Page 54

CHAPTER 54

BY THE TIME I finished telling Dave Summerly about the trophy box — how I’d come to acquire it and what I knew about its contents — he was standing before the collection of ten sad little zip-lock bags, each with the newspaper article pressed against its surface, spread out on my dining-room table.

Summerly stood there emotionlessly, his hair still wet from the shower we’d taken together, his mouth clamped shut and his jaw muscles twitching. Jarrod Maloof’s greasy backpack and a printout of Alex Brindle and Daisy Hansen’s messages over the months of their affair were also on the table. I’d come clean on everything. It had taken me half an hour to get it all out. Summerly licked his teeth and looked at me in a way he never had before.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I said, though I was terrified to hear it.

“I don’t even know where to start.” He shook his head. “I can’t ... I can’t fix on anything. It’s all swirling around. The ... the utter disappointment I feel that you didn’t trust me with all this. The fucking blinding rage I feel that you would jeopardize a chain of custody this way.”

“I kept the box back until now because I wanted to know how it connected to the case,” I said carefully. “And I knew it would blind the police team to the possibility of Troy’s innocence. Make their tunnel vision even narrower. The chain of custody isn’t any more corrupted than it would have been if a suspect handed evidence to his lawyer. No one has touched the box except me. It’s been with me the whole time.”

Summerly’s fists were clenched and shaking. He picked up each bag by its corner and placed it as carefully as he could into the box. But even though he was being as gentle as possible, the anger was fighting to get out of him. He fumbled Dorothy Andrews-Smith’s bag. I went for it. He snatched it away.

“Dorothy Andrews-Smith was killed by a fucking gang, Rhonda.”

“How do you — ”

“I know, ” he said. “I know she was. And you will too when you examine the facts. How closely have you looked at these cases?”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’ve been a little busy,” I said. “When I started, I went for Jarrod Maloof. He went missing most recently. His uncle is — ”

“I don’t care.” Dave rubbed his brow. “I don’t care what happened to him.”

“Yes, you do.” I tried to keep my voice gentle. “Baby and I are wondering if Daisy’s affair with Alex Brindle might have sparked this. The therapist was pulling away. She felt the relationship was too intense, too risky. It could be that Daisy wanted to connect with her on a shared interest, and she went looking for — ”

“Rhonda, you gotta stop talking.” Summerly slapped the message printout on the top of the box.

“Alex Brindle — ”

“Is a ruined witness,” he barked. He picked up the box and headed for the door. “The thing you should have done when you discovered Daisy was having an affair was tell me so I could get Brindle’s story while she was fresh. Now I gotta wonder what you’ve suggested to her in your untrained, unsanctioned, possibly manipulative interrogation.”

“What?” I slipped by him and grabbed the doorknob before he could. “What did you just say? You think I don’t know how to preserve the testimony of a witness? I was a lawyer for twelve years!”

“Exactly.” Summerly hugged the box to his chest. His eyes were fierce with contempt. “You go into every interview knowing which side you’re on, what answers you want. I’m a detective, Rhonda. I’m trained to make sure that doesn’t happen.” He shook the box in his arms. “These people? They aren’t paying me to be on their side,” he said. “Every dollar you make off Troy Hansen is a reason for you to ignore the truth.”

“You really think I’d do that?” I asked. “You think I’d protect Troy if I thought he was guilty just to make a buck?”

“What am I supposed to think, Rhonda? Isn’t that what lawyers do?”

I tore open the door. “Get out,” I snarled.

He did.