Page 84 of Shame the Devil

“It doesn’t matter,” Jennifer said. “Maybe it’s better. Time for all the secrets to come out.”

“Can I get you two a cup of coffee?” Johnson asked.

“Sure,” Harlan said. “Black. Not for her, though. She’s pregnant.” He looked at Jennifer. “Water? Something else?”

“Water’s good,” she said. She was still holding his hand, or he was still holding hers, when he realized that he’d said it. He’d told somebody.

She’s pregnant.

A pause, then, while they waited for the detective to come back, and he tried to think of something to say and couldn’t. She said, “Fifteen minutes, and whatever it is, this part will be over. Even the worst moment ends sometime. I hope you’re still planning to take me to lunch afterwards, though, because it’s after noon, and I’m starved.”

“The pregnant thing,” he said. She’d said the same thing he’d been thinking, about the fifteen minutes. Huh.

“Yep,” she said. “I like that you told him so. Thanks for looking out for me.” She smiled at him, and that was so much better.

The detective came back with a bottle of water for Jennifer and a paper cup of coffee for him, which turned out to be hot and strong and exactly what he needed. He took a sip, left his hand curled around the cup for warmth, laced the fingers of the other hand through Jennifer’s under the table, and said, “Whenever you’re ready.”

Johnson turned the recorder on, gave their names, the date, checked the clock on the wall for the time, sat back, and said, “So, please. Tell me what this is about.”

“I went to see my dad at the jail this morning,” Harlan said. “He’d been calling me, telling me he had to talk to me. I guess you don’t actually only get one call.”

Johnson said, “What did he say?”

Harlan had spent the drive over trying to organize his thoughts. They still weren’t all that organized, so he just started at the beginning. “He wanted me to pay for a defense attorney. A hundred thousand, he said.”

“At the very least,” Johnson said. “If it goes to trial. How did you respond?”

“Told him hell, no.” He took a breath and said, “You probably know I play for the Portland Devils. NFL.”

“Yes,” Johnson said. “I do.”

“Which means he thought I should do it,” Harlan said, “because the money doesn’t mean that much to me.” He felt the stiffening in Jennifer, tightened his hold on her hand, and said, “I’m used to that. But not like this. I told him that he owns property, plus whatever he has saved up. Told him to use that. He said there was the bail, too. Is he going to get bail? For murder?”

“Probably,” the detective said. “The judge could deny it, but it’s a first offense, and it happened a long time ago. He’d have an ankle bracelet. The judge could call him a flight risk, though, because of your financial resources.”

What was he supposed to do about that? Whatcouldhe do about that? He didn’t want his dad out, back in the house, back around town. It would feel like leaving a black-widow spider in the corner of your shed, just waiting for a kid to stick his hand in there. It would feel like failing his mom again. If he told the judge he wasn’t helping with bail or anything else, though, they’d probably bemorelikely to grant it.

He needed to talk to his lawyer.

A problem for later. “I’m taking my sister out of here,” he said. “To Portland. If you need us, you know my number.”

“Seems like a good idea,” Johnson agreed. Harlan could hear him thinking,You got me all the way over here on Sunday for this?

Harlan put his elbow on the table and drew his hair back from his face. “I’m going to tell you some stuff he said.”

“I’m listening,” Johnson said.

Harlan closed his eyes a second to get it straight in his brain. Like memorizing a playbook, and he was good at that. Recall under stress, and he was good at that, too. “He told me that it must be somebody else. He suggested Austin Grant, the bookstore guy, but I wouldn’t say he was focused on that. He gave me a scenario of what the guy would have done, though.”

Johnson was too good an interviewer to react to that. “Go on.”

“He said it wouldn’t have been hard to break into the office and get the keys for a Bobcat. He said that specifically. Bobcat. That the guy would drive it up onto a trailer and haul it. That the land wasn’t fenced, so all the guy had to do was haul the Bobcat behind the trees, out of sight, and dig the hole. That he’d have all night to do it, because there would be nobody to see him, not in October.”

“That’s interesting,” Johnson said.

“Yeah.” He had to breathe a couple times for the next part. “I asked him why somebody would’ve done that. Why the guy would’ve killed her. He said, maybe she wanted to leave with him, and he didn’t want to take her.”

Some definite non-interest on Johnson’s face. “Yeah,” Harlan agreed. “That one was stupid. Why would a man kill a woman for that? He’s leaving anyway. And then he said, maybe he didn’t mean to do it. Maybe she told him it was over, and they were fighting about it. Maybe he was shaking her, had his hands around her neck to shut her up, and it happened by accident. Or maybe …” He gripped Jennifer’s hand tighter. “Maybe she told him she was pregnant.”