by Lis Wiehl
As she put the phone back on her belt, she saw the bartender’s eyes take in the holster and then skitter away. A minute later he brought her another drink. She thought about waving it away, but instead she drained the last inch of her old drink and picked up the new one.
“It’s weird that we can watch videos of Cassidy anytime we want,” Nic said to Allison. “In the old days, when you were gone, you were gone. Maybe someone cut off a lock of your hair and framed it. But that was it.”
Allison popped a cashew into her mouth. “Have you ever seen those scary old daguerreotypes they used to take of people lying dead in their coffins? Most of the time that would be the only photo of the person ever. Now even after you’re dead you can live on forever on the Internet.”
“Not to mention the billboards,” Nic said. “I wonder how long until they take those down?” She had passed one this morning on her way to work. Your Friends at Channel Four, with pictures of Cassidy as well as Brad, Phoebe, and the sports guy whose name Nic could never remember.
“And I think they’re on at least one of the MAX trains.”
“Everything’s going to change,” Nic said, feeling the weight of the truth. “Not just the billboards, not just at Channel Four. The three of us—you and me and Cassidy—it just worked. She was lighthearted and fun, and I’m way too serious. And you’re right in the middle. It’s not going to be balanced anymore.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Allison said. “You and I still need each other. Maybe even more than we did before.”
Allison was probably just saying what Nic wanted—needed—to hear.
“Everything is changing. Makayla won’t hold my hand anymore. She gets mad if I come into her room and she’s not completely dressed. She wasn’t even scared to go to sleepaway camp for two weeks by herself. According to her, ten years old is practically grown up.”
A flicker crossed Allison’s face, and Nic remembered the baby her friend had lost. Did it hurt her every time Nic mentioned her daughter? Had that flicker always been there, but she just hadn’t been tuned in enough to see it?
“What about you and Leif?” Allison asked. “Is that changing?”
“He definitely wants things to change. He wants to get married. But you know me. I’m too independent and too old to change. Not that he’s not great. He actually pulled me out of the interview room last night and told Jensen we were done. Then he followed me home to make sure I was okay.”
Leif had stayed and held her for a couple of hours, listened to her cry, not interrupting as she tried to make sense of Cassidy’s death. And when she was all talked out and all cried out, he had told her funny stories about a private investigator he was working with who was really more like a computer.
“This was your friend’s favorite, right?” The bartender’s voice interrupted Nicole’s memories. He set down three forks and a chocolate soufflé that had grown over the top of the white ramekin. It was dimpled with melting chunks of chocolate and dusted with powdered sugar. Next to it was a small white pitcher of chocolate sauce. But it was the three forks that Nic couldn’t look away from. Three forks, as if there was still a Cassidy to share it with them.
Nic nodded at the bartender, unable to speak. Instead she forked up a bite and lifted it into the air. “To Cassidy,” she said.
“To Cassidy,” Allison answered, lifting her own bite in a toast. The bartender nodded and then turned away.
They busied themselves, taking bites in turn. With no Cassidy to fend off, it felt strange. As Nic waited for the last of the sauce to drip out of the pitcher, she had a flashback so clear it made her gasp. The last time they had been here, they had eaten the ramekin empty. Then Cassidy had run her index finger inside the pitcher and licked it clean, declaring, “I’m not letting a single drop go to waste.”
Cassidy hadn’t let anything go to waste. She had thrown herself into every activity, from eating to covering a crime story, with unbridled enthusiasm.
And now she was dead. And only one person knew why.
“You know what I keep wondering?” Nic said. It wasn’t really a question. “What were her last few minutes like? Did she suffer?”
“I hope it was fast,” Allison said. Her eyes looked haunted.
“The only person who knows is Rick.” Nic stood up, and for a moment it felt like her head kept moving even after she was on her feet. She put her hand on the bar to steady herself. “And I’m going to go talk to him. With or without you.”
Before Nic could stop her, Allison snagged the keys from her hand. “It’s definitely with me. And I’m driving.”
“I’m not drunk,” Nic said, but she knew it was a lie.
CHAPTER 14
Official visiting hours for the Multnomah County jail were only on weekends. But certain types of people, like clergy and bail bondsmen, could visit at any time. As could law enforcement personnel and attorneys. It wasn’t unheard of for an officer to want to talk to a prisoner being held on an unrelated case. Bad guys were bad guys, after all, and tended to be involved in or have knowledge of more than one bad thing.
When Allison walked through the jail’s double doors with Nicole, she was immediately assailed by the mingled stench of greasy food, sweat, and sewage. Her gorge rose and she swallowed hard, forcing down the suddenly nauseating mixture of cashews, stuffed dates, and alcohol. Even though the jail felt cool, almost clammy, the heat outside must somehow be intensifying the smells. She concentrated on breathing shallowly through her mouth.
Nicole managed to appear not only completely sober, but she had also tapped into her patented don’t-you-dare-mess-with-me vibe. The corrections officer didn’t ask them what their business was with Rick, and they didn’t volunteer. While they were presenting their IDs—Nicole had left her Glock in the gun safe in her car—Allison asked, “So does McEwan have a lawyer yet?”
The corrections officer shrugged. “Word is he’ll have Michael Stone representing tomorrow at the arraignment. I guess Stone’s out of town until then.”
Allison and Nicole exchanged a glance. Michael Stone and Rick McEwan were meant for each other. No crime was too heinous to be defended by Stone. Past clients included a surgeon accused of operating while drunk, an actor charged with sexually abusing a middle-school student, and a Portland Trail Blazer who had shot his wife and then tried to make it look like a robbery.
And now a cop who had killed his ex-girlfriend.
They were ushered back to the empty visiting area, a cheerless row of windows separated by chest-high cinder block partitions. On either side of each section was a single battered chair. Allison dragged a second chair over to the first window and then sat down to wait for Rick. Under her fingertips, the scratched and scarred counter felt like some kind of reverse Braille. How many people had sat here? Their desperation, depression, and disappointment still hung in the stale air.
Accompanied by a guard, Rick appeared on the other side of the glass. He wore an orange jumpsuit over a white T-shirt. Allison stiffened. This was the man who had brutally killed her friend. Her hands curled into fists, her fingernails cutting into her palms. For a second time, her stomach rose and pressed against the bottom of her throat.
Rick normally strutted, but now he shuffled. When he turned to face them, Allison gasped. His left eye was purple and swollen shut, and the whole side of his face was bruised. When they came to arrest him, he must not have gone along quietly.
Staring at them through the Plexiglas, Rick slowly lowered himself into a chair. With his face so distorted, it was hard to tell what expression he wore. Allison’s rage changed into something duller and heavier. It was all so stupid. Rick had taken Cassidy’s life and ruined his own, and for what? For what?
She picked up the black corded phone from the wall, trying not to think about how many hands had handled it, how many lips had rested against the mouthpiece.
For a long moment, Rick did nothing, just stared at them with his one good eye. The guard stood off to one side, his hands
clasped in front of him. Finally, Rick picked up his own phone. Allison tilted the receiver so Nicole could hear.
“Here to gloat?” He lifted his chin.
Allison didn’t answer him immediately. Finally she took a deep breath. “What happened to your eye?”
Nicole pulled back and looked at her, but Allison kept her gaze on the man on the other side of the glass.
He gingerly touched his lower eyelid. “A little souvenir from an old friend.”
She was shocked. “They put you in with everyone else?” Cops were normally segregated from other prisoners for their own safety.
“Oh, I’ve got my own cell. But the guy in charge of the uniforms recognized me.” The undamaged side of Rick’s mouth twitched upward. “I guess it wasn’t a good memory.”
Nicole grabbed the phone from Allison’s hand. “You’ve made a lot of those, haven’t you, Rick? Especially for Cassidy. Tell us what happened last night. Did she suffer? Did it take her long to die?”
His mouth twisted, and his good eye blinked rapidly. “I loved that girl once, you know?”
“Oh, please.” Nicole made a sound as if she were spitting something foul from her mouth. “Love? What kind of love is that? The kind where you strangle someone and then when that’s not good enough, you stab her? What kind of love is that, Rick?”
He straightened up, and there was a flash of the old Rick, always aggrieved. “You two never liked me. Not for one minute. You cheered when Cassidy dragged me through the mud.”
The anger was back, stiffening Allison’s spine, pushing back the sadness and the nausea. She took the phone from Nicole. “That’s because we saw what you did to her. Like making her cut up her underwear because you thought it was too sexy.”
“People were always looking online for shots of her with her bra showing or her skirt riding up when she sat down. I was just trying to keep her from embarrassing herself.”
Allison thought of what Phoebe had shown them. Was there a kind of truth to what he was saying? But a guy like Rick would always have an excuse for everything. “Then what’s your explanation for how you left those bruises on her when you were dating? Or how you broke into her condo and pulled a gun on her?”
He said nothing. Allison watched his body as well as his face, alert for the slightest change in expression. Even the best liars couldn’t control everything.
Nicole took the phone. “So why didn’t you shoot her last night, Rick? Was it just not hands-on enough for you? Did that make you feel like some big man, choking the life out of her? You must have seventy pounds on her.”
Eyeing how tight the orange jumpsuit was over Rick’s biceps, Allison wondered if he was taking steroids. Rage and ’roids went hand in hand. It was probably too late to do a urine test. Steroids cleared in a day or two.
Nicole continued her accusations. “So what—you came over, you two argued, and then things just went too far? Is that why you strangled her from behind, Rick? So you wouldn’t have to look her in the eyes?”
“I don’t remember.” His gaze dropped to his hands.
“What do you mean, you don’t remember?” Nicole’s tone was sarcastic.
“I don’t remember being there. I don’t even remember talking to her last night, let alone killing her.”
“What do you remember, then?” She issued the words like a challenge.
“Here’s what I remember about yesterday.”
Allison read Rick’s lips as much as she heard his words through the receiver Nicole held between them.
“Yesterday I was called out to a house to do a welfare check. When I got out of my car, I could hear the flies before I even got up on the porch. The windows were black with them.”
Allison’s imagination obligingly supplied the details. She wished she hadn’t eaten anything at VQ.
“I didn’t want to go in there. I knew what I was going to find. But I’m the police. I don’t get to say no. I’m the one who gets to find some old guy who died two weeks ago. So it was a very bad day. And then later I went to Diamonds.”
Diamonds was a strip club.
“All I wanted to do was try to relax and take my mind off things. And then I must have gone home. That’s all that I remember.”
“What are you saying?” Nicole asked.
He brought his face within an inch of the glass. “As far as I’m concerned, I haven’t even talked to Cassidy for months. I know what they say I did, but I have no memory of it.”
Suddenly Allison saw the way it would go. Rick would claim posttraumatic stress. Or some kind of flashback. Or temporary insanity. Michael Stone would construct an elaborate theory to explain how Rick briefly went crazy, lost it so bad that once he regained his sanity, he didn’t even remember the terrible thing he had done. Could you really be guilty if you didn’t even remember the crime?
Meanwhile Stone would trot out stories of Rick’s heroic actions as a cop, and a few more of the terrible things he had faced in the line of duty, things that would make a bloated dead guy in a fly-filled house look like a cakewalk. Whatever happened, Stone would say, was a terrible anomaly.
And a jury might even buy it.
“If I was thinking clearly, would I have left my fingerprints on that knife?” Rick demanded.
Nicole sighed theatrically. Her sigh said it all. That she wouldn’t take any more lies from Rick. That she was bored by his lies.
Allison took the phone from her. “People do a lot of stupid things in the heat of the moment. You can’t say that because you left your fingerprints on the murder weapon, ipso facto, you weren’t in your right mind.”
“I must have blacked out,” Rick said. “It’s happened to me before.”
“What do you mean?”
Here came the lies. Allison waited for his hands to busy themselves. Liars unconsciously created jobs for their hands, like grooming or lint picking. Anything to fill the pause while they figured out what response was in their best interest.
Rick kept his free hand flat on the counter. “Last week I was out at Diamonds. The next thing I knew it was morning and I was in bed feeling like I had to hold my head together with both hands.” He looked from Allison to Nicole. “I woke up with no idea what had happened the night before, who I was with, what I did. Luckily I still had all my money, but when I went outside, my car was parked in someone else’s space at my complex. It was just a complete blackout. Last night wasn’t quite as bad, but I still don’t remember getting home.”
“How much did you have to drink?” Allison asked.
“Three or four drinks. That’s all. I’m not an alcoholic. But I’ve been on high blood pressure medication for six or seven years. It could have been a spike in my blood pressure.”
So if the explanations about temporary insanity or post-traumatic stress or on-the-job horrors didn’t work out, there was always his blood pressure. Allison had never heard of high blood pressure causing blackouts, but Michael Stone could probably find a physician for hire who would testify that it was possible.
But the strange thing was that Rick didn’t act like a liar. His body hadn’t contradicted his words once. But he had also been a cop for fourteen years. He knew the tells as well as Allison and Nicole did. He was probably practicing for the jury.
“Cassidy talked about you two, you know,” he offered. “She said you were always interfering in her life.”
Inwardly Allison flinched, but she tried not to let it show on her face. Had Cassidy really said that? Or was Rick just lobbing shots in the dark? There was no way to know.
Through clenched teeth, Nicole said, “If we had done a better job of interfering in her life, you would never have been part of it.” She didn’t have the phone, but Allison could tell Rick still understood what she had said. Nicole got to her feet, the chair scraping back on the floor. “I think we’re done here.”
Allison’s next words surprised even herself. “I’ll pray for you, Rick.”
He snorted. “Thanks, but no thanks. I don�
�t need your crocodile tears. I don’t need you pretending that you care about my soul.”
She was opening her mouth to reply when a voice spoke from behind them.
“What are you two doing here? Why are you talking to my client?”
Allison jerked around. It was Michael Stone, dressed in a charcoal-gray suit and looking as natty as if it wasn’t several hours past quitting time. Rumor had it that he slept just four hours a day—and found ways to bill for all twenty-four.
He stepped uncomfortably close to Allison, close enough that she could smell his cologne, something with the mingled scents of musk and money. Bitter bile flooded her mouth.
“What are you doing here?” he repeated.
“We’re here as citizens,” Allison said flatly.
“Citizens who used their officially issued IDs to get in after hours?” Stone let out a two-note laugh. “I can’t wait to find out how much weight that will carry with Dan. He won’t like this much, will he, Allison? Especially if I leak it to the Oregonian. ‘Federal prosecutor abuses powers to harass prisoner.’”
“We weren’t threatening him.” The calm in Nicole’s voice was belied by the tiniest twitch under her left eye. “We just had a few questions.”
“Just wait until I talk to your new SAC about it. One of his agents abusing her credentials, threatening and taunting a suspect. Do you know how many lines you both crossed just being here?”
“We were just leaving,” Nicole said, and swept out past him.
Allison followed. She made it to the parking lot before she threw up.
CHAPTER 15
Allison was useless the next day. No matter how much she tried to focus on the case she was building—a Ponzi scheme that had masqueraded as a real estate investment—her mind kept jumping from thought to thought.
She had braced herself in the morning for a talking-to from Dan, but all he had done was pat her on the shoulder and ask her how she was holding up. Stone must have been bluffing, then. That was Michael Stone, all bluff and bluster.
