okay, you’re innocent. So, let’s prove that. Once we rule you out, you never see us again.”

  “How do we prove my innocence? If it was so easy, then they could have done it twenty-five years ago.”

  “They could have, maybe, but they didn’t do it as a matter of course. It was rare back then.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “DNA,” said Frankie. “If you’re innocent, DNA will clear you. There are samples from the Mukherjee house that we’re having tested. You’ve never been in the Mukherjee house, right?”

  “Right,” she said.

  “So, then we’ll test your DNA, and it won’t match, and that will be that.”

  Rory shook her head. She bit down on her bottom lip.

  “Is there any reason your DNA might be in the house? Tell me now and we’ll figure this out.”

  “It’s not that.” Rory massaged the bridge of her nose. “If I give you that DNA, then do I go in some database? Would they test it against other unsolved crimes?”

  “Is there another crime you’re involved in?”

  “Well, some things have statutes of limitations, right?”

  “Yes, they do, but what is it that you’re concerned about?”

  “No, I need to shut my big, fat mouth,” said Rory, shutting her eyes.

  “Listen, all I’m concerned with is the Mukherjee case. I don’t care about anything else.”

  “Sure, you don’t.” Rory made a face. “As if I could believe anything out of a cop’s mouth.”

  “I’m a lawyer.”

  “Even worse.” Rory lifted her chin. “I want you to leave. I’m not saying anything else.”

  * * *

  “That’s okay,” said Elke to Frankie, who was annoyed with herself for failing to get the DNA from Rory. “We’ll find some other way to get her DNA. Anyway, we can probably hold off on it until we get the tests back on Kelley and Squires.” She was sitting at the conference table and Rory was there too. Iain was sitting at the table, but he seemed a little preoccupied. “Hudson? You with us?”

  He turned to Elke. “What?”

  Elke laughed. “You thinking deep thoughts about the case there?”

  Iain made a face. “Sorry, I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

  “Maybe you should get some coffee,” said Elke. “Actually, maybe Amos can help us out with that.” She went to the door and yelled for Amos.

  After they had all given their drink orders to him, and he’d promised to be back in a jiffy, Elke sat back down at the table.

  Frankie still didn’t know how she felt about Elke. The woman could be brusque, even rude, but she seemed to be focused on the case. Her heart was in the right place, anyway.

  “So,” said Elke. “Where were we?”

  No one said anything. Frankie didn’t know if she should bring up Rory again. After all, it seemed like Elke had closed the door on that case for now. She kept her mouth shut.


  Elke pointed at Frankie. “Joshua Oliver’s alibi? You were going to check into that.”

  “Oh, right,” said Frankie.

  “Did you get a chance?”

  “I did,” said Frankie. “I tracked down three of the students who were on the debate trip with the professor. They all confirmed his story. I also spoke to the professor at Ethen College, which hosted the debate, and he said that Dr. Oliver was witnessed to be there by the audience, which may have been about thirty people, plus all the other students from other teams. And it’s too far of a drive for him to have gotten back in time to commit the murder.”

  “So, we cross him off?” said Elke.

  “I think so,” said Frankie.

  Elke turned to Iain. “What do you think, Hudson? Is this good enough, or do we need some tangible evidence?”

  Iain shrugged. “Maybe he conspired with Tempest. He wouldn’t have needed to be there in order to do that.”

  “But we said that the gun evidence doesn’t seem in line with our theory about Tempest,” said Elke.

  “But we haven’t ruled her out either,” said Iain.

  “How do we do that?” said Frankie. “It’s not like we can use DNA. She lived there.”

  Elke made a tent with her fingers and rested them under her nose. “Didn’t Dr. Oliver say that Tempest went to her parents house the weekend before the murder?”

  “You think her parents did it?” Frankie’s eyes widened.

  Elke laughed. “No, but I do think we should talk to them. Why did she go there? Did she confide in them that her marriage was unhappy? They might be able to help us figure this out.”

  “True,” said Frankie.

  Elke got up. “When Amos gets back, I’ll have him hunt down their number and see if we can set up a time. It’ll be you and me, Hudson. Hart, you’ll stay here to hold down the fort.”

  Hold down the fort? What? But Frankie just smiled. Whatever Elke wanted, she’d do.

  * * *

  “Okay, look,” said Elke to Iain, “when we get there, you’ve got to let me do the talking.”

  “I always do,” said Iain, staring straight forward as he gripped the steering wheel. He was driving north to Tempest Mukherjee’s parents’ home, and he seemed pretty focused on the road. However, he seemed a little out of it today, and she wondered why he was low on sleep. Before, he’d said that he’d been talking to a reporter in the wee hours of the morning. Did Iain have some kind of substance abuse problem or something?

  It wasn’t uncommon for people in their line of work, truly. Especially when dealing with grisly murders all the time. That tended to get to a person, and sometimes there was no way to handle it besides drinking.

  But Iain didn’t seem like the type.

  Of course, maybe he got wildly social under the influence of alcohol. Maybe he turned into someone completely different. But she doubted it.

  “You don’t always,” she said. “Sometimes you chime in. And I don’t want to discourage you from doing that in general, because the last few times, it’s been pretty helpful what you’ve said. But in this case, I think we have to be very careful not to upset Tempest’s parents. We don’t want them to get the idea we’re accusing her of murdering her husband and somehow getting killed herself as a product of her own actions. I think that might make them hostile.”

  “Yes, probably,” said Iain.

  “So, it’s best if you let me talk.”

  Silence.

  Then Iain spoke up. “I’m not a complete idiot, you know.”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “I do understand the need to be respectful to parents of a dead child,” said Iain. “I know that.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll be quiet anyway.” He sounded annoyed.

  Elke sucked in a breath. “Is this about the other day when I was angry about the article, because I tried to tell you that I—”

  “We don’t have to talk about that.”

  “Okay.”

  “I think I tried to tell you that.”

  “Okay,” she said. Man, something was going on with him. Maybe he was simply irritable because he hadn’t slept much. “I just, I get the feeling there’s some tension here between us.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  He sighed. “I had a rough night last night is all. I’m still not sure how I feel about… It’s not about you, or us, or the job.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be thinking about it. I should just be focused on the case.”

  More silence.

  “You know, I’ve been having personal issues too,” said Elke softly. And she wasn’t sure why she was volunteering this.

  “Yeah, I did look up what happened with your husband,” said Iain. “I’m sorry. That must have been horrible.”

  “Ex-husband,” she said.

  “Of course,” said Iain.

  More silence.

  “I’m just thinking about something that someone said to me last night,” Iain muttered. “And how it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Oh,” said Elke. That was vague. She was kind of curious. Should she press? Ask questions? What would she ask? Do you, in fact, have a substance abuse problem, Hudson? Yeah, maybe not.

  “Sorry.” Iain adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. “Uh, forget I said anything. Maybe we should talk about the case.”

  “Sure,” she said brightly. She tried to think of something to say about the case, but the only thing that came to mind was, “You don’t really think it was Tempest, do you?” Crap, that was offensive.

  “Uh, well, I think I’ve made it clear that I think our most likely perps are Kelley and Squires,” he said.

  “So, you think we’re wasting our time going up here?”

  “I didn’t say that,” he said. “That money did go missing from her account. We don’t know why. It’s suspicious.”

  “Yeah, that’s true. If it’s her, though, it’s going to be another PR nightmare. I mean, no one’s going to want to hear that the murderer is a dead woman—one of the victims. And we’d still have to find the contract killer she hired. How would we do that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Iain. “But if we have to do it, we will. The truth is all that matters.”

  She sighed. “You’re right.” Of course he was right. That was what they were doing here. They were looking for the truth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Iain clutched the cup of coffee that Cleo Austin, Tempest’s mother, had given him. He wasn’t sure how many cups of coffee he’d had today. Three? Four? It was making him feel a little jittery. A little on edge. Maybe that was why he kept thinking about what Harley had said last night.

  Elke had declined the coffee. She was sitting next to Iain on the couch. “So, I apologize for coming to see you like this out of the blue. I’m sure dredging up these memories isn’t easy.”

  The two were sitting in the Austins’ living room. Someone in the house had a thing for chickens, because they were everywhere. The windowsills, the mantle, and several shelves were all covered in various little ceramic chicken figurines.

  Iain gazed into the coffee, barely paying attention to Elke. I didn’t realize this would make you so upset. That was what Harley had said, and she’d gotten him with that little line, plus the one about how she didn’t think he cared. That had stopped him. That had made him feel guilty. Because so many people had told him he was cold and detached and unfeeling. And she knew that too. Damn it.

  “It’s not a problem. I’m not saying it isn’t hard,” said Cleo. “We miss our baby girl, of course.”

  “And our granddaughter, too,” said Tobias. “We miss her something awful. She’s been locked up her entire adult life. All the things she’s missed, it’s terrible.”

  “And you know she gets no support from her father’s side of the family, and they’re the ones with all the money. All doctors on that side, all
with million-dollar houses,” said Cleo. “They could be paying for lawyers for her. God knows, we’ve tried to do what we can. We’ve helped out the Greenes, Kevin’s parents, as best we could. But as some point, we’ve just run into brick walls.”

  “And you wonder,” said Tobias, “you wonder if you’d had more money to get better lawyers, if maybe…” He shook his head.

  Iain took a slug of the coffee. Okay, he was cold and detached sometimes. He was. Right now, these two people were pouring out their frustrations at the demise of their family, and all he could think about was the fact that his girlfriend—no, his fuck buddy—was a manipulative bitch. He set the cup down on the coffee table and tried to concentrate on the interview.

  “Anyway, it’s painful to talk about,” said Cleo, “but we’re also glad you’re here. We’re glad somebody finally saw that Saanvi and Kevin are innocent.”

  “Well, to be fair,” said Elke, “we’re not taking any positions at this point. We’re simply investigating the case.”

  Right, thought Iain darkly, and if they find out we suspect their daughter, they won’t be pleased. This was a delicate balancing act. He was glad Elke was handling it. Especially because he was still thinking about Harley. Her words from the night before echoed through his brain. She was a liar. She had lied to him. She said that shit, and knew it would get to him, but she was lying. Of course she knew how much it would affect him.

  “Yes, we understand,” said Cleo.

  “But we’d like to help however we can,” said Tobias.

  “All right, well, we have some questions, then,” said Elke. “How would you characterize the relationship between Tempest and Abeer?”

  Cleo and Tobias exchanged a glance.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” said Cleo.

  “We liked Abeer,” said Tobias.

  “He was wonderful to our daughter. A wonderful husband.”

  “So, they were happy?” said Elke, raising her eyebrows.

  Iain picked the coffee back up again. Okay, so this was interesting. Had the parents simply not known about the state of their daughter’s marriage, or were they lying for some reason? Or could Dr. Oliver have been lying? Or could Dr. Oliver have been mistaken? People seemed to have mistaken ideas about other people’s situations all the time.