Page 51

This time it’s Ball putting his hand on Danny’s arm.

Davis carries on as if Danny has said nothing. She’s looking at him earnestly, the smile gone. “You’re carrying a weight. I can almost see it. That’s why you’re telling this story about a dream.”

He says nothing.

“It’s awfully far-out, you have to admit that. I mean, look at it from our point of view. I don’t even think your lawyer believes it, not for a minute.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Ball says. “More things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of in your philosophy. Shakespeare.”

“Bullcrap,” Jalbert says from the poster. “Me.”

Danny just holds the woman’s gaze. Jalbert is a lost cause. Davis might not be, in spite of her hard shell.

“You feel remorse, I know you do. Putting that barrel over Yvonne’s hand and arm so the dog couldn’t get at her anymore, that was remorse.”

He says nothing, but if she really believes that, she might be a lost cause, too. It was compassion, not remorse. Compassion for a dead woman with a charm bracelet on her mutilated wrist. But Davis is on a roll, so let her roll.

“We can help you take that weight off. It will be easy once you start. And there’s a bonus. If you make a clean breast of it, we may be able to help you. Kansas has the death penalty, and—”

“Hasn’t been used in over forty years,” Ball says. “Hickock and Smith, the ones Truman Capote wrote the book about, they were the last.”

“They might use it for the Wicker girl,” Davis persists. Danny thinks it’s interesting that young woman has become girl. But of course that’s what the prosecutor would call her: the girl. The defenseless girl. “But if you own up to what you did, the death penalty would almost certainly be off the table. Make it easier for us and for yourself. Tell us what really happened.”

“I did,” Danny says. “I had a dream. I went out to prove to myself a dream was all it was, but the girl was there. I called it in. You don’t believe me. I understand that, but I’m telling the truth. Now let’s cut the crap. Are you going to arrest me?”

Silence. Davis continues looking at him for a moment with that same warm earnestness. Then her face changes, becomes not cold but blank. Professional. She sits back and looks at Jalbert.

“Not at this time,” Jalbert says. His dusty eyes say But soon, Danny. Soon.

Danny stands up. His legs are like the legs in his dream—as if he doesn’t own them and they might carry him anywhere. Ball stands up with him. They go to the door together. Danny thinks he must be a little unsteady on his feet, or too pale, because Ball still has his hand on his arm. All Danny wants is to get out of this room, but he turns back and looks at Davis.

“The man who killed that woman is still out there,” he says. “I’m talking to you, Inspector Davis, because it’s no good talking to him. He’s made his mind up. You talk a good game, but I’m not sure you’ve made up yours. Catch him, all right? Stop looking at me and look for the man who killed her. Before he does it again.”

He might see something on her face. He might not.

Ball tugs his arm. “Come on, Danny. Let’s go.”

23

When they’re gone, Jalbert turns off the camera and the recorder. “That was interesting.”

She nods.

He peers into her face. “Any doubts?”

“No.”

“Because a couple of times you looked like he might actually be convincing you.”

“No doubts. He knew where she was because he put her there. That’s the logic. The dream story is TV bullshit.”

Jalbert takes Danny’s phone from the pocket of his coat. He punches in the passcode, swipes through the various apps, then turns it off again. “We’ll get this to forensics ASAP and they’ll go through the whole schmear, not just his locations going back to June 1st. Emails, texts, photos, search history. Clone it, get it back to him tomorrow or Monday.”

“Given the way he turned it over to us, I don’t think we’ll find much,” Davis says. “I didn’t expect that.”

“He’s a confident son-of-a-buck, but he may have forgotten something. Just one single text could be enough.”

Davis remembers Jalbert saying that same thing, or close to it, about one single hair in the cab of Coughlin’s truck being enough. But they found nothing. She says, “We’ll just find the one trip out to Gunnel. You know that, right? His phone was back at his trailer when he killed her and when he buried her, both at the same time or separately. Count on it.”