Isobel popped her head out of his office. “Are you about ready to interview David Benson, or what?”
Or what
. He really wanted to choose
or what
and go track down Jordan, but David Benson wasn’t going to wait forever, and he needed to ask as many questions as possible before the kid lawyered up. He looked at the door Jordan had just stomped out of and then glanced back at Isobel.
Fucking day from hell, that was what this was.
Ty grabbed a couple bottles of water and followed Isobel into the room where David Benson sat staring at the floor.
“Do you mind if I record your statement, David?” Isobel asked.
David turned his glassy red eyes in her direction and gave a small shake of his head. Isobel turned on the recorder, made note of the date, time, and particulars.
“David, do you know this woman?” Isobel scooted a picture of Hailey in front of him.
“Yes.”
“What was the nature of your relationship?”
Isobel’s tone carried a good amount of unnecessary intimidation, yet Ty let her hammer away at David for several minutes anyway. At least she was establishing a timeline of his history with Hailey. She began to work the details of Friday night, finally getting around to the fight David had with Hailey.
“What was the fight about?” she asked.
David propped his elbows on the table and covered his eyes with his hands. “We were in my bedroom. Just listening to music and stuff. We wanted to be alone, but it was loud in the house and people kept walking past the door, talking and goofing around. So we just went back to the party.” David’s breath hitched.
“Did you take Hailey to your room with the intention of having sex with her?”
When she asked the question, David’s hands fell away from his face and his gaze shot to Isobel’s and then to Ty’s as if searching for help.
The question had to be asked. Ty knew Isobel could have finessed it a little better. Still he said, “Answer the question, David.”
“No,” David said. “I mean, nothing was for sure. We just wanted some time alone together.”
“And then what happened?” Isobel asked.
“Nothing. It was just so damn noisy. And some jerk came and pounded on the door, just to be an ass, I guess. We decided to go back to the party.”
“Did you decide that? Or did Hailey?”
David shrugged.
“We’re recording, Mr. Benson, so please answer verbally,” Isobel reminded him. She continued the rapid-fire questions. “Were you angry that Hailey decided to go back to the party instead of being alone with you?”
“No,” he said. “I mean, I wasn’t happy. Mostly frustrated, I guess, because I offered to get us a hotel room.”
“So you could have privacy while you had sex with Hailey.”
“Yes.” David looked at Ty again. “I mean no. You’re making it sound like I was pressuring her to do something, but I wasn’t. She wanted to be with me, too. We were just trying to figure out . . .” David pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I loved her. I swear I’d never do anything she didn’t want me to do.”
“But you
were
angry that she changed her mind about having sex Friday night?”
“I was frustrated, okay? She was always so busy . . . We both were. She said she couldn’t skip the party because she was a chaperone for one of the freshman.”
“A chaperone?” Isobel challenged.
“They do this thing in her sorority where every freshman gets paired up with an upperclassman. Kind of a buddy system so none of the girls get too drunk or taken advantage of. I just wanted one night where it wasn’t about school, family, or sorority crap.”
“Did the fight turn physical?”
“What? No,” David said. “There wasn’t really even a fight. I told you, I’d never hurt Hailey.” David got very quiet. Tears started running down his face again. “Oh God, you think I killed her, don’t you? I swear I didn’t.” He leaned toward Ty. “I loved her. I picked out a ring to give her when school was over this summer. I already made the first payment. I can’t believe she’s gone,” he sobbed.
“No one is accusing you of killing her, David.” Ty narrowed his eyes at Isobel, knowing full well that was exactly the road she was barreling down. “In order to find who did this, we need a timeline so we understand everything that happened in her life. Right up until the last minute.
“What happened when the fight ended, David?” he asked.
“I went to the basement and played poker.” David’s gaze met Ty’s. “And I drank. I’m so stupid. I loved her, and I could have spent a few more hours with her, but I didn’t. I should have been there to walk her home. If I’d done that, she’d still be alive, wouldn’t she?”
Ty watched the tears flood down David’s cheeks.
“Every relationship has fights,” he said. He thought about Jordan storming out of his office a little while ago. “But it really is better to tell us everything now. If we find out later that you lied, then it looks like you had something to hide.”
“When was the last time you saw Hailey alive?” Isobel jumped in again.
“I told you. Before she left the frat house,” David mumbled.
“What time was it?”
David shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t do this anymore.” David dropped his head on the table. “I want my dad. Please, I just want my dad.”
Ty tried to calm David a couple more times, but David just kept crying and asking for his dad. They were walking a fine line between witness and suspect, and Ty didn’t want to jeopardize the case. He followed Isobel out of the interview room.
“See, this is why I told you to read him his rights,” Isobel said.
“I had no plans to arrest him, Isobel. I just wanted to know what happened. And he’d have told us a hell of a lot more if you hadn’t scared the shit out of him.”
“More lies, you mean?”
Ty folded his arms. “I didn’t get the feeling he was lying. He’s so hungover he can’t even think straight, much less form a decent lie.”
“Are you kidding?” Isobel tossed her hands up. “A rich, spoiled kid like that, completely used to having his way and getting exactly what he wants? Except he didn’t get Hailey, and he was pissed about it. He told us that much himself.”
“That doesn’t mean he killed her. And if you’d backed off a bit, he probably would have been more open about what happened next instead of asking for his dad. Which is just the same as asking for a lawyer.”
“So let him get a lawyer. I’m checking on the warrants to search his frat room and car. And if we find any piece of evidence or get another witness to remember any violence between them, I’m going to the DA.”
“I think that might be premature, Isobel.”
Isobel’s expression turned softer, almost like she took pity on him. “That’s because you’re a good guy from small town, USA. I’ve dealt with his kind, Ty. Wealthy, arrogant, making a lifelong career out of lying and avoiding any responsibility. I agree we don’t have enough on him yet. Let’s see what the search turns up.”
Isobel pranced away, and Ty got the feeling he’d just been called a dumbass hillbilly in the nicest of ways. Apparently one of them was a dumbass, because they weren’t seeing eye to eye regarding David Benson. Despite the drinking and the fight with Hailey, he didn’t think those things added up to David being a murderer. Then again, he’d also thought he could keep Jordan and Isobel from ever crossing paths, and look how well that turned out.
***
Jordan used the one-and-a-half-hour drive to Saunders Funeral Home in St. Louis to calm herself.
Damn men.
Why did relationships have to screw with your head so badly? Since when had she become such a jealous idiot?
She glanced in the rear-view mirror. Her hair was in a ponytail. No make-up to speak of. Jeans, boots, an old jacket. Okay, so she did look more like a sandwich delivery girl than a cop. But Cherry-bomb certainly didn’t ooze professionalism, either. Seriously, who investigated a murder wearing fuck-me-red lipstick?
Someone who wanted to fuck a big rugged cop like Ty,
that’s who.
“Okay, enough,” she chastised herself. None of this was Ty’s fault. She couldn’t act like an idiot every time an attractive woman flirted with him.
Ty wasn’t a liar.
And he wasn't a cheater.
By the time she pulled into the parking lot of the funeral home, she decided she owed him an apology. And how the hell that had happened, she had no idea.
Damn relationships.
She turned off the car and looked around. So this was it? She’d worked so close for so many years and never had a clue that graves for her family were just around the corner?
In less than fifteen minutes, she walked out of the funeral home with a map of the huge cemetery and a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. It had taken a few little white lies and a wave of her badge, but she’d also managed to harass the timid clerk into giving her a plot number where Jack Delany had been buried.
This certainly wasn’t how she’d pictured the last few days of her vacation. Visions of sand and ocean and sipping frosty little drinks while Ty rubbed lotion all over her body was a much nicer image. She was a long,
long
way from that fantasy.
The narrow blacktop road twisted and curved toward a large lake and the spot the clerk had marked on the map. She parked, got out, and leaned back against her car. The snow accumulation was barely a dusting here. Acre after acre of headstones and flowers peeked up through the thin layer of white. Kind of gruesomely beautiful, really.
But she sensed very little energy. Seemed the dead didn’t like hanging out in cemeteries any more than the living.
She’d been to rock concerts where she sensed more spirit. Yet it made perfect sense. If a soul could bounce around anywhere, a sandy beach in Jamaica had to beat the hell out of a depressing grave in Missouri.
If some drug dealer eventually put a bullet in her, she had no intention of hovering over a cold chunk of stone when her spirit could instead invisibly ogle Ty in a warm shower.
She closed her eyes and attempted to mentally prepare for whatever lay across the road. Graves or no graves, it shouldn’t matter.
This
shouldn’t matter. Her family had been gone for twenty years.
So why did she feel like she was losing them all over again?
She pushed off her car, but her feet didn’t seem to be on board with the need to move. Maybe because she couldn’t think past the memory that kept looping over and over in her mind—her uncle’s blue and white pontoon boat.
Certain days leave an imprint, much like a brand on the brain. Time had never dulled the memories of spreading ashes of her mom, dad, and Katy.
The sun had been bright, but the cold, windy day had bit at her cheeks like a million stinging bees. Her stomach was sick, and the throbbing in her head intensified with the speed of the boat.
She had once loved that lake. Her family had, too. However she had never been out on the water when no one else was around.
It was the wrong time of year for boating.
A box sat next to her. Her uncle had explained that it contained three urns. Until that day, she hadn’t known what the word
urn
had meant. The vibrations of the boat made the metal urns clank together.
The clearest memory was how unfathomable it had been that her entire family, three whole people, fit inside a small box with room to spare. Her whole world had been in that box. And she watched that world float away in the waves in the lake.
Maybe. But maybe not. If Bahan were correct, it seemed that might be another fact up for debate.
No, absolutely not.
She refused to believe it. For years she’d resented her uncle for not taking her in when her family had been murdered. She considered him a major asshole for that, but even he couldn’t be cruel enough to stage the spreading of ashes for his own family.
She cleared her mind and forced herself away from the car. Counting the rows and headstones, she came upon . . .
Jack Edmund Delany.
After reading the documents in her father’s file, she’d expected a headstone with her father’s name on it, had steeled herself for it. She just hadn’t expected the sick roll of her stomach, as though she were still on that damn pontoon boat.
Her throat swelled and burned.
Her eyes stung.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” she whispered. “I don’t even know how to ask for forgiveness. I’ve managed to find the truth for complete strangers, but you . . . I never did for you. Now I will. I promise.”
She glanced at the next headstone.
Mary Elizabeth Delany.
Her mom.
Rein it in, Jordan. This can’t be real
. Even so, the third headstone was a bitter pill.
Jordan Miranda Delany, June 30, 1983 – November 25, 1993.
A cruel irony swallowed her up, because she couldn’t say that the date of her death was wrong. Anything she had been before November 25, 1993 was a hell of a long way from everything she’d become after.
But seeing the headstone with her name on it was almost a relief, assurance that all of this really was just an elaborate setting. She wasn’t, after all, dead. For certain, at least one of the graves was empty. In her heart she believed the other three were, as well.