What time was that? Did you hear anyone? Did you see anything else? Can you describe … on and on. I know the tricks of the trade. He’s looking for any chance to cast doubt on what I’ve said. To see if I’m lying.
“She’s not coherent,” he says and I exhale in frustration. I begged her this morning, telling her if she wanted to say something, to just cry instead. It’s better for her to appear unstable than to give them an alternative version of the story.
It’s not lost on me that if she slips up, if she goes weak, I’m fucked.
They’ll know I lied and charges will be pressed; I’ll be disbarred. It’ll be the end for me.
“She wasn’t coherent when I found her either,” I tell Skov again. Two hours in and I’m only repeating myself now.
I can take it all day long. I don’t know that the same can be said about my mother, though.
Glimpses of her disheveled state flicker in front of me and I pick under my nails rather than look back at the man I’m certain doesn’t believe me. He knew my father and by association, my mother and me and my sister. Only by name, though.
“Is this a normal reaction for her?” he asks and I glare up at him.
“A normal reaction to finding her husband dead? My father,” I say but my voice breaks and I force my eyes closed. “I’m sorry,” I whisper and with both elbows on the table I hang my head in my hands. “I just … I’m sorry,” I say, apologizing again.
“For what?” he asks and if I wasn’t truly destroyed from everything that’s happened, I would smile at his idiocy. My story is ironclad. It’s all up to my mother.
“For my shortness,” I tell him and take in a steadying breath. “I’m usually more … Talkative and approachable and … I’m usually better.” My voice cracks again as I speak and I shake my head. “I just don’t understand or believe it. He can’t be dead.”
Believe your lies and everyone else will too. I’ll never forget that phrase from Criminal Investigations 450 written on the chalkboard in a room full of expectant, soon-to-be lawyers. So long as they passed the bar.
“I should have …” I let the statement trail off and close my eyes. My mind drifts, wandering back to the front door of the home I grew up in. My throat’s tight as I remember opening it, the creak and the ominous silence that greeted me.
“It was supposed to be a girls’ night,” I say and my words are etched in agony as I stare up at the detective and let the pain of it all be revealed in the statement. “That’s what we should be doing right now. We should be out having fun while my father attends a conference.”
“As far as you know, there isn’t anyone who would want your father dead.”
Just as I’m about to respond by bringing up his cases from years ago or disgruntled former business partners, the door opens and Skov’s partner, Gallinger, comes in. The two are complete opposites. The clean-shaven, pristine cop is at complete odds with Skov’s disheveled state.
Even his polite smile and nod, plus the way he whispers to Skov, appear to be in direct conflict with the man’s appearance.
“How are you, Delilah?” Gallinger asks me, pulling out a chair and sitting across from me.
“It feels like everything is coming apart,” I say, making the admission because it does. And it adds to the testimony.
“You have to know how this looks,” Gallinger says while gesturing with his hand, sympathy in his gaze. Skov turns, still standing and paces behind him.
“I do. Trust me, I do,” I tell him and my heart beats harder, wondering what change brought him in. Did my mother say anything? Please, God, please, I will do anything.
“We found a note at the crime scene, did my partner tell you that?”
A flicker of hope lights with me like the small flame of an ancient furnace. “He didn’t, no.”
I was beginning to think Marcus never left it. Or it simply wasn’t found.
The small slip of paper flitters across the table and I make great effort to only touch the plastic edges of the evidence bag it resides inside.
Bad men die.
I don’t have the ability to read past the first line. My breath is stolen from me as my blood runs cold.
It’s Marcus’s handwriting.
He didn’t try to hide it. He’s pinning it on himself.
“We’re running forensics,” Gallinger starts to say but my head spins and a ringing in my ears drowns out his voice.
I can’t breathe. I can’t focus as the man speaks. Leaning forward slightly, I manage to control my breaths. In and out, in and out.
“Are you—”
I cut off his question, but I can’t complete the statement as I say, “I recognize …”