Waylon holds up his hands, stopping me mid-sentence. “If anyone were to find out that we’ve been working on this together, my credibility would be shot. There’s no way anyone would see it as objective. I mean, I’m sorry to say this, but—”
“But I’m a suspect,” I interject. “And you need to treat me as such.”
“Yes,” he says. “Well, no. I’m just saying that it can’tappearlike I’m taking sides.”
“If you were really concerned about your integrity, you never would have agreed to stay here in the first place,” I say, standing up from the couch. “So why don’t you tell me what it is you’re really after?”
Waylon is quiet, his fingers tapping away at the side of his mug. “I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.”
“I know you lied to me about seeing Dozier yesterday. I know because he was here.”
Waylon perks up, his eyes growing wide.
“He must have come by after I left—”
“And I know you lied about Dozier saying he doesn’t know my neighbor, too, because he does know him. He told me his name,” I say, the anger and the betrayal pushing me forward. “So stop with your bullshit aboutcredibilitybecause you and I both know that you have none. Why are you here?”
“I’m… I’m here to help,” he says, though it’s starting to sound less convincing. Like even he knows that there’s no use lying anymore. “I’m here to figure out what happened to your son—”
“Bullshit. I went through your stuff last night. I saw everything you’ve been hiding. Why are you here?”
He’s quiet, his lips pursed tight as we stare at each other from across the couch in a silent standoff. Just as I’m starting to think he’ll never talk, he bows his head and blows a tunnel of air out through his lips.
“Isabelle, you’ve seen the evidence,” he says at last. “You’ve seen it all.”
“So?”
“So you know what the evidence says. Whoever took Mason… they came from inside the house.”
I look at him, blink a few times. The implication, of course, is clear. I know what he’s trying to say.
“The evidence doesn’t line up with the idea of a forced entry.”
“But there was an open window—” I start.
“But no footprints on the carpet,” he interrupts, finally looking up at me. “If someone came into your house through that window, there would have been dirt on the carpet. Mud, grass,something.”
“That’s just one thing that could easily be explained,” I say. “He could have taken his shoes off—”
“Why didn’t Roscoe bark?” he continues, pressing on. “He barks when he sees strangers. Someone would have heard him. You would have woken up. Why was he quiet?”
“He wasn’t… he wasn’t in the nursery,” I say, even though I know it’s a bad answer. He would have heard it, anyway. “Maybe he was asleep.”
“He was quiet because nobody broke into your house, Isabelle. I know it, you know it, the cops know it. There was no intruder.”
I think of Detective Dozier and the way he’s always brushing me off; the way he looks at me like he knows something I don’t. The way he never seems to give me the time of day.
So I was right, then. That’s what he thinks. That’s what they all think.
“You really believe that?” I ask, trying to keep my voice level. Trying to keep myself from crying. “This whole time you’ve been here, every conversation we’ve had…?”
We’re both dancing around it, avoiding having to say it outright, but from the look in his eyes, he knows what I’m asking:Do you think I killed my son?
“Yeah,” he says at last, his eyes on mine. “Yeah, I do.”
I should have seen this coming. I’m a storyteller myself, after all, and a storyteller never goes into a story withoutactuallyknowing the story. Without having an idea of what it is you want to tell. You don’t go in blind, searching for answers. Youhavethe answers—your answers, at least; the answers you want—and you go in searching for proof.
From that very first conversation on the airplane, this has been Waylon’s angle.Ihave been his angle. I thought he was different, I thought he cared, so I let him in, told him things. Things I’ve never told anyone. But that was his game all along, wasn’t it? That was his goal: to get me to relax, open up, by cooking me dinner and pouring me wine; by listening to me so intently and never pushing too hard.