Tattooed (32 page)

43

K
enzie wouldn’t let her see how much the look of contempt in Kate’s eyes rankled. She acted so superior to her.

And maybe she thought she had good reason to.

Well, she would see soon enough how wrong she was.

She strode outside.

Fresh air.

She’d only been inside for less than twenty-four hours, yet it seemed much longer. The breeze warned of fog, but she slipped off her jacket. The air stirred the tiny hairs on her arms.

She was alive.

She was free.

For now.

The cabbie honked again.

She flashed him a look and climbed into the backseat. She gave him the address to Yakusoku Tattoo. His gaze flickered over her tattooed sleeves. “Got room for any more?” he chuckled.

Kenzie stared out the window.

A van pulled into the handicapped zone, in front of the cab, forcing the cab to reverse out of the parking spot.

The cabbie swore. He backed up and swung around the larger vehicle. Kenzie glanced at the driver as they drove by.

The face was familiar.

The cab drove past Citadel Hill, a saturated green from all the rain. It was so vibrant. Kenzie had a favorite ink in that exact same shade—

Phyllis
. The driver of the van was her mother’s caregiver.

The passenger must have been her mother.

Kate Lange—her mother’s lawyer—was already at the station.

Waiting for Kenzie’s mother.

The dots finally connected. “Jesus Christ.”

Was her mother going to implicate Kenzie further in Heather’s murder?

But if that were the case, would the police have let Kenzie leave before the twenty-four-hour period—especially with no conditions?

She fumbled in her purse for the business card that Eddie Bent had given her.

He answered on the second ring.

“Eddie? It’s Kenzie Sloane.”

“How did things go?”

“I did as you said. I didn’t say a word.”

“That’s good.” Pause. “So the police didn’t keep you for the full twenty-four hours.”

“No.”

“You sure you didn’t answer any questions?”

The implication was obvious: Eddie thought she had leaked some information that had given the police what they were looking for.

“No. I honestly didn’t say a word. You should have seen me.”

“Okay. I believe you, Kenzie.” His voice was a soothing growl in her ear. She had been skeptical of him when she first saw him: rumpled shirt, dirt-stained jeans, nicotine and garden soil on his fingernails. The only reason she hadn’t sent him on his merry gardening-gnome way was because of his eyes. They were incredibly astute. They saw past all the tattoos and gazed straight inside her. Now he said, “But it’s a bit unusual for the police to let you go before they need to.”

“Just as I was leaving the station, I saw Kate Lange.”

“I see.” His voice was neutral.

“And then my mother arrived.”

“I didn’t know she was able to travel.”

“Only in emergencies.” She nibbled a nail, a habit she had broken when she was eight. “So why do you think she’s at the station?” Kenzie knew the answer. But she wanted her lawyer to tell her she was mistaken.

“They obviously want to videotape her statement.” Eddie Bent let that sink in. “Why do
you
think your mother is at the station?” She had the distinct feeling she was in a therapy session.

Mom, what are you doing?
“I don’t know.”

“Are you sure?”
Don’t bullshit me,
his tone warned.

“Yes. I have no idea why my mother wants to talk to the police.” She bit off the end of her nail. She had forgotten how satisfying it felt. “So what’s the next step?”

“We wait. I’ll call you when I hear something. If the police call you, you do not need to return the phone call. If they bring you in again, make sure that you say nothing except that you wish to call me, and that I am your counsel of choice.”

“Okay,” she said. As an afterthought, she added, “Thank you, Eddie.”

“Remember, I’m on your side, Kenzie. If there is anything else you need to tell me, call me. The more I know, the better I can defend you.”

“Thanks. I’ve got to go now.” They had arrived at Yakusoku.

She paid the driver and hurried to the parking lot behind the tattoo studio. Thank God. Her car was still there. The police hadn’t seized it.

She unlocked her car and slid behind the wheel. Fatigue crashed into her. She had had no sleep last night. She leaned back against the headrest and dialed Finn’s cell phone.

He answered on the first ring. “Kenzie! Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“Did the police let you go?”

“Yes.” Her voice was amazingly calm. “They have no evidence to hold me, Finn.”

“Of course not. That’s because you are innocent.”

Bless your trusting heart, Finn.

“Well, you never know what they’ll try to twist to fit their theories,” she said. “How’s Foo?”

“He’s great. But he misses you.”

Her heart squeezed. She could not wait to hold her dog again.

But she had one last
t
to cross before she was home free. “Will you be at your place in an hour? I need to collect my stuff.”

“You’re leaving tonight?” No mistaking the hurt in his voice.

“Look, Finn, I need to go back to New York. With the exception of you, this has been a spectacularly crappy visit.” He would see the truth in that.

“I’ll be home.”

“Thanks.” She said it softly. It would hurt to leave him. Maybe he could visit… .

Enough with the fantasies.

“See you soon. I just have a quick errand to run.”

She turned off the phone’s ringer. It was time to pay a final visit to her mother’s house.

44

E
than chugged his entire mug of coffee in one gulp, swallowing several ibuprofen with it. He had hit the wall about an hour ago. His head pounded. He couldn’t believe the twist this case had taken.

They were screwed.

And by none other than Kate’s client.

Don’t shoot the messenger.

Kate hadn’t appeared too happy about her client’s confession. The assisted suicide campaign had officially committed its own act of suicide. And now this case, which had appeared so promising, appeared to be crumbling in front of his eyes. They couldn’t hold Kenzie once Frances had presented her confession—which meant there was no time for the infrared photos. Just one more possible lead that was now out of reach.

He could not let another case go down the tubes.

Enough was enough.

Lamond walked next to Frances Sloane as her finger single-handedly drove her wheelchair into the interview room. She wore some kind of breathing tube in her nostrils.

Her caregiver, Phyllis, checked the portable oxygen tank and fussed with the tube. She plucked at the blanket on Frances’ legs, her face drawn in lines of disapproval.

“I’m fine, Phyllis. You can go now,” Frances said.

Ethan placed the affidavit on the table, flanking it with a thick file folder and a blank notepad. “Mrs. Sloane, this interview will be videotaped. You have the right to remain silent—” he read her the caution “—you have the right to speak to a lawyer—”

“I have already spoken to her.” Her eyes were uncannily like her daughter’s. She swallowed. “I confess to the murder of Heather Rigby.” She spoke slowly, taking great care to enunciate her words as much as she was capable.

“Tell us what happened that night, Mrs. Sloane.” Ethan leaned back in his chair.

She told the exact same story as Kate had written in the affidavit.

He listened, his face impassive. Then he picked up a sheet of paper in the folder and read it with a frown, aware of her eyes on his face.

He wanted her to worry. He wanted to make her unsure.

He wanted her to wonder what she didn’t know, what she was inadvertently revealing to the police.

He placed the sheet of paper in the folder, closed the folder with great deliberation and looked up. His gaze locked onto Frances Sloane’s.

She was doing an admirable job of keeping her composure. But he had seen the flicker of unease in her eyes.

“Mrs. Sloane, your daughter has red hair, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Had she dyed it for the Mardi Gras?”

His question posed a dilemma for Frances Sloane:
Had the police found a dyed hair? Or a red hair?

After a few seconds, she said, “No.” She watched him closely for his reaction.

He sipped a freshly topped mug of coffee, smothering a wince when his stomach reacted to it with an immediate protest. “A rubber Halloween mask was found on Heather Rigby’s skull.”

“Yes. I put it on her.”

“Why?”

“Because I was angry.”

“Was it Kenzie’s?” He asked the question quickly, trying to catch her off balance.

But when a woman has very little control of her muscles, everything appeared to throw her off balance.

“No. It was on the floor of the bunker.”

He opened the file folder and wrote a note. Then closed the folder again.

“Had you ever seen the mask before?”

“No.”

“How do you think it got there?”

“Could be Heather’s.”

“Did you try it on before you put it on Heather Rigby’s head?”

She hesitated.

Why would he ask that question?
she would wonder.

Of course: a hair had been found in the mask. But what color? And whose?

“No.”

He eyed her short, silvery hair.

“What color was your hair seventeen years ago, Mrs. Sloane?”

“Mainly gray. But I still had some natural color.” At his questioning look, she said, “It was red.”

Red.

Now, that was interesting.

“Did you have the same hairstyle back then?”

“No. It was long.” She swallowed. “I cut my hair when I became too ill to manage it.”

“How long was your hair?”

Triumph gleamed in her watery eyes. “Past my shoulders. Just like Kenzie’s.”

Damn
. He sipped his coffee to hide his frustration. Acid blossomed in his gut.

He contemplated her for a moment, trying to increase her anxiety, smothering his discomfort at trying to agitate an obviously dying woman. She had chosen this path. Finally, he said, “What happened after you shot her?”

“I dragged her body to the bogs.”

“How?” He asked the question in his most casual tone. The rope was a key piece of holdback evidence. They couldn’t hammer Frances with the tattoo—Heather could have gotten it before she showed up at the bunker.

“Under her arms.” Mrs. Sloane’s speech had slurred drastically. She was tiring.

“So you dumped her body in the bog?”

“No. I buried it.”

“How?”

“I dug under the bushes.”

That would have been extremely difficult.

But not impossible.

“What happened to the gun, Mrs. Sloane?”

“I threw it into the ocean.” Her chin sank to her chest. She slurred, “Are we done?”

He pushed back his chair and picked up the file folder.

Her eyes studied the folder.
What did it hold?
he knew she wondered.
What evidence was there to incriminate her daughter?

Plenty.

He held open the door. “You can go home, Mrs. Sloane.”

“You aren’t charging me?”

“We need to assess all the evidence, Mrs. Sloane.”

“But I said I did it!” Saliva pooled by the corner of her mouth.

“I know.”

“So arrest me! Handcuff me, detective.”

“That’s not necessary.”

He waited until Phyllis returned to the room. With a look of gratitude, she unlocked the brakes of her employer’s wheelchair. “Time to go home, Frances.”

Frances stared into Ethan’s eyes. “My daughter is innocent. Do not make another terrible mistake like you did with Randall Barrett.”

She was baiting him.

Not a great way to get the cops on your side,
Frances.

He led them to the elevator, pressing the down button. It opened immediately. Frances maneuvered her wheelchair with the toggle button. Ethan and Phyllis entered behind her. The doors closed.

Not another word was said on the ride down.

But Frances had made her point.

Did he have blinders on?

Or was he being manipulated into believing Frances’ implausible story?

Heather Rigby’s self-confessed murderer pushed the toggle button with her finger and drove her wheelchair out of the station.

* * *

No one should be at home—Kenzie had seen both Phyllis and her mother arrive at the police station—but she approached her mother’s house with caution nonetheless. Several lights had been left on. They gave the fog-wreathed building the iridescence of an opal.

She skirted around to the side of the house. In the deepening twilight, the row of evergreens that edged the path appeared impenetrable.

When she had run down this path seventeen years ago, the evergreens had been newly planted. Now they towered over her, guarding the family home, it seemed,
from
her.

She rounded the corner to the back of the house. And gasped. The old porch her father had built in defiance of his wife’s aesthetic had been replaced with a Japanese-style garden. Kenzie would have appreciated its simple perfection if she had not been so alarmed by the unexpected change.

If the porch was gone, did that mean…?

She broke into a run, her sleep-deprived body resisting the urgency that made her heart race. Her panic dropped a notch when she saw that the small, shingled shed her father had built at the far end of the property still stood. Her mother had not had it removed.

Instinctively, she glanced at the woods behind the shed. Her skin broke out in goose bumps. The small break in the trees leading to the oceanfront path was still there, albeit overgrown. She had spent many hours walking the path as a child, and many hours sneaking back and forth to the bunker on that path as a teen.

The last time she had used that path was in the very early morning hours after the Mardi Gras.

When she finally arrived at the end of the path, she wanted to throw herself on the ground and weep. She was home. She was alive.

McNally and Lovett had not yet found her.

She crouched in the wild underbrush and stared across the lawn at her house. The shrine to her mother’s daring, her mother’s ambition, her mother’s ego.

She tucked the gun into her waistband and sprinted to the back door. As she expected, her mother had left the door unlocked for her. She slipped inside, grateful for the new, silent hinges.

She paused in the kitchen, listening.

No sound of anyone still awake. But she could not risk going up to her room. She might wake someone.

She tiptoed through the living room. Then she crept down the basement stairs and paused at the bottom.

Still silent.

Thank God.

She hurried to the laundry room.

The phone hung on the wall right next to the doorway. She snatched the receiver, her hands shaking.

In her mind’s eye, she pictured Heather Rigby lying on the ground. Blood gushing from the wound in her chest.

She could not speak from the blood entering her airway.

But her eyes begged Kenzie.

Why? she asked.

Help me.

Help me!