Page 85 of Shame the Devil

A little noise from Jennifer, like she couldn’t help it escaping. He loosened his hold on her hand and said, “Sorry. Am I hurting you?”

“No,” she said. “It’s OK.” She wanted to say something else, he could tell, but she didn’t.

Johnson said, “Anything else?”

“That was it.” Harlan was lightheaded. He took another sip of cooling coffee, and then a second one, only a major effort of will keeping his hand from shaking. “And I kept thinking … how did he know? It was like he saw it all. The Bobcat. Driving back behind the trees. October, not whenever it would have been after the postcards stopped. The postcards that aren’t there anymore, so nobody can compare the handwriting. That would have been April, maybe, when the ground was thawed enough to dig. But he said it was October, and that you’d be digging all night.” He put the cup down and looked into the detective’s pale blue eyes. “And I swear he saw those hands around her neck.”

No answer, and he needed one. He said, “Detective. How did my mother die?”

* * *

The tension was holdingHarlan’s body up like he was strung through with stiff cords. Like if you cut them, he’d collapse in a heap. He was all but vibrating with it.

With that, and dread.

A long, long pause, and the detective said, “Manual strangulation.”

Jennifer saw Harlan’s eyes close, saw the motion of his throat he swallowed. He opened his eyes again, not moving a muscle, and asked, “Was she pregnant?”

She could see the detective deciding whether to tell him. Finally, he said, “Not to my knowledge. If a fetus isn’t very far along, though, you’ve got cartilage, not bone. Cartilage dissolves.”

Unlike the bones of a skeleton. Over twelve years.

She couldn’t bear to think about those last moments. About her frantic hands around his wrists, her mouth open, trying to speak. Trying to beg. She couldn’t bear to, but she was going to have to, because it was right there in Harlan’s mind.

Johnson said, “Thank you for providing that information. It could be useful.” His tone matter-of-fact, dry as unbuttered toast, as only a Norwegian could make it.

Harlan said, “He hasn’t confessed, obviously.”

“No.”

“Are you going to try to get him to?”

“Yes. It’s easier. You never know what a jury will do.”

“Can I …” Harlan’s hand was tight around hers again, almost painful. “Is there a way I can … wear a wire, or something? If I told him I’d bail him out, that I’d pay his lawyer, too, but I needed to know the truth, I’m pretty sure he’d tell me. He wants to say that it wasn’t his fault. He’s dying to say that it was an accident, to justify it. It’s what he does. I could feel it in him. All I’d have to do is give him a nudge, and I’d have it.”

“No,” the detective said. “Not at this point. Once we’ve made an arrest, we can’t go back in to try to compel a statement. It would be entrapment. He’d be incriminating himself.” A wintry smile. “Blame the Fifth Amendment.”

“You wouldn’t be doing it,” Harlan said. “It would be me.”

“Sorry,” the detective said. “I see that you want to help. You have helped. We can use what you’ve told me, as long as you’re willing to repeat it in court.”

“I’m willing to repeat it anywhere,” Harlan said.

“Good. But you can’t go back in there on purpose to extract some kind of confession, and come tell us about it. You could jeopardize the case,” he went on, when Harlan would have said something. “Go see him, if you like. Ask him whatever you want, if it’s helpful to you and your sisters. But don’t tell me about it. We can’t use it, not now.”

Jennifer could see the frustration in every line of Harlan’s body, but all he said was, “What happens next?”

“He’ll see a judge in the morning,” Johnson said. “For the bail hearing. The judge will appoint a public defender, if he hasn’t hired an attorney. It’ll be short.”

“Is there a … a plea deal?” Harlan asked. “Some way he pleads to a lesser charge, and there’s no trial?”

“That depends,” the detective said. “On whether he wants to take his chances with a jury, and on what we can get him to tell us.”

“Which won’t be much,” Harlan said. “Not if he has an attorney. You can’t play in the NFL for ten years and not know that.”

* * *