She crossed her fingers and held them up for Alvarez to inspect. “We’re like this. We tell each other everything,” she said as a scrawny tabby cat trotted from the hallway and hopped onto the back of the couch. Veronica stroked it and then waxed euphoric about Donny, the mayor’s son, the athlete, the “sweetest guy on the planet, and I mean it.” She gladly answered questions about Donald Justison Junior, and admitted that they were “deeply involved,” and “in love,” and “would probably get married.”
“Really?”
“Oh, sure. We’re soul mates,” she said, nodding her head sagely. “But not ’til after we graduate, though. My folks would kill me if I didn’t finish up with my degree first.”
“You called Destiny Rose Montclaire a bitch.”
“Because she was one.” Again, the bobblehead nod. “I hate to talk bad about the dead, y’know, but she was like the worst.” She glanced at a fish tank mounted on a small table near an older television. “Oh.” She scrambled to her feet, grabbed a can of fish food sitting on the TV, opened it, and tossed a handful of fish food into the water. A dozen tetras flashed to the surface, the water roiling. “How are you, guys?” she said to the fish. “Sorry. I know Mommy’s gone and Aunt Ronnie forgot.” She actually made fish faces into the smudged glass.
Secretly Alvarez wondered how she would ever graduate. She asked, “How?”
“Huh?” Veronica glanced over her shoulder.
“How was Destiny Montclaire the worst?”
“Everybody knew it. Destiny was always calling and texting and messaging Donny. Bitching him out, you know. No wonder he broke up with her. She, like, couldn’t get it that it was O-V-E-R.”
“Did you know that he met her on the day she went missing, before her body was found?”
She couldn’t suppress a telltale jerk of surprise. “He was with me that day.”
Alvarez paused. “Do you know what day that was?”
“Uh-huh. That Friday. Donny was—we were together—” She snapped closed the lid of the fish food.
Everything about the girl said she was lying. “Did you know she was pregnant?”
“The baby wasn’t his. You know that. Donny told me he gave up his DNA and you guys tested him and that baby wasn’t his.” She said it as if the fact that he wasn’t the father of Destiny’s baby absolved him from any sin, including the fact that he’d likely been cheating on each of them with the other. She set the small can back on the table and scowled, but any further questions Alvarez asked didn’t produce any more information.
Even before Veronica had started lying, Alvarez had realized Veronica wouldn’t be much help in ferreting out the truth. She was just too much in love with Donny, and she didn’t seem to think that lying to the police was a problem, no matter how many times Alvarez tried to impress upon her the importance of the truth.
No, Veronica would defend Donny to the death and provide alibis whether they were true or not. But Donny Justison knew more than he was saying, Alvarez was sure of it. He’d already lied to them; she felt it in her bones.
Now you’re sounding like Pescoli. You need proof, not gut feelings.
Somehow, some way, she was going to get it, she thought as she drove out of town. Her muscles were tight, her frustration level in the stratosphere, and to top it all off, she got stuck behind a tractor pulling along the road at fifteen miles an hour.
“Really?” she said and after a sharp curve, spied a straightaway and hit the gas. She flew around the farmer, who, in a ball cap, eyes on the road ahead, took the time to wave as she sped past.
Once the farmer was in her rearview, she hit the button to open the sun roof, rolled down the windows, and ripped off the band holding her hair away from her face so that the wind could rip through it.
She considered the case, all the angles, all the suspects. She had circled around over everything again and had just arrived at the outskirts of town when her phone rang. With a glance at the screen, she saw it was Sage Zoller and answered.
“Alvarez.”
“It’s Zoller,” the junior detective said. “The lab did an analysis on the bit of rubber found under the victim’s fingernails. Latex. Most likely from a glove, the type used in hospitals.”
“That’s what we thought.”
“No DNA could be found on it.”
“Damn.” That had been the hope, a slim one, but a hop
e.
“I’ve been checking around. The glove is pretty common and its usage widespread. The gloves can be found in hospitals and just about anywhere else you’d want to look. Stores in town sell them and we’re checking that, but along with the hospitals, they’re used in clinics and vet clinics and are sold commercially to anyone who wants to keep their hands sterile. Farmers for examining animals, or people who clean houses or whatever. And, of course, you can get them online. We’re checking local outlets to see if any were purchased recently, but that’s probably not going to be all that effective. Anyone who visited a hospital room or a clinic where they were having an exam could have snagged a pair.”
“So no good news?”