52

H e shook Maggie’s hand. “Nice to see you again.” Ignoring any kind of greeting for me, he pointed to the side of the table with the two chairs.

“Nice to see you, too,” I said.

He continued to ignore me.

Maggie took a seat. I followed her lead.

Vaughn closed the door, sealing the room into silence.

As we took our seats, I looked at Vaughn. His brownish hair with shots of gray seemed newly cut and stood up straight like the bristles of a brush. When he caught my eyes on him, he smiled with one side of his mouth. He had sharp eyes that made no excuses for studying me.

I gave as calm a smile as I could, as if to say, Go ahead, I’m ready. But he just kept dissecting me with his eyes. The silence in the room grew oppressive.

“You had some questions for my client?” Maggie’s tone was congenial, but matter-of-fact.

“Yeah, one sec.” Detective Vaughn opened a manila folder and pushed his chair back, balancing the folder on a crossed knee so we couldn’t see what was there. He grabbed a pen clipped to his belt. Click, click, click with the end of his pen. He glanced up at me, grinned. It was as if he knew that the sound drove me crazy. He made some notes.

“Okay.” He sighed. “They make us write all this stuff down when we interrogate a suspect.”

I glanced at Maggie with a silent question-Did he just call me a suspect?

Maggie stared at him hard. “Can we get moving, please?”

“Yeah, hold on.” He scribbled something. “Isabel McNeil…” he said, almost under his breath. More scribbling. “Represented by Maggie Bristol…”

He looked up. “You related to Marty Bristol?”

Maggie nodded. “He’s my grandfather.” Then she added, “He’s also my law partner.”

Detective Vaughn gave an appreciative nod. “I remember when he had the Keith Lee Baker case.”

Maggie nodded again. Her grandfather, Martin Bristol, now a wealthy criminal defense lawyer, had started out his career on the state side and prosecuted the infamous serial killer, Keith Lee Baker. Far from being intimidated by her grandfather’s reputation, or feeling like she had to take a backseat to it, Maggie had no qualms using that reputation to open doors. She’d always said that in business, everyone got a leg up for one reason or another-maybe it was your connections, maybe it was your looks, or maybe it was the fact that your grandpa put away a particularly nasty serial killer.

“Hey,” Maggie said to Vaughn. “Someone told me you worked the Kenny Paris case. Is that right?

“Yeah.”

“Heard it was a crazy one,” Maggie said.

I had no idea what they were talking about, but Detective Vaughn laughed. “Oh, man, it was fucking nuts.” He shook his head.

He and Maggie bantered for a few more minutes, their tone sounding more as if they were gossiping about a neighbor’s lawn rather than the prosecution of a man who had killed ten people in a robbery gone awry.

“Okay.” Vaughn gazed at me with that laserlike focus. “Have you wanted to do that for a long time?”

I was taken by surprise. “Do what?”

He pointed at the TV, now off. “Be a newscaster.”

“It never occurred to me until Jane offered me a job at Trial TV.”

He smirked, as if he didn’t believe it. “You’ve got Zac Ellis all revved up.”

“I’ve got him all revved up? I haven’t done anything to that guy. In fact, you should know that he’s already dating someone else.”

He nodded, his expression unfazed. “He thinks you were dating his wife.”

“That’s nuts.” I glanced at Maggie, who was wearing her focused but unflappable lawyer look.

“Is it? I’ve got a witness who says they saw you and Jane having coffee Saturday.”

“We did.”

“That person also said you two looked very cozy.”

“We were friends. If that’s cozy-looking…” I trailed off, shrugged.

He said nothing.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” I said.

“I want you to tell me the truth.”

“I am.”

Another smirk. “Good. Then tell me the truth about this. Did you kiss Jane when you were having coffee that day?”

“No!”

“That same witness who saw you having coffee said that they saw you kissing.”

“That’s absurd!” But then I remembered Jane leaning close to me. I remembered thinking she might be going to kiss me. I blushed now at the thought.

Vaughn noticed. I could tell, because the smirk suddenly involved both sides of his mouth.

“Jane and I were talking about the night before,” I explained, “and Jane was trying to make a point by leaning close to me. We did not kiss.”

“Where were you the night before?”

“I told you this on Monday. Jane and I were out that night at the hotel bar and then the place on Damen. I should have also told you that Jane went home with someone that night. A guy.” I looked at Maggie, who nodded at me to go ahead. “And so did I.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

I swallowed hard. “I didn’t know if it was an okay thing to talk about. Jane and I were friends-just friends-but since she’s married and a public figure, I thought it would look bad if this information came out.”

I thought about one other thing I hadn’t told them-the sex game Jane liked to play, the scarfing. I’d promised her I wouldn’t. Because I was the attorney she had consulted on that matter, I couldn’t. But I’d already told them about the noose made from her scarf that she found in her house. They didn’t need to know that Jane had that sexual habit, that predilection, did they? I hated it when people, usually celebrities, became better remembered for how they had died rather than the life they had lived. The actor who accidentally overdoses, the politician who dies while visiting a prostitute. Their legend becomes about the circumstance of their death and the building of evidence by the press as to how they got to that point. The great work they did slides away in the collective consciousness of society, replaced by the reports that the celeb was a drug addict, a sex addict, a cheater. Jane won an Emmy Award. She broke huge stories and lived her life with passion. That was what she should be remembered for, not a minor sexual preference.

Maggie cleared her throat. I realized I’d trailed off in thought, and Vaughn had said nothing.

I looked at him expectantly, but he just sat quietly. The silence, started out like a trickle of water, but then it began to pool and grow. Like the other night, I could hear nothing outside the room.

Vaughn stared intensely at me. Mute.

Maggie had told me to only answer the questions he asked. And if he asked, I would answer.

But he wasn’t saying anything.

The room grew more and more uncomfortable. Suddenly the silence seemed like an ocean crashing over us. I heard Maggie clear her throat. Still, Vaughn and I gazed at each other relentlessly, a showdown. I remember he’d been like this the day he questioned me after Sam disappeared. But then I didn’t feel so afraid of what he was thinking.

And the more he stared at me, the more the silence expanded, taking up all the air in the room. I grew more and more terrified, because swimming in that sea of silence, I could suddenly tell exactly what he was thinking. You killed Jane Augustine.

“You all done, Detective?” Maggie said, breaking the awful quiet.

He didn’t even glance at her, but he finally spoke. “So on Friday night, you and Jane didn’t go home together from this place on Damen?”

It had the feel of a question, but Detective Vaughn’s tone made it clear he thought he knew the answer.

“No. I went home with a guy I met that night.” It sounded so seedy.

“A guy.”

“Yes. His name is Theo Jameson.”

Vaughn pulled the file folder in front of him closer. He opened it, picked up his pen. Click, click, click, click, click. “Theodore…” he said, trailing off.