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Johnson held up a hand. “So you’re saying that Chad saw Marlie being chased by Edmund Tate?”
“No! He couldn’t see who it was, he was all dressed in black and had like a mask on, I guess. Cuz I asked. Chad said he knew it wasn’t Edmund Tate, the cop, because Chad saw him on his porch. Someone else was chasing Marlie.”
“Who?” Thomas asked.
“I told you he couldn’t see. Too many trees, but he saw the guy on the porch smoking, because there was light from the inside of the Tates’ cabin and his cigarette tip was red.”
Was this right? Thomas glanced at Johnson.
“He was sure of that?” Johnson said.
“Look, you’ll have to ask him all about it, but that’s what he told me.”
Was she lying? Thomas asked himself. Or had Chad lied to her? Was there even a whisper of a chance that Marlie Robinson had survived? “Running in which direction?” he asked. “To the lake? Or away from it?”
“I don’t know!” she said, exploding. “I’m telling you he said he saw Marlie being chased, but I don’t know for sure. Again,Iwasn’t there, but you’d think he would know because he’d dated Marlie for years. They . . . they had a thing. He knew what she looked like, right? And Kara, the sister, she was a lot younger. Even in the dark, he would’ve seen that she was just a kid.”
Thomas leaned forward. “Did Edmund Tate see Marlie being chased?”
“Jesus! I don’t know,” she bit out. “I’m only telling you what Chad said that night. He could have been mixed up; he was really, really upset. Out of it, kind of. You know, scared out of his mind. I’ve never seen him like that before or after. He could’ve been wrong. Like I said, you’ll have to ask him.”
“We will,” Johnson said.
“What about the parents? Sam and Zelda McIntyre?” Thomas asked, backing up a bit, trying to piece the scene together and not get ahead of himself. This was their chance to find out what really happened all those years ago. If they could locate Chad, press him further, and Brittlynn wasn’t lying, who knew what they’d uncover? “When ‘all hell broke loose,’” he said, “were the parents there? Awake?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Chad never said a word about them. Nothing. Just that when he finally reached his car, I mean his truck, he drove like a bat to my house. He snuck in through my bedroom window and he was still shaking, his eyes like saucers. He swore he didn’t do anything more than try to steal from the old man.”
“And witness a murder.”
“Yeah.” She chewed her gum more slowly, paused, glanced at her attorney.
Cooke nodded grimly, encouraging her.
Brittlynn’s voice was becoming a whisper. “So, Chad and I, we struck a deal.”
“What kind of deal?” Johnson asked.
“I said I’d tell the cops that he was with me all night. So he wouldn’t get caught for the attempted robbery, so maybe then Jonas wouldn’t come after him, you know?”
Johnson asked, “And he agreed?”
“Sure. He needed me.” Brittlynn almost smiled.
Johnson circled back. “And what would Chad do? What was his part of the deal if you agreed to lie for him?”
Brittlynn looked away and blushed, seeming suddenly ashamed. “I was just a kid. A girl who was in love, you know. Chad was my everything. At least he was at fourteen.” They waited until she finally admitted, “He promised to marry me the minute I turned eighteen.” Her gaze was level. “He had to swear he’d break up with Marlie, that he’d lie and say they weren’t planning to run away and that he wasn’t even near that mansion, that she dreamed up the whole thing if she ever testified or was questioned by the cops or whatever. That . . . that she was obsessed with him when he was in love with me.”
“When you were the one who was obsessed.” Johnson leaned back in her chair.
“He loved me!” Brittlynn hooked a thumb at her chest. “Me. Not her.” She blinked and a single tear slid down her cheek. Sniffing, she slapped it away with the sleeve of her sweater.
“Weren’t you curious as to what happened to her?” Johnson asked, shoving a tissue box toward Brittlynn.
“Sure. Everyone was. For God’s sake, it was, like, a national obsession.” She angled her chin upward, though her eyes were still bright with unshed tears. Her hands were shaking. “To me, it didn’t matter what happened to her. At least not then. All that I cared about was that I had Chad.” Her voice faltered a bit. “I won.”
Thomas watched Brittlynn’s reaction. “Do you believe Chad’s story?”
“Yes!” She sniffed again. Ignored the proffered box of Kleenex. “Oh, yeah. He didn’t, like, have any blood on him, and I figured when I read about that massacre that if he’d been anywhere near any of the victims, there would have been blood. Tons of it. And he was scared, like batshit scared. Freaked out beyond freaked out. But not like scared because he thought he was going to be caught for killing an entire family. No, like scared because of what he’d seen. He never liked Jonas, told me that he was ‘whacked,’ that’s the word he used, and from that night forward he wanted nothing to do with the McIntyre family. Nothing.”