Almost Lost

by Blake Pierce

  The fact that this was even being allowed was terrifying. Cassie wondered whether there was corruption at work. In this close-knit community, Trish might have a connection within the police department. If that was the case, who knew how far her influence reached, and would Cassie be able to get beyond it to plead her case?

  “In here, please, love.”

  The kind constable had stopped calling her “ma’am” after the third pack of Kleenex had been opened. Now she seemed to have adopted a motherly concern for Cassie, but the fact she cared only made Cassie cry all the harder as she was shepherded into the tiny prison cell.

  The door clanged behind her and she was alone, locked into this cramped, chilly space that stank of chemical cleaner, with a sour undertone of old vomit.

  She hadn’t taken her meds last night—she’d been too distraught to think about it after escaping from Ryan’s threats. That was probably why she’d had the nightmare and sleepwalked. Now here she was, locked in a police cell without them, for who knew how long. Would she be able to cope?

  Cassie doubted it. Her mind felt as if it was on overload, with red alarm buzzers sounding on all sides. Her ability for logical thought had shut down completely. The hysterical crying had made her nauseous, and in fact, she spent some time dry retching over the metal toilet pan that was wedged in the tiny space behind the Spartan bed.

  Then she collapsed on her knees next to the bed and buried her face in the coarse blue blanket.

  She lay there, her sobs gradually lessening, until she slipped off the bed onto the hard linoleum floor.

  *

  Constable Aria Chandra peered worriedly through the bars.

  The pretty redhead had suffered a bout of hysterics so severe that the constable had been on the point of calling the precinct’s doctor, as she’d thought a tranquilizer should be administered.

  Now she’d finally calmed down, but she was on the floor. The girl should at least be on the bed.

  Reading through the charge sheet, Chandra learned she’d been arrested at home. She had appeared sober and not under the influence of any drugs, although she’d grown hysterical upon being arrested and had attempted to resist the officers.

  Chandra sighed. This girl looked pretty, and fragile, and harmless; and it wouldn’t do her any good to be lying on the floor. When the detectives came back later in the morning, she’d be taken for questioning. She needed some rest.

  “Watch me, will you?” she asked her shift partner, a junior sergeant.

  She made some warm, sweet tea in a paper cup and headed into the cell, with the sergeant standing by outside the locked door.

  Chandra put the cup down on the shelf.

  “Come on, love. Get up. You’ll have a better rest on the bed. That floor’s too cold for you to be spending time there.”

  She helped the girl up, thinking she was in a right state and wondering if she should give the doctor a call after all. She was shivering and shaking and she started crying again.

  “It’s a setup,” she kept repeating.

  “Love, you need to get some rest. Here’s your tea.”

  She placed the cup in the girl’s hand, noticing she felt icy cold, and held it steady while she drank. She’d been crying so much she needed fluids. When Chandra was sure she was able to hold it on her own, she let go.

  Once the tea was finished, she helped her onto the bed and pulled the blanket over her. Then she left, hoping that she would calm down and be able to get some sleep.

  An hour later, she returned to check up on Cassie, bringing her another cup of tea. She was still in two minds about whether to call the police doctor, because although the girl had finally stopped crying, she was shaking violently.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, as some of the tea splashed onto the floor.

  “It’s all right. Try to be calm. Remember, nobody’s out to get you. They just have to follow the processes.”

  Returning to the front desk, Chandra saw that Parker had returned to work.

  There was no need to ask him if he’d had any sleep, because he’d obviously spent the interim at the gym. His hair was still wet from the shower and he was carrying his gym bag over his shoulder.

  “Good workout?” she asked.

  “The best. Keeps me sane.” He grinned at her.

  “Are you going to question the girl now? Don’t be hard on her. She’s very nervous.”

  Parker frowned.

  “Chandra, she doesn’t deserve special treatment. She’s a murderer. We’re going to put on the table now what she’s done, and I’ll be very surprised if she doesn’t cave in immediately and give us a full confession.”

  “She says she didn’t do it. She told me so; she kept repeating it.”

  “All the evidence points to the fact that she did. If she says differently, she’s a liar.”

  “A liar?” Chandra asked. “You really think so?”

  Chandra wished she had more experience. She’d only been with this unit a year and was still in training to be a detective. She didn’t have any proof that the auburn-haired girl wasn’t lying, only a gut feeling, and what use was a gut feeling when you were still a trainee?

  Parker sighed heavily and leaned his arms on the front desk.

  Speaking in a low voice he said, “This is personal for me, you see. Ryan Ellis was my friend. We knew each other from gym. We even trained together when my shifts allowed.”

  “That so?” Chandra asked. She wasn’t very surprised, because in the town there was only one police station, and only one gym.

  “He was a good guy, a family man, who spoke highly of his wife and children. He owned a boat hire business, I think. He trained hard, regular as clockwork, Monday to Friday—and sometimes Saturdays, from seven to eight-thirty a.m. When we got the chance to work out together, he was a fantastic weight training partner.”

  Parker smiled sadly. “I remember he joked to me that his family thought he went to work early every day. That was what he told them. But instead, he was at the gym.”

  Chandra raised her eyebrows.

  “And you’re calling her the liar?”

  Parker scowled.

  “She’s alive. He’s dead. I’m going to be as hard on her as I need to.”

  Chandra took a frustrated breath, ready to argue back, but then her phone rang, and Parker marched away.

  She could only hope that the questioning didn’t end up breaking this fragile, nervous young girl.

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  When Cassie heard the tramp of feet heading toward her cell door, nervousness boiled inside her and it was all she could do to stay on her feet. She felt dizzy, disoriented, and incapable of stringing even the simplest of sentences together.

  How was she going to stand up to their onslaught?

  The two policemen looked grim, and Parker in particular seemed hostile. He didn’t even greet her, although Bruton offered her a brief “Good morning.”

  At least they didn’t handcuff her this time, but as she walked alongside them she began to feel more lightheaded with every step.

  The tiny interview room was warm and felt airless. She collapsed onto the steel chair, staring down at the table while the two officers sat across from her and switched on the recording equipment.

  After stating her name and address again for the record, Parker got straight to the point.

  “Tell us what happened last night. In detail, please. Leave nothing out. Give approximate times where you can.”

  Cassie wanted to cry. Where was he going with this? Why did he keep on asking her the same thing? Was he trying to prove that she was in some way responsible for Ryan’s death? How could you be responsible for what another adult chose to do?

  “I gave the children supper and put them to bed before eight thirty.”

  Her voice sounded weak and toneless. Would she have thought herself to be a credible witness? She didn’t think so, and nor did they. She could see it in their faces.

  “The Ellises
arrived back at around ten. They were—well, Ryan seemed tipsy, and Trish quite drunk. Ryan put Trish to bed and then came back. I had a glass of wine outside with him and updated him on things. It didn’t take long. I was in bed before eleven. He stayed out on the balcony.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Like I said, I woke from a bad dream. I noticed the porch light was still on. I went and found him.”

  Had it been the dream that had drawn her outside into the rainy garden? After her confrontation with Ryan, she’d been in a stress meltdown and perhaps she had seen, or done, something she didn’t remember. That could be why the police thought she was guilty.

  “Why do you keep asking me this? I didn’t know he’d stay outside drinking in the cold, or that he’d finish another bottle of wine. I didn’t even know people could die so easily from exposure. Why are you accusing me? I didn’t lock him outside or tie him to his chair! What did you want me to do?”

  Her breath was coming faster and she could feel herself starting to sob.

  The officers exchanged a glance which Cassie didn’t understand.

  She thought that Parker looked temporarily confused, but Bruton continued impassively.

  “Ryan Ellis’s body was taken straight for postmortem analysis and a series of tests. The results came back an hour ago and they are as we suspected. Mr. Ellis did not die from exposure, nor of any natural or preventable causes. He died because the wine he drank was laced with a large quantity of rat poison.”

  His gaze drilled into her, and Cassie was without words as shock overwhelmed her.

  Only now did she realize the full implications of his death.

  Rat poison—the poison that she herself had bought, and then put away, because the traps were sold out.

  Her mind was reeling.

  Someone had poisoned Ryan. Poisoned him. How had it been done, and when?

  What would it have taken to deliberately add some of that poison to a bottle of wine, knowing that he would drink it and then he would die?

  Who could have callously done such a thing?

  She remembered that red-stained vomit on the front of his shirt, and guessed that it must have been blood.

  “I feel sick,” she said suddenly, and Parker leaped from his chair. He grabbed the bucket in the corner, shoving it toward her just in time.

  Cassie retched into the gray plastic bucket, unable to erase the image of the bloody vomit from her mind.

  Rat poison. Someone had poisoned him, and he’d died.

  She’d felt fine after the wine she had drunk; she hadn’t even felt sick. Cassie guessed that made her look even guiltier.

  “Can I have some water?” she asked. Her voice was wobbly and her mouth tasted terrible.

  She rinsed it out with the lukewarm water they brought her, and spat it into the bucket, feeling humiliated and defenseless at having to do all of this under their unsympathetic gaze.

  “You purchased the rat poison yourself, correct?”

  No chance for her to recover. Cassie sensed this questioning would be relentless.

  “Yes. I was supposed to get a mouse trap but there were none at the store, so the shopkeeper recommended it. Then Ryan said they didn’t use poison in the house. He asked to take it back and exchange it.”

  “But you didn’t? Why?” Parker’s question sounded accusatory.

  “My car broke down.”

  “But you had use of another car, correct?”

  “Only a few days later. By then I’d forgotten about the poison. I—I didn’t even think about exchanging it. I was supposed to call the store and ask them if they had the traps in stock.”

  “By then you’d found out that Mr. Ellis was married, and that his situation wasn’t as you’d believed.” Parker leaned forward.

  “Yes. I was confused because he kept saying one thing to me, but acting in a different way to her. I was very miserable. I decided to leave. I would have gone last night already if they’d come back earlier, but I couldn’t leave the children on their own.”

  “Your passport.”

  Now Bruton spoke and she swallowed nervously.

  “Yes?”

  “You don’t have a work visa for the UK. You’re here on a visitor’s visa.”

  “Like I said, I was a friend.”

  Bruton’s face was like thunder.

  “We interviewed Ryan Ellis’s wife again this morning. She confirmed that she has never met you, and that her husband never mentioned you.”

  One lie—one lie, and she was being caught out. For a moment Cassie was dazed by the irony. This could sink her. Meanwhile, Ryan had told thousands of lies, and had gone about his life with no consequences—until the end, anyway.

  “All right. It’s not exactly the truth.”

  Parker nodded in satisfaction as he noted her confession down.

  Cassie sensed his antipathy toward her, although she didn’t know why. It was as if he wanted her to have committed this crime and to be convicted of it. He didn’t seem to have a shred of sympathy for her. Were they even considering any other suspects? Surely the spouse was always a suspect in a case like this, but it didn’t seem as if they doubted Trish’s version at all.

  How could she convince them to consider Trish as a suspect? Was there a way to redirect their attention from her?

  She stared at Parker, looked at his thickset, muscular arms crossed on the table, a frown creasing his broad forehead. He was a strong, focused guy. So maybe she needed to try to be stronger, too. Falling apart, weakness, fragility was all she’d shown and maybe, in his mind, it was painting her as the victim.

  Bruton seemed more neutral, although he might just be better at hiding his feelings.

  At any rate, they’d caught her out in a lie.

  This was the worst thing that could have happened. Perhaps she should have admitted she’d come here to work for cash—but then she would have confessed to breaking the law and they would have gotten her on that.

  Either response painted her as an unreliable witness and a criminal. There was simply no good outcome to that line of questioning. She could accuse anyone else, including Trish, of having committed this crime, but there would be no weight behind her words.

  If she had lied about one thing, she could lie again. A smaller lie would lead to a bigger lie. That was why they would not believe her, and she knew they would use it against her.

  That made her think about Ryan all over again, and her brain reeled as she thought about the immensity of the lies he’d told. The audacity of what he’d done, how he’d misled her, felt as shocking as it had the first moment that she’d realized.

  She’d wanted to kill him.

  Cassie felt a thrill of fear as she remembered the murderous thoughts she’d had about Ryan, the anger she’d had inside her. She couldn’t tell the police that or they might regard it as a confession.

  Nor could she tell them about the way her memory fragmented under stress, and that strange sleepwalking incident she’d had before he had died.

  She swallowed hard as she wondered how much she herself remembered about that night. What if their relentless questioning triggered memories she didn’t even know about?

  In horror, Cassie visualized herself walking to that cupboard, opening the poison, adding it to the wine. She imagined stirring it to be sure it had dissolved and smelling it, nodding in satisfaction when all she picked up was its fruity, earthy scent. Pouring another, untainted glass for herself, and walking out to Ryan with a humble apology, telling him that she believed him after all, waiting and watching while he drank down the deadly liquid.

  What if these repressed memories had caused her to sleepwalk?

  Glancing at the police, Cassie saw to her relief that they were reading through their notes. Perhaps that meant questioning was over for the day. But then Parker put down his pen and picked up her passport again, paging through it carefully.

  “I see here you have a French student visa, stamped in October. So you were
working there. That was supposed to be a year’s contract, correct? What happened?”

  Cassie felt short of breath. She’d thought the information inside her passport couldn’t get her into any more trouble, but now she was realizing it could, and would.

  “The family I worked for didn’t need me anymore,” she said.

  “Is that so?” Parker’s voice dripped with sarcasm and she couldn’t summon the nerve to look him in the eye. Instead she stared down at the table.

  “Can you give us the name, all the contact details?” he pressed her. “We will need to check if there were any irregularities during the brief time you were in their employ.”

  Irregularities. Now it seemed as if there was no air in the room at all. She couldn’t lie her way out of this, it was too serious, even though the truth would instantly incriminate her.

  She thought of her ex-employer and wondered whether he was being held in prison while awaiting trial.

  He had insisted, from the start, that he had been wrongfully accused of the crime.

  Now Cassie was discovering exactly what that felt like.

  What a twist of irony that she had ended up in the same situation—the only difference being that he had a top legal team working around the clock to exonerate him, and she had nobody.

  “I was working for the Dubois family,” she said. “Pierre Dubois employed me.”

  There was a short silence, and then, as Parker realized who she was speaking about, she saw the blaze of triumph in his eyes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  When Chandra entered the conference room after taking the redhead back to the cell, she found Parker and Bruton discussing the case. Their conversation was heated.

  “It’s too much of a coincidence,” Parker insisted. “She works for that French family, and the fiancée ends up dead. Now she works for this family, and the husband ends up dead. What is she? I know I’m thinking a few steps ahead, but this points to serial killer methodology.”

  Bruton shook his head.

  “As a woman, it’s less likely she’s a serial killer. Look, it could point to plain bad luck, but there’s also a possibility that the experiences at her previous job pushed her over the edge. A young girl who’s mentally unstable and who’s been through the traumatic experience of a suspicious death at her workplace—that could be a trigger.”