Lie in Wait (15 page)

 

Chapter 31

T
EST
ENTERED THE
makeshift interrogation room at 2:23
A.M
., just as North seemed about to begin his interview with Brad. Apparently, he'd let Brad stew just a bit. It wasn't the approach for which he was known. She'd expected he'd launch in right away.

Test dragged a chair in from the break room and sat beside North.

Brad scowled at her. He sat back in his chair, his chin jutting, cocky. But the hands resting in his lap were cuffed and his thumbs rubbed against one another. His swollen forearm looked painful.

“The little shit,” Test whispered to North, only so she could whisper something. She wanted Brad to think she was exchanging vital information about him, at his exclusion.

North played along, nodded seriously. “Yes, I know,” he said.

He hit the red
RECORD
button on the tape recorder sitting on the table.

Test whispered again to North, “You let him stew?”

“I'm having his prints run,” he whispered. Then, so Brad could hear: “We've been going around and around. He's playing tough guy.”

“I'm not saying a word,” Brad said.

North shrugged. “We've got enough evidence for an arrest whether you talk or not.”

Brad's thumbs stopped working at each other. “Bull. You'd have arrested me if you did.”

A state trooper entered the room. He leaned into North's ear and whispered to him and left.

North leaned toward Brad. “You don't seem to understand. You're here to say whatever it is you can to convince us not to charge you. Just. Give us a good reason.”

“I didn't do it. How's that?”

“No crime is perfect,” Test said.

Brad's eyes darkened. He twisted a loose thread of his jeans around his finger until it snapped.

“We know you killed her,” Test said.

“Wait. You think I
killed
her?” He looked genuinely surprised.

North gave her a savage look. She'd erred. This was not her interrogation. And apparently North had not laid out so plainly to Brad why Brad was here.

“Why else would you be here?” North said, picking up the thread.

“You said you wanted information. I heard you tell my dad in the hall that—­”

Brad fell quiet.

Test wondered if Brad had thought they'd wanted to speak with him because he'd been having sex with Jessica, and he was in trouble for that, not the murder.

“We know you killed her,” North said. There was no going back now.

“That's crazy. You don't know squat,” Brad said.

“Then who killed her?” North said.

“How should I know?” Brad leaned his head back as if working a kink in his neck.

“You were her boyfriend,” North said.

“I didn't even know her.”

“No?” North leaned in and folded his hands on the table.

“No.”

Test laughed. “We know you knew her. And
you
know we know.”

North shot her a look, but it was far less grave than the previous look.

“Bull,” Brad said.

“ ‘To the Victor?' ” North said. “Ring a bell?”

Brad wiped his mouth with the back of his cuffed hands.

“You're full of shit,” North said. “We read all the e-­mails between you two.” He reached over to a stack of papers on the table. Flipped one over to show Brad. “They're all right here.”

Brad set his cuffed hands on the table, fidgeted, then settled into a glower. “So? OK. She had a crush on me, like most girls do. What am I supposed to do about it? I wasn't her boyfriend. Just a friend. So what?”

“So, you lied to us. Meaning we can't believe anything else you say.”

“Yes you can. You can believe I didn't do it.”

“There must be a reason you lied,” Test said.

“Some friend,” North muttered. “More like a smug asshole jock taking advantage of an underage girl.”

“That's not how it was!” Brad strained forward, veins in his neck rising.

“Awww,” North said, mocking Brad. “How was it then? Please, do tell.”

Brad sat back, slumped. “I liked her.”

“He liked her,” North said to Test, maintaining the mocking tone. “You hear that, he liked her?”

“Enough to use her, then get mad when she fell for you and wanted to tell the world about it—­” Test said. She wanted to rile him, shake him.

“I
didn't
kill her. Why would I? I got everything going for me.”

“Maybe that's why,” Test said.

“You had everything to lose,” North added. “If she told her friends and adults found out. It's statutory rape. Now I know such small matters as statutory rape certainly may not matter to a first-­class NFL recruit playing for Alabama or FSU, but it matters for a high-­school recruit from little old Vermont who needs all the help he can get to even get a call from Kent State.” He glanced at Test to take a shot. They'd found a chemistry.

“All that matters is you did it and we know it,” Test said.

North slid an e-­mail printed from Jessica's account across the table to Brad.

Brad's eyes raced down the page. He looked at Test then North.

“Why'd you keep a ‘friendship' secret?” North said.

“We didn't keep it a secret.”

North laughed this time. “This kid's a riot.”

Test stared at Brad. “Detective North gets a kick out of liars,” she said. She tapped the page in front of Brad. “It's right there in black and white, as plain as can be. You were angry with her because she wanted to go public with your relationship. If you didn't tell her to keep it a secret, how come no one knew about you? Not even her closest friend, Olivia?”

“It's not like we broadcasted it,” Brad said, shifting in his seat.

“I'd say not. Since not one friend or acquaintance of hers knew of you,” Test said. “You don't seem too shook up about her being dead.”

“I am.”

“You don't seem it.”

“I'm still in shock. I still don't believe it.”

Test took the printed e-­mail away from Brad. “She was going to tell someone you were fucking her. And you got mad. Scared she'd ruin your big future.”

Brad sat bolt upright, as if stabbed in the back. “That's a lie! You're a fucking liar!”

“Sit,” North said.

Brad sat, reluctantly, enraged.

“You better start telling us the fucking truth. Because everything you've said so far is shit,” North said. “We know you were screwing her. Using her. We can't do anything about that now. She's dead. If you didn't kill her, it sure looks like you did, so you better start dealing straight with us so we can look for the right person.”

“Where were you last night?” Test said. It was two nights ago now, she realized. Time was slipping away fast. But at least they had their doer. Except. Except what? Except his reaction just then when he'd bolted upright and called Test a liar. It was—­

“Home,” Brad said. “I was at home. I swear.”

“All by your lonesome in your room listening to music, I bet,” Test said.

Brad looked surprised. “My parents were out.”

“Where?” North said.

“Their family shit. Ask them.”

“What were you doing at home?” Test said.

“You read the e-­mail. I was waiting for her while I studied my playbook.”

“For who?” North said.

Test and North had fallen into a natural rhythm of alternating questions, increased the pressure on Brad.

“For Jess,” Brad said. “I was waiting for Jess.”

“You see how this looks?” Test said.

“Did you make any calls? Send any texts or e-­mails? Surf the Internet?” North said.

“When I study my playbook, I
study
my playbook. Being quarterback isn't just taking snaps and stepping back and hurling it, you know.”

“Convenient,” Test said.

Home alone studying was no alibi.

“Weren't you worried when she didn't show?” North said.

Brad shrugged. “I figured she babysat late and couldn't make it. She knew not to come over or call if it was later and my parents might be home.”

“You'd warned her about that, had you?” North said. “Not letting your parents know she existed.”

“Because you were sleeping with her,” Test said. “Raping her.”

“Jesus! I never raped her, or anyone! You can't just say that shit about us!”

“Shut up,” North said. He looked fraught and pale. “Shut your mouth. Let me tell you what we have. That trooper who came in a minute ago. He just confirmed. We have your fingerprints all over the Merryfields' house, including on their bedposts. Including on the doorknob to the cellar where Jessica was found.”

Brad shook his head vehemently. “I never said I was
never
over there. I was. A lot. But not that night.”

“But you can't prove it?” Test said, “because you were all alone at home, right?”

Brad rose from his chair.

“Sit down,” Test said.

Brad stared at her.

“Sit your ass down.”

Brad's nostrils flared. Test thought he might spit on her. But, he sat.

“You have no alibi,” North said. “You had opportunity. You were mad at her. You had motive. One blow with a hammer killed her.”

Brad flinched.

“Not just anyone can do that,” North continued. “It takes a strong arm. An accurate, powerful arm. “

“I couldn't do that.”

“He couldn't kill her but he could rape her,” Test snorted.

“A real gentleman,” North volleyed.

Brad's jaw worked. “You two are sick,” he said.

Test wanted it to gnaw at his nerves, the word rape.

“It wasn't rape,” Brad said. “Not to us.”

“Ah, love. So now you
were
more than a friend?” North said. “Which you know we know since we have all your e-­mails.”

“I'm not that much older than her,” Brad protested.

“Three and a half years,” Test said.

“So what? Are you the same exact age as your husband?”

Test wasn't. In fact, Claude was seven years older than her.

“Jessica's grandmother got married at sixteen to a twenty-­nine-­year-­old, or something like that,” Brad said, parroting Jessica's line from her e-­mail without any conviction.

“Things were different then,” Test said.

“Yeah, way less fucked up,” Brad said.

He has a point there
, Test thought.

“This isn't the nineteen fifties. What do you think a jury will think about the age difference now, in our fucked-­up world?” Test said.

“I didn't
know.
OK? I didn't know how old she was, at first,” Brad protested, his voice cracking with anger. “She
lied
. She told me she was sixteen. And after. It didn't feel any different, except when she started with the romantic stuff.”

“Like the fourteen-­year-­old she was,” Test said.

“She didn't
act fourteen,”
Brad insisted.
“
You're making it out like she was some little innocent creature. You two would never have thought she was that young either. Never. She'd act twenty. And she looked it. She acted older than me, for fuck's sake.” He was riled now, agitated. Good. Except. There was something agitating Test again. Something Test didn't like, and for the wrong reasons. A hard pit of doubt was forming in her stomach. It was small for now. But it was nonetheless doubt. Doubt that Brad had killed Jessica. Because he not only seemed vexed, but at ease, too, at least in what he was saying. It felt natural to Test. “She was responsible,” Brad said. “Studying all the time. Always in the library. She wore her clothes and hair like she was older. She was . . . mature. But when it came to us, she got ideas.”

“So you killed her,” North said.

“I slept with her. You got me. But you can't do anything about that. You said so yourself.” He stared at North.

A smile seeped across North's face. “I lied. I can lie too, you know. We can press charges against you for raping her.”

“You can't,” Brad said. “That's not fair.”

“Fair?” North said. He looked about ready to reach over the table and grab the kid and smash his face into the table.

“We can do whatever we want,” Test said. “Who's going to stop us? You?”

North glanced at Test, then back to Brad.

“Stay put,” he said.

He nodded toward the door.

Test followed him out of the room.

In the hallway, North leaned against the wall. “Well?”

“Intellectually. It all adds up.”

“Intellectually?”

Test stretched her neck. She was stiff and sore, and if she shut her eyes she'd fall asleep standing upright. “My gut? I don't know. There was something. A moment or two when he was genuinely angry at us and protective of their relationship, I felt a tug of doubt.”

“Intuition?”

He hadn't said
woman's intuition
; still, the capital North had built up in his favor during the interrogation vanished with that one word. “Gut,” Test said. “Just like yours. It seems he thought we'd hauled him in because he was sleeping with her. Not because he killed her.” Her own doubt aggravated Test. She had been all but certain Brad was the doer.

“His fingerprints are all over the house,” North said.

“He'd been in the house before. There's genuine fear in him.”

“I'd be afraid too.”

“True. But. It's more than the fear of losing his future. Or prison. It's more fear from being unable to believe this is happening.”

“He better start believing. He's one cold, narcissistic prick. He doesn't care that she's dead, except for how it impacts him. Don't let him fool you.”