Felt as though the dark smudges under her eyes were like magnets, and that everyone in the court was studying her sunken cheeks, pale skin, hollow eyes.
“DS McKenna, as part of your investigation, did you speak to Evelyn Shepherd?” Troy Grainger asked. Apparently, he was dispensing with the warm-up questions today.
“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “It was the day after Adam’s death, and my partner, Noah Wilmott, and I had gone to the school to conduct interviews as part of the investigation.” Hunter paused. “We were walking up the steps to the school as Vinny was leaving.”
“You received permission to interview Evelyn Shepherd?” Grainger remained seated, reading from his list of questions.
“I had an opportunity to speak to Vinny at the school, with her mother present.”
“Were you aware that Evelyn Shepherd had just been released from school for medical reasons?”
Images from the dream flashed through Hunter’s mind. “No-not at the time, no.”
Grainger’s head snapped up. “What do you mean, not at the time?”
She felt the heat in her cheeks. “Well, you’re suggesting now she’d had medical treatment, but I wasn’t aware of that when I spoke to her.”
Grainger stared at her. “Are you saying that her mother did not inform you of that fact?”
“That’s correct. Mrs. Chadwick did not indicate Vin-Evelyn was having medical issues at the time.”
"DS McKenna, you are aware that perjury is a serious charge."
"Which is irrelevant, because I'm telling the truth. Mrs. Chadwick said Vinny was in shock, but she offered no substantive evidence to support this claim."
"She never told you her daughter had passed out and just been released by the school nurse?
"No."
“And she agreed to let you question her daughter?”
Hunter paused. “I didn’t question Evelyn after Mrs. Chadwick asked me to stop.”
“What happened after you stopped?”
***
Noah whistled. Softly, just loud enough for Hunter to hear it. “I’d heard the stories, but I don’t think they do her justice.”
Hunter didn’t answer. The ‘her’ was Rose Chadwick, and there wasn’t anything she could say about that woman that would be safe. What Noah didn’t know about the tensions between Hunter and the family of her former partner, Thomas Shepherd, he’d guessed at. He’d never said as much, or shared his thoughts, but sometimes, when Tom's name came up she’d find Noah watching her with a look.
A look that said more than any words could.
“What do you make of the daughter?” he asked her.
She snapped back to the present, and thought through the brief exchange with Evelyn Shepherd. “Something about it doesn’t seem right. I know she was friends with Adam, but that’s a pretty extreme reaction, even to the death of a friend.”
“You didn’t hear?” Noah asked as they walked up the steps, toward the main doors of Sagamo High. “A kid, Jonah Tyson, was brought in for questioning yesterday. Suspected rape.”
Hunter glanced at him and raised an eyebrow.
Noah reached for the door handle, then paused. “Suspected rape of Evelyn Shepherd.”
“Jonah? Are you sure?”
Noah opened the door and stepped inside. She followed as he gave her one of his looks. “You know him?”
“Not well. Just, he used to play with Evelyn when she was a kid.” She swallowed. “I was thinking about him just yesterday, when we found Adam.” Hunter shook her head. “I don’t want to believe he’d do something like that. Always seemed like a nice boy.”
“Mother’s the one who contacted the station.”
“She’s not the most credible witness. Rose never liked Jonah.”
“If you ask Tom about it, he’ll swear on a stack that Jonah never touched his daughter,” Noah said as they stopped outside the office. The halls were almost empty. A bell rang, and the last few students in sight disappeared quickly. They must have arrived at the start of a new period.
“Seems… odd. They don't get along, but I'd think Tom would give his ex-wife the benefit of the doubt, since Evelyn's the alleged victim."
“Yeah, well, turns out Jonah’s planning to be a police officer, and Tom’s been mentoring him. They meet at least once a week.”
“On the night the attack allegedly happened?”
Noah nodded. “Anything about that seem odd to you now?”
“Anything? Try everything.” If Evelyn Shepherd hadn’t been raped, why had Rose Chadwick made an accusation against Jonah Tyson?
As she followed Noah into the school office, she couldn’t shake the feeling that Evelyn Shepherd was connected to Adam’s death.
***
The courtroom was quiet for a moment, and then Grainger looked up at her.
“You readily admit that you were concerned Vinny had been involved?”
Hunter nodded. “I didn’t necessarily think she’d pulled the trigger, but I felt she knew something more than she was telling us.”
“I see. Did you have any evidence to support that?”
“Not enough to justify bringing her in for formal questioning.”
“Did you pursue other suspects?”
“Yes. We were following up every lead we could, trying to interview anyone who knew Adam and may have had some explanation for how he ended up in an empty house he had no connection to.”
“Did you have a lot of leads to follow?”
“No.” Hunter glanced at the jury. They were watching her closely, but she couldn’t tell what they thought of her testimony. “The investigation was stalling.”
“I see. And how did your supervisors feel about the lack of progress?”
A risky question. One Solomon had discussed with her. Limit your liability by highlighting the stress you were under. It could be professional suicide, but it was sometimes the only way to avoid being the one who took the blame when an investigation soured and someone was looking for a scapegoat.
“DS McKenna, how did your supervisors feel about the lack of progress?”
“They were anxious for my partner and I to make an arrest.”
“Did you feel pressured?”
Hunter paused, and glanced back at the jury. Nobody blinked. She looked back at her attorney.
“We’re always,” she paused as she searched for the right word, “encouraged to produce results as soon as possible.”
“But this case was exceptional, wasn’t it?”
“Any time a crime involves a child, even a teenager, the public needs reassurance.”
“The kind of reassurance that can only come from a quick arrest?”
“It’s ideal if we can apprehend a suspect as quickly as possible.”
“And yet even now, even with all the stress you must be under facing this trial and the charges against you, you’re calm, measured, and you aren’t pointing fingers. Why is that, DS McKenna?”
Why? Hunter felt her jaw drop open as her lawyer jumped to his feet. He objected. Grainger argued back. The judge said something. She'd purposely tried to block out the visual images in the courtroom, to keep from focusing on the packed rows of spectators who were there to observe. The ones with notepads who scribbled quotes and the ones who whispered behind fingers to their friends when something seemed shocking to them. Courtrooms were generic enough. Rows of seats led to the door that led to the hall. The carpet was dark and bland. The wood was probably oak. There were no windows through which natural light could enter, but the painted walls were white. Wood and white, and row upon row, a sea of faces she had no wish to study or remember. In the end, it was all such a blur that she had no idea what had happened until the judge looked at her and spoke.
“You may step down.”
She glanced at her attorney. Was this a good thing? Had he won? She walked to her chair and the judge dismissed them for lunch. Solomon ushered her out to a private room.
“Christ almighty.”
She sank into a chair. “Is it that bad?”
“That bad?” He paced back and forth. “It’s worse.”
“I thought you wanted him to stop the questioning.”
Solomon stopped and stared at her. “Yes, I did. But it’s too late to undo the damage he did.”
“All I did was recount the details of the investigation.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“You talked to me about this already.”
“But Grainger put you up first. He’s made you look methodical, professional, credible.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” A door opened, trays of food were set down at the table in front of her, and as she uttered her thanks she heard the door close. Behind Solomon was a wall of faded white that failed to hold her interest, but it was preferable to meeting his relentless stare.
He finally sank down into the seat across from her.
“The problem is, it’s going to be hard to explain your indiscretions.”
“It was years ago, and I was younger.”
“But the jury will consider how you’ve been presented to them. And Grainger presented you as a professional first. Reasoned. Measured. As he said, even with all this stress you aren’t pointing fingers. So how do you explain having an affair with a married man?”
“I admit it was a mistake.”
“And then Grainger will argue that the way you proceeded with this investigation was another mistake. That an otherwise professional and capable detective lost perspective over a case that involved the daughter of the man she had an affair with, and that her conduct during the investigation-”
She held up her hand. “Okay, I get it, but I couldn’t lie under oath, and Grainger pulled a fast one. Case closed.”
"It's not the simple, Hunter. If it is, then you're already guilty."
"Is that what you think? That Grainger's already beat you?" Two could play the psychological warfare game, and she knew Solomon's pride would always rise to the surface.
Solomon reached for his sandwich. “We may be down, but we’re not out.”
THE WAY OF THE GUN
Hunter McKenna Testifying For The Prosecution
- The Investigation Of The Murder of Adam Fields' -
Approximately thirty hours after the discovery of Adam Fields' body, when Noah sat down across from her with a sly look on his face, Hunter knew he had something juicy he was just itching to share. She wished she could ignore him and string him along, but they were more than a full day into the investigation of the suspicious death of Adam Fields and the trail had run cold.
And this wasn’t a death anyone would accept remaining unsolved.
“You want to know, don’t you?” He grinned.
“Just tell me what you’ve got.”
“Okay. The gun was used in a murder in East Gwilimbury six months ago.”
She frowned. “So, what are we thinking? Some sort of random shooting?”
Her partner looked like he’d just earned a promotion as he shook his head. “The gun went missing from the property room of the precinct that was handling the case.”
She whistled. “And managed to find its way here and be used in another death?”
“If guns could talk…”
How had a gun disappeared from a property room? Who would have the access, the ability, to sneak it out? How had it ended up miles away, in another district?
“The murder was drug related. Some dealer got shot. Seems word was a crooked cop had done the hit, and tossed the gun. It already had a history before that. The slug they pulled from Adam’s body not only matched that shooting, but three other armed robberies scattered throughout Newmarket and Richmond Hill. The report says the serial number was filed off.”
“A crooked cop would explain how the gun disappeared from the property room.”
“But those were unsubstantiated rumors that don’t connect to the armed robberies. In each robbery, there was video footage or eyewitnesses, and the police eventually made arrests in each case.”
“Let me guess. They never recovered the weapon.”
“Didn’t matter. They had enough from the tape and from goods found on the perps to prove guilt.”
“So, somehow, the gun found its way to another person, who murdered a drug dealer, and then it ended up in a property room, disappeared, and ended up here.”
“And was used to shoot Adam Fields.”
“We’d better find this gun before it gets involved in anything else,” she said as she shook her head. How could this help them with their investigation?
“It might not be as hopeless as you think,” Noah said, the grin gone. “The coroner's office confirmed that they found some needle punctures on Adam. Not enough to suggest he was a heavy user, but what if drugs were involved?”
Hunter thought about that. They’d been tracking down the drug supply for weeks, trying to identify the new source supplying the high school. Adam’s death had derailed the investigation, just when it was starting.
Her boss would cite conspiracy theories and an obsession with her pet anti-drug project she’d fought to take charge of.
“One thing’s for certain, Noah. If we’re going to pursue a drug angle, we’d better have the facts to back us up.”
He stood up. “Then let’s find some facts.”
***
The courtroom was quiet for a moment before Grainger spoke.
“You and your partner began to suspect drugs had been involved in the death of Adam Fields?”
“Yes.”
Hunter watched her attorney. Lawyers were practiced at concealing their emotions, but there was something about the look in Solomon’s eyes that made her feel uneasy. One second he looked about to speak, then he closed his lips and glanced down at the paper in front of him.
She wondered what he was thinking. Wondered just how much damage her testimony for Grainger might be doing.
Then he asked her to talk about the events of the morning they found Evelyn Shepherd.
IN THE WOODS
- Tana French -
Hunter McKenna Testifying for the Prosecution
- The Day They Found Evelyn Shepherd -
It was 5:27 am, still early enough for the spell of nighttime to linger. In the hours before sunrise the world grew quiet. Nighthawks and party animals passed out or went home after the bars closed and even most of those who thrived on mornings didn’t want to be greeted by the deep dark just before the dawn. This was too early, even for them. As a result, for these few hours the silence seemed to grow, if only because all the things that normally blocked it out weren’t active. Sound carried farther at 4 am than it did at 2. Hunter had worked enough night shifts to appreciate that even cops didn’t want to break the calm. It was an unspoken superstition, that as long as the silence ruled, crime could not. Nobody wanted to tempt fate by shattering the stillness. Even jokes abated and voices were instinctively hushed while society slept.
Of course, their quiet was also influenced by the fact that their shift was nearly over, that soon it would be time for them to go home and sleep.
The first rays of light were just starting to filter through the predawn quiet, rousing birds and sending nocturnal creatures to their nests and dens. If you looked to the west you could still see the stars but when you turned to the east lines of pink blended with blue in bold waves rippling across the horizon.
As she walked along the path the pebbles crunched beneath her feet. The faint morning light caught the dew on the grass, and on the leaves of the trees ahead of her. Between the boughs of one tree a spider web glistened. It amazed Hunter that such a vulnerable construction, exposed to wind and rain and wild animals, not only survived, but stood as such a thing of simple beauty.
Perhaps part of the allure was the vulnerability.
She entered the woods that bordered the farm and turned on her flashlight. There wasn’t enough natural light to navigate the terrain safely yet.
As she walked she heard someth
ing rustling the bushes to her right. Not just a bird flitting between the branches but something scuffling the earth not far from the path. Skunk or raccoon most likely. Possibly a fox. Hunter’s grandmother had lived near here, on the other side of these woods. Grandma had told her once she’d seen deer on the border of her property. As a child, when Hunter’s family had visited from the city, Hunter had slept out in the back yard, in the gazebo, waiting for her chance to catch a glimpse of a deer herself but it never came. Every trip home from visiting her Grandma’s house she’d felt the disappointment of knowing that whatever secrets the forest held still remained hidden from her.
It was strange to think that she was walking along a path in the woods, possibly being watched by a wild animal only a few feet away, but she couldn’t see it. It made her wonder about all the times in a person’s life that they may have been so close to something they dreamed of seeing, experiencing, having…
But they didn’t even know how close they were and they missed it.
The uniformed officer ahead of her nodded his acknowledgement of her arrival, barely glancing at the ID Hunter raised. He pointed to a fork off the main path. She nodded back and took the turn.
This trail was overgrown. Two people – three, if you’re talking about those extremely skinny teenage girls with the toothpick legs and flat chests, who look like they haven’t eaten in three months - could walk alongside each other on the main path, but this side trail barely had room for one person. The ferns encroached on the sides. She wondered how they'd survive the impending onslaught of activity. The volume of traffic generated by searching a potential crime scene was considerable, and most of the people who would need to enter and exit from the area over the next few days wouldn’t show concern for anything other than evidence.
In the process of avoiding the foliage she nearly tripped over a root, and caught herself just in time. In places the path hugged the trees and she could imagine the crime scene guys would soon be bitching about the poor access and how hard it was to move things in and out.
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