“We’ll get it back to you as soon as we can,” Officer Bradley told her. “But we need to acknowledge the way he looks at the ring when he sees it. That look alone could tell us so much.”
* * *
A little more than an hour after they were dismissed, Elsa paced in the waiting room while Bruce sat, his shoulders hunched forward. “He’s back there, isn’t he?” Elsa demanded, her voice harsh.
“He should be,” Bruce said.
“What’s taking so long?”
“These things are complicated. They’re more mind games than anything else. And mind games take time,” Bruce told her.
Elsa groaned, remembering the countless crime shows Bruce had forced her to watch. She hadn’t imagined any of them would have prepared her for some real-life encounter.
“Why don’t you sit with me for a second?” Bruce asked tenderly, tapping the seat of the chair next to him.
“I don’t know if I can calm down enough to sit.”
“Maybe we could do some deep breathing?”
Elsa’s laughter rollicked from wall to wall. Bruce’s smile was enormous, knowing.
“You knew that would make me mad, didn’t you?” Elsa said.
“Yes. But I also knew you’d laugh,” Bruce returned. “And that’s the only thing I wanted to hear.”
Elsa rolled her eyes.This man was too good for her.
The waiting room door creaked open to reveal Officer Bradley, who was pale and sinister from his hour-plus interview with Brodie. “Could the two of you come back again, please?”
Elsa and Bruce followed behind the officer, both wordless. Elsa could only hope that he’d take them directly into Brodie’s room, where she could rip into him herself. Of course, that wasn’t the way things worked.
Once behind his desk, Officer Bradley gathered several papers into a stack and tapped the edges to make them into a crisp pile.
“We weren’t able to get very much out of him,” Officer Bradley said finally.
Elsa exhaled all the air from her lungs. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish I was,” Officer Bradley returned.
“But what about the ring? What did he say when he saw it?”
“His eyes were buggy. He was clearly frightened. But when I asked him where he got it— even giving him an out to say ‘pawn shop’ or something, he refused to tell me. He said he would never tell anyone where he got the ring,” Officer Bradley said.
“Oh my God.” Elsa dropped her chin to her chest.
“We asked him about the night of the robbery and where he might have been,” Officer Bradley continued. “He said he was with his siblings at their family home. He then left early the next morning to take one of his siblings to Woods Hole, where she boarded a bus to Boston. After that, he took the ferry back to the island.”
“That’s when my daughter must have met him,” Elsa whispered.
“It doesn’t clear him,” Officer Bradley said. “It’s all his story. We don’t have anyone to corroborate it.”
Suddenly, after what seemed like a mountain of silence, Bruce piped up. “Does he know his rights?”
Elsa looked at Bruce, bug-eyed. “What are you talking about?”
Bruce adjusted his collar. “I just mean that he has a right to an attorney.”
Officer Bradley arched his brow with confusion. Usually, the prosecution didn’t fight for the rights of the guilty party.