“I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. It’s just that you’re so goddamn aggravating when it comes to this.” He lowered his hand. His green eyes appealed to her. “Give it up, Alex. Relent.”
“I can’t.”
“Won’t.”
She reached for his hand. “Reede, we’re never going to agree on this, and I don’t want to argue with you.” Her face turned soft. “Not after last night.”
“Some people would think that what went on in there,” he said, indicating the living room, “would erase the past.”
“Is that why you made it happen, hoping that I’d forgive and forget?”
He yanked his hand away. “You’re dead set on pissing me off, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not trying to provoke you. Just please understand why I can’t give up when I’m this close.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Then just accept it. Help me.”
“How? By pointing a finger at either my mentor or my best friend?”
“Junior didn’t sound like a best friend a while ago.”
“That was injured pride and jealousy talking.”
“He was jealous the night Celina was killed, too. She had injured his pride. She turned down his marriage proposal because she was still in love with you. Could that have driven him to murder her?”
“Think about it, Alex,” he said with annoyance. “If Junior did blow his top at her, would he have had that scalpel handy to start slashing? And do you honestly think, no matter how enraged he was, that Junior could kill anybody?”
“Then, it was Angus,” she said softly.
“I don’t know.” Angrily, Reede slung himself out of his chair and began to pace. This was a familiar, haunting hypothesis. “Angus was against Junior marrying Celina.”
“Angus is more volatile than Junior,” she said, almost to herself. “I’ve seen him angry. I imagine that when he’s crossed, he could be capable of killing, and he certainly took desperate measures to have the case closed before the evidence could come around to him.”
“Where are you going?” Reede jerked to attention when she left her chair and headed toward the bedroom.
“I’ve got to talk to him.”
“Alex!” He went after her. He rattled the knob of the bathroom door, but she’d locked it behind herself. “I don’t want you to go over there.”
“I’ve got to.” She opened the door, already dressed, and stuck out her hand. “Can I borrow your Blazer?”
He stared at her hard. “You’ll wreck his life. Have you thought of that?”
“Yes. And every time I feel a pang of regret, I remind myself of the lonely, loveless childhood I spent while he wa
s prospering.” She closed her eyes and pulled herself together. “I don’t want to destroy Angus. I’m only doing my job, doing what’s right. I actually like him. If circumstances were different, I could grow very fond of him. But the circumstances are what they are, and I can’t change them. When a person does something wrong, he’s got to be punished.”
“All right.” He grabbed her arm and drew her up close. “What’s the punishment for a prosecutor sleeping with a suspect?”
“You’re no longer a suspect.”
“You didn’t know that last night.”
Furious, she wrestled her arm free and ran through the house, grabbing his keys off the end table where she’d seen him drop them the night before.
Reede let her go and placed a call to his downtown office. Without preamble, he barked, “Get me a car out here on the double.”