About That Night (21 page)

If Ronan had so much as blinked an eye, he would have missed it. But he didn't blink, and there it is: Diehl flinching.

“I heard you. You rang the bell. And when no one answered and you didn't see anyone leaving the house, you went around behind the house to see if Derek had gone that way, along the trail. You saw us, didn't you?”

“Us?”

“Me and Derek. You saw us. We were having an argument. It got kind of physical.”

“So now you're admitting you were physical with the Maugham kid.” Diehl seems genuinely amused. “That's it, kid. Come clean. It'll do you good.”

“You killed Derek. And you've been trying to pin it on me ever since.”

“It's a nice story,” Diehl says. “But that's all it is. A story.”

“I know why you did it.”

Diehl's face hardens.

“I know the blood is still there.”

“What blood?” Diehl tries to convey by how he asks the question that he doesn't believe that for a second.

“When you wouldn't let her in, she hammered on the door. She hammered on it until her knuckles bled. I know that because when I found out who she was, I went back through the papers. They said she was found with bloody knuckles. They guessed she'd tried to find shelter but couldn't get in. They were right. Only that shelter was her own house—the one you locked her out of.”

“I've had enough of these fairy tales,” Diehl says. “You breached the terms of your bail. You're going back to lockup.”

“I know you think you got rid of it,” Ronan says. “But you didn't. Not all of it. And from what I've heard, they don't need much blood to make a match.”

Just like that, Diehl's face is inches from Ronan's. “You're threatening the wrong guy, you little creep. There is no blood on that door.”

“You're sure of that?” Ronan smiles, refusing to let Diehl see how he really feels.

“Yeah, I'm sure.”

“What about in your truck?” Ronan knows he's scored a direct hit when he sees the look on Diehl's face. “I saw you put her in the truck—before you came across the street and rang the bell. She didn't walk away, did she? You drove her away. You wanted to make sure she didn't come back.”

“I'm going to bury you, kid,” Diehl says. “Just like that.” He snaps his fingers. “You have a record. It'd be just like a kid with your past to start spinning stories. They sound kind of desperate, if you want my opinion. You need to face reality. You need to take responsibility. We've got a motive for you, and from what you've just told me, you were at the scene and you admit being physical with the Maugham kid. And once your mother kicks it, there's not a soul left in this world who will give a good goddamn about you. So if you think you can threaten me—”

Diehl is a big man. A big man with a gun and a badge. Ronan has to swallow hard to rid himself of the fear that comes at him.

“Fine,” he says. “I want to see my lawyer. And when he gets here, I'm going to tell him everything I know. Then we'll see who believes what. Especially when you come into all that money. Jesus, talk about motive.” Diehl isn't happy about that—Ronan can see it in his eyes. “A couple million dollars, isn't that right? That's what the old man got for his farm when he sold it to that developer. And he earmarked every single dime of it for your wife's care.” Jordie told him that. She says it's common knowledge. “The only way you could touch it is if she died. Kind of convenient the way things worked out, huh?” He forces a confidence he doesn't feel.

“I've had just about enough of you, kid,” Diehl says. He pulls out a key and approaches the table to uncuff Ronan.

Behind him, the door to the interview room opens, and Sergeant Tritt walks in.

“What's up, Mike?” he asks.

“The kid walked out of his mother's house,” Diehl says. “He's going back to lockup. Handle it for me, will you, Neil? I have something to take care of.” He tosses the key to Tritt and leaves the room.

“Come on, kid,” Tritt says.

Twenty-Two

W
ith Ronan Barthe safely behind bars again, Neil Tritt stops to talk to a couple of patrol officers and then gets into his car and heads north. He parks a couple hundred yards from his destination, below the crest of the hill, retrieves some equipment from the trunk of his car and trudges up the steep slope. He stops near the top, where he can see without attracting attention to himself. His heart sinks when he sees what's happening. He raises the camera that he has taken from the car, adjusts the telephoto lens and starts snapping pictures. When he's done, he trudges back to his car and stows the camera. Then it's back up the hill again.

He's halfway up the driveway before the person he's come to see even notices him. Mike Diehl is standing outside his front door. There's a bucket of steaming water on the top step, and Diehl is holding a wet rag in his gloved hands. The garage door stands open. Diehl straightens when he realizes he isn't alone anymore. He grins at Tritt.

“Just getting that frost off so I can see if it builds up again—you know, to see if I really am leaking heat like you say,” Diehl says.

“Good idea,” Tritt says. He continues up the driveway until he is standing beside Diehl. He sniffs the air, and his heart sinks lower. “Washing it at the same time, I see,” he says.

“Huh?”

“The bleach. I can smell it.”

“Oh,” Diehl says. “Yeah. So, the kid's going back to detention, huh?”

“Looks that way,” Tritt says. “For now anyway.”

“For now? Come on, Neil, you don't think the judge is going to spring him on compassionate grounds again, do you?”

“Maybe,” Tritt says. “Under the circumstances.”

Diehl snorts. “Any judge that'd do that should step down from the bench—on mental-deficiency grounds.” He drops the rag into the bucket and bends to pick it up.

“Let me get that,” Tritt says. He slips in smoothly, grabs the bucket by the handle and starts for the garage. Diehl trots after him. Inside the garage, the back door to the truck stands open. Tritt can see a layer of frost on the backseat. He sets the bucket down, sticks his head inside the back of the truck and sniffs the seat. He shakes his head. “She was a nice woman, Mike. And I mean that. A nice woman and a real lady.”

“I miss her, that's for sure,” Diehl says. “I missed her for months before she walked off the way she did. It's a terrible disease, Neil. It takes the person and leaves the shell. She didn't know who she was or what she was doing. Everything confused her.”

“You mean
almost
everything, don't you, Mike?”

Diehl frowns.

“She knew enough to want to get in out of the cold, isn't that right?” Tritt says.

“You mean the blood on her knuckles?” It seems to Tritt that Diehl is working hard to keep his tone neutral.

“And the blood on your front door,” Tritt says. “And on this seat here.”

“What are you talking about?” Diehl asks, still working it hard, seeming puzzled now, as if he's wondering what his old friend and colleague is blathering about.

“That switch, the one in the interview room. I disengaged it, Mike. You thought you turned off the audio, but you didn't.”

Diehl still doesn't give up. “That kid is all bluster. He said he wanted to make a deal and wanted me to throw the switch. But he's full of it. All that talk about blood on my door? Come on, Neil.”

Tritt looks his old friend in the eye. “Right,” he says. “Because if there was any blood—and whatever there was would have been pretty microscopic after you washed the door the morning after Elise disappeared—it's gone now, is that it? Same for anything that might have been in this truck. Right again?”

Diehl says nothing.

Tritt reaches for his phone and flips it open. He says one word: “Now.” Then he looks back at Diehl. “I talked to the kid yesterday. I had forensics out here this morning while you were talking to him. Had them give your truck a once-over. What they found backs the kid up, Mike. She didn't walk away. She was driven away.”

“If you're going to believe that, I want a lawyer,” Diehl says.

A patrol car slides up Diehl's driveway. As the two uniformed officers get out, Tritt says, “You couldn't wait? What she had—that's a death sentence. You couldn't do right by her and make do with whatever was left over?”

“I want a lawyer,” Diehl says again.

Tritt nods at the two officers, who circle Diehl and start to cuff him. Diehl offers no resistance as Tritt places a hand on his shoulder and tells him he is under arrest.

» » »

Jordie Cross is seated in the foyer of the police station. It's nearly five o'clock. She should call her mother and tell her she will be late for supper so her mother doesn't worry. But if she makes the call, she will have to lie to her mother about where she is, and she doesn't want to lie anymore, not to anyone. She waits. Maybe Sergeant Tritt will appear soon. Maybe whatever he wants to talk to her about won't take long and she can get home for supper after all. Besides, she wants to know what happened. She doesn't want to make do with an abbreviated version on the news. So she waits, leaving her cell phone in her pocket, where it has been for the past hour.

It's ten minutes before Tritt appears through a door to the right of the desk sergeant. He beckons to her, holding the door, and leads her to a kitchen-like room—the break room, he calls it—and invites her to sit. He offers coffee. She declines.

“Do you mind if I have one?” he asks. “It's been a long day.”

Of course she doesn't mind. But that doesn't stop her right foot from thrumming impatiently as she watches him pour coffee from a carafe, stir in sugar, add milk, stir that in and then carry the mug over to the table, where he sits, sighs and takes a sip.

“Did you find it?” Jordie asks. “Did you find blood where Ronan said you would?”

“We did,” Tritt says. “On the front door and inside the truck. We got to the traces before Diehl. There's no way to prove how long it was there, but given that Diehl chose to clean it up after he talked to Ronan, well, that gives credence to Ronan's interpretation of events. Diehl is under arrest.”

“Okay,” Jordie says slowly. She's puzzled by Tritt's choice of words—
Ronan's interpretation of events
.

“What about Derek's clock? Was it still there or had Mrs. Maugham thrown it out?”

“It was there. And then there's the window, the one he said. The Maughams probably wouldn't have noticed it had been jimmied until spring, when they opened it. So that's another factor that backs up Ronan as a witness to what he says he saw.”

There it is again—what he
says
he saw.

“As for the clock—Mrs. Maugham is positive the clock was undamaged when she and her husband left town. Ronan claims it broke at midnight the night he was in the house. The time and date displayed on the clock back that up. So unless Derek was in his room that night and broke the clock at that precise time, and unless Ronan broke in some time after that—”

“Wait a minute,” Jordie says. “Are you saying you don't believe Ronan?”

Tritt takes another sip of his coffee. “I believe, based on the evidence, that Mike Diehl facilitated his wife's death. I believe that in doing what he did that night, he knew that she would die. He's been charged with first-degree murder. Whether that charge sticks or gets argued down to second-degree or manslaughter, I don't know. His lawyer will probably try to argue mercy killing. But given the amount of money Diehl stands to inherit pursuant to Elise's death, that could be difficult. The fact that we have all this is thanks to you and Ronan. But—”

Here it comes, thinks Jordie.

“Jordie, I want you to tell me everything you know about the night Derek died.”

“I already did.” Why is he even asking? He doesn't think she had something to do with it, does he?

Tritt leans forward, his hands clasped in front of him on the table.

“I also want you to tell me about any conversation you might have had with Ronan before Derek disappeared, before his body was found, before Ronan was arrested and before this morning. And I want you to tell me the absolute truth, without leaving anything out.”

Jordie is stunned by this request. But she also feels the blood rising in her face. He is telling her he knows—not suspects, but knows—that she has held back certain things in past conversations. And he's right about that. He's telling her he knows she has spoken to Ronan, several times, about what happened, and that she hasn't mentioned most of that either. But is he also telling her that he doesn't trust her?

“Why?” she asks.

“Because I need to know.”

They look at each other, the cop and the girl. Jordie tries to read Tritt the way she suspects he can read her. But all she sees is a man who wants to know more than he thinks he does already. So she begins to tell him. She has no idea how long she talks. Tritt listens without moving. He doesn't write anything down. He doesn't ask any questions, not until she finally stops talking.

“And that's it?” he says. “That's everything—every conversation you had with Ronan, everything he said to you and everything you said to him?”

“Everything that I can remember,” she says. “Why? He was right about Lieutenant Diehl, wasn't he? You believe what he said he saw, don't you?”

“That's not the problem,” Tritt says.

“Then what is?”

“Jordie, did it ever occur to you that Ronan might have killed Derek? Maybe Derek attacked him, or maybe they got into a fight and it got out of hand, but that he did do it?”

“No, of course not!” Jordie is indignant. But as soon as she says the words, she realizes what she's doing. “Well, maybe when I saw the police officer with that button, I might have thought that.”