“You didn’t see Franklin Dowd on the night of July thirtieth?”
I shifted in my seat. A bead of sweat crawled between my shoulder blades like an insect. “I’m not telling you shit.”
“Come on, Wentz,” Harris said. “Let’s make this easy on everyone. We all know what happened.”
Kowalski ticked off his fingers. “You got a well-documented beef with Frankie Dowd. You broke his nose within seconds of meeting him. Fifty witnesses can say they saw you tackle him to the floor at a house party on September ninth of last year, and a few months ago, you were heard telling him that if he hurt anyone you cared about, you would quote: fuck his shit up.”
Harris crossed his arms. “Shiloh Barrera is someone you care about, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” I said. And that was the truest thing I said that night.
“And Frankie hurt her,” Harris continued. “So you did just what you promised and fucked his shit up. Hard. Didn’t you?”
“I told you, I—”
“He’s in the hospital, Ronan,” Kowalski said. “Fighting for his life.”
Harris nodded. “That’s called motive.”
“And here you sit, your fists swollen and bruised all to hell. But this time, it wasn’t you. Is that what you’re saying?”
I tilted my chin. “That’s what I’m fucking saying.”
Harris heaved a sigh. “You’re just making this harder on yourself, Wentz. This case is cut and dry. Confess and maybe they’ll cut you a deal. If your victim survives, that is.”
My aching hands made fists under the table. I was allowed a lawyer. A phone call. But what good would it do? I was guilty before they sat my ass in the chair.
Harris cocked his head. “You want to know what I think, Ronan?”
I already knew what he thought.
End of the road.
Like father, like son.
Shiloh, I’m sorry. I tried…
The detective leaned over me, his tone cold and final. Like a door slamming shut. “I think you’re going to prison for a very long time.”
Chapter One
One year ago…
“Time to head out,” I said, dragging my rolling suitcase into the lush family room of my aunt and uncle’s house. “Got a plane to catch.”
I hated stating the obvious, but if I didn’t announce my departure, my mother—sitting in the kitchen—might ignore it altogether. Maybe reminding her that it’d be a full year before she saw her only daughter again would break down her cold walls and she’d show me some warmth.
No dice.
New Orleans bustled on the other side of the glass under a thick summer morning while Mama sat bent over the card table near the window, smoking her cigarette and doing the Sunday crossword. Aloof and distant. No different than how she’d been at the start of this visit six weeks ago—and every summer visit I could remember since I was four years old, when she gave me up to live with my great-grandmother, Bibi, in California.
Aunt Bertie—round and colorful in her purple blouse and matching slacks—made a pitying sound from her spot on the couch where she sat wedged between my Uncle Rudy and their twenty-five-year-old daughter, Letitia. A Saints preseason game blared on the flatscreen.
“Already?” Aunt Bertie said and clucked her tongue. “Seems like you just got here.”
For my summer visits, I always stayed at my aunt and uncle’s Victorian in the Garden District. It was historically old and beautiful and richly decorated with Aunt Bertie’s taste for jewel tones and velvet tasseled pillows. The front door’s stained glass cast rainbows over the carpet.
I loved the house and the people in it, but I’d have traded it all to be with Mama at her little shotgun on Old Prieur Street in the Seventh Ward. She said it was too small, but I didn’t care. I’d have taken the couch. The floor…