“It was all supposed to be a joke,” he said, and the lawyer winced slightly.
“What was?”
“All of it. The monkey suit. I lifted it from the club, the Big Foot Believers, and yeah, I chased Bianca with it that night. It was kind of a joke, like I said, a prank, a big ‘Ha-ha!’ but I didn’t know anything about . . . Destiny. I swear. That was a total shocker, you know.”
Alvarez waited.
Another nod from the lawyer.
“And I got into a little more trouble. You were right, I was, like . . . involved with Lindsay. She was really Kywin’s friend. Hell—all the girls are, y’know.”
Alvarez didn’t.
“But she, Lindsay and I connected. I didn’t want Kywin to get wind of it and we share a room at the old man’s house—it’s really a pain—so Lindsay and me, we worked out this signal system. She’d butt dial me, like a mistake, y’know,” he said, trying to look honest when Alvarez knew him to be a liar. “And then she got real upset. Knew that Kywin had something to do with Destiny’s death. Destiny had texted her and told her she was going to meet Donny that night, the same as she texted Kywin, so . . . she wanted to go to the cops and tell everyone what she knew.” Some of his bravado slipped a little. “I told her to meet me up at Horsebrier Ridge at a park up there, we’d been there before. So she snuck out and I did a stupid thing. I went up ahead of her and left a dummy on the road, so that she’d see it, you know, and swerve. I just wanted to scare her. . . .”
“But she did just what you expected, swerved, overcorrected, and ended up driving her car into the canyon, where she died.”
He looked at his hands. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I didn’t expect her to die.”
“You thought she’d survive?” Alvarez didn’t bother hiding the skepticism in her voice.
“I didn’t know she’d actually drive off the damned cliff. Besides, she was going to rat out Kywin.”
“The brother you didn’t want to know that you and she were seeing each other.”
“That was before everything got so heavy, you know?” He was now searching for reasons to explain his unexplainable behavior.
Alvarez said, “So you thought it would be funny, a prank, to scare the living shit out of her by having her crash her car.”
“I already told you: I didn’t know that would happen.”
“Really?” Alvarez wanted to lean across the table and throttle the stupid ass, but she controlled herself by holding on to the edges of the table in a death grip.
Diane Moore said, “My client is here giving you information. This is obviously difficult for him.”
Difficult, my ass. A girl is dead! She wasn’t about to apologize to this jerk-wad. “So what happened to the body you left on the road—the dummy?”
“I picked it up. Still have it. In a shed at my dad’s place.”
“I’ll want to see it.”
“Of course,” Diane said before Kip could argue. “My client has offered full disclosure for leniency,” she said, reminding both Alvarez and Kip Bell of their deal.
“So did Kywin kill Destiny Rose Montclaire?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Kip said. “But . . . but Lindsay thought so.”
“How did the ape suit get in Marjory Tufts’s car?”
“I put it there,” he admitted. “I saw it parked in the dealership lot one night—she was out with her husband in his car and had left it there with the keys in it. It was parked out back, no cameras and no one was looking. I wanted it out of my rig, so I took a chance. I figured no one would ever find it.”
“Guess you figured wrong.” She leaned forward and looked him straight in the eye. “So where’s your brother? Where’s Kywin? I really need to talk to him.”
“I don’t know, Detective,” he said. “And that’s the fuckin’ truth!”
* * *
The truck shuddered to a stop, engine still thrumming in the darkness. Bianca forced herself to wait, to pretend that the effects of the stun gun hadn’t worn off. When her assailants came to do whatever it was they were planning, she’d lay there, still twitching, and act as if she were still tied and not in control of her body. The twine still covered her wrists, she’d retied pieces around each of them and held them tightly together, the little knife in her right palm.