“What did you plan to do?” John asked quietly.
She stared at him. “Well my plan certainly wasn’t to murder him.” She looked down at the purse in her lap. “I went to the locksmith and arranged for him to come out and change all the locks tomorrow. I figured that was a good first step. Then I intended to cut my stepbrothers off from my money. I won’t pay to bail them out or give them money for any reason again.” She sighed. “That’s as far as I’d gotten in my plans.”
John nodded. If the murder weapon was her pistol, this wasn’t going to go well at all. She’d been at the scene, had been holding the weapon when the deputy arrived, had been covered in Carl’s blood, and they had found minute traces of gunshot residue. The traces were so minute that they could have come from having her hands on the body or by handling the weapon after the fact. All of the blood on her hands could have affected the results, too.
The fact that Carl had hit her and destroyed her possessions would give her motive. Not to mention the years of verbal abuse that she’d mentioned. Was it just last night that she had told him about it?
Freddy Victors had witnessed Carl striking Hollie. Who knew what the man might say? For all John knew, Freddy had killed Carl and set up Hollie. They had to get Freddy in for questioning as soon as possible.
It could have been Freddy, but there was also the chance that someone from Jesus Perez’s gang had killed Carl.
John turned to watch his brother, Mike, walk up to the SUV. “We’ll get on down to headquarters,” Mike said to Hollie. “Watch your feet.”
Hollie nodded and scooted onto the seat, bringing her feet in off of the running board. Her gaze met John’s and he held it, not wanting to let the eye contact between them break. But then Mike closed the door, severing the connection.
“I’ll meet you there,” John said to Mike.
“What’s your relationship with Ms. Simmons, John?” Mike asked.
“We were together last night.” John blew out his breath. “Not sexually.”
“You’re clearly too close to her,” Mike said.
Heat crawled up John’s neck. “I’m going,” he said. “I’ll see you there.”
Mike studied John, who cut his gaze away from his brother’s. John turned and strode toward his cruiser that was parked in front of Hollie’s home.
He looked back at Mike who was climbing into his SUV. In moments, Mike had started the vehicle and was driving back to the Prescott sheriff’s department headquarters.
* * * * *
Hollie buried her face in her hands as she sat at the table in the room where the sheriff’s deputies would be questioning her. At least they hadn’t cuffed her to the table. They’d taken her in for questioning and hadn’t arrested her.
She raised her head and leaned back in the chair as she waited for the deputies to come in. It was a nightmare, a complete and total nightmare. She couldn’t say she’d mourn for Carl, but she would never have wished death on him.
The room was silent, sound muffled. She could hear blood pounding in her ears and she still felt numb, reality not quite sinking in.
She looked at the mirror and wondered if someone was watching her now through the one-way glass. Something about being watched made her feel small, as if she was under a microscope. They probably had a camera on, recording her every move, her every expression. She didn’t know what was going to happen next. Did they believe she didn’t do it? Or was she truly a suspect?
It was ironic, really, that here she was in the sheriff’s department headquarters when she’d been the one to pick up her stepbrothers from here or the police station so many times over the years when the brothers had been taken in for questioning or arrested. They’d been involved in bad things since they were young and she’d had to deal with it.
The door opened, startling her. Deputy Reg Schmidt and Deputy Betty Turner came into the room. Schmidt was unsmiling and had the same expression as he had when he’d questioned her at her home. Deputy Turner was the deputy who had accompanied Hollie to her room to clean up and change. The deputy had bagged up Hollie’s clothes and had given them to a crime scene tech when they’d gone back downstairs. Turner’s expression wasn’t stern like Schmidt’s, but it wasn’t friendly, either.
Schmidt pulled up a chair directly in front of Hollie while Turner stood. Schmidt folded his hands on the tabletop and fixed his gaze on Hollie. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened,” he said.
“I already told you everything.” She felt thick, foggy, confused.
“We’re going to go back through it from the beginning,” he said.
“Okay.” Her voice was small. He made her feel like a mouse about to be eaten whole by a cat a hundred times her size.
“Did you kill Carl Whitfield?” Schmidt asked.
Hollie clenched her hands in her lap, her nails digging into her palms. “No.”
Schmidt looked her over. “How did you get the bruises on your face?”
“I told you,” Hollie said. “Carl hit me last night.”
Schmidt’s expression didn’t change. “Did you kill him in retaliation for hitting you?”
“No.” Hollie shook her head. “I would never kill anyone.”
Schmidt acted like he didn’t hear her. “He came home, started pushing you around again, and you shot him in self-defense.”
Hollie was so exhausted after over twenty-four hours without sleep and numb from shock. She had sharp pains in her head, her face hurt, her body ached. She didn’t know how much more of this she could take.
“I did not kill Carl.” A burst of anger shot through her. Schmidt was trying to rattle her, to take advantage of her exhaustion and shock. Her anger faded as quickly as it came. She was too exhausted to be angry.
“How do you explain the gunshot residue on your hands?” Schmidt said.
“The what?” Hollie stared at him.
Schmidt narrowed his eyes. “There was gunshot residue on your hands. Explain that.”
Had there really been residue on her hands or was he trying to rattle her yet another way? “There couldn’t be,” she said. “The only time I’ve fired that pistol was at target practice and that’s been years ago.”
“So you know how to handle a gun,” Schmidt said.
“Well, yes.” She wanted to look away from his pale blue eyes. “My dad taught me when I was young.”
Deputy Turner came up beside Schmidt. She spoke in a firm but kinder voice than what Schmidt had used. “Let’s go back, Hollie. Tell us what happened from beginning to end,” she said.
Hollie took a deep breath and told her story once again.
On the other side of the one-way glass, John gritted his teeth, his entire body tense with the desire to lunge through the glass and grab Schmidt by the throat. A part of John knew that Schmidt was only doing what John had done hundreds of times himself with the goal of getting the suspect’s story under duress to see what might change, if anything.
Despite looking wan, exhausted, and still in shock, Hollie’s core story never changed. But Schmidt tripped her up in places, drawing out what the brothers had done to her over the years and how that was a motive for killing Carl. She was clearly rattled, sounding more and more confused as the interrogation went on.
Hollie was innocent, damn it. John placed one fist on the window, bracing himself. After all her stepbrothers had put her through, now she had to go through this. He didn’t remember ever feeling so frustrated, so angry, and so helpless.
“Maybe you should leave.” Mike’s voice came from behind John. “Like I said before, you’re too close to this one.”
John wanted to tell his brother to fuck off, but ignored him instead, staring intently at the scene before him as the deputies’ and Hollie’s voices came over the speakers.
A tech stepped into the room with John and Mike and held up a report. “Got the results back on the clothing. No gunshot residue on her clothing. What was on her hands could easily have come from handling the gun or touching the wound.” The tech glanced at the report. “The blood on Ms. Simmons’ clothes is a match to the victim’s and she had his DNA beneath her fingernails. The only prints on the weapon belong to Hollie Simmons.”
Mike took the report from the tech. “Thanks, Milo.”
Milo gave a nod and left back through the door he came through.
John dragged his hand down his face. The fact that no residue was on her clothing was big, but they had found the trace residue on her hands. The other factors were enough for them to book her.
“Dickey and Floyd Whitfield are here,” Mike said. “They’ve been put into separate interrogation rooms.”
John let out his breath. He wanted to see their interrogations but he didn’t want to leave Hollie, even if all he could do was watch.
“What about Freddy Victors?” John asked.
Mike shook his head. “He hasn’t been located yet.”
“This could have been a retaliation murder,” John said. “We think Victors is responsible for picking off three of Jesus Perez’s men, including Perez’s brother.”
“Why don’t you get me what you can on those killings,” Mike said. “Just maybe we’ll find something that will tie Perez to Carl Whitfield’s murder.”
John’s phone vibrated in his holster and he pulled it out and looked at the caller ID screen. It was Nadia. He frowned. Considering the nature of their friends with benefits relationship, it wasn’t like her to call him often but this was the second time. She’d called him last night when he’d been with Hollie at his house and he’d sent Nadia’s call to voice mail.
Well, he didn’t have time to deal with her right now. He sent her to voice mail again.
John looked back to watch Hollie and his chest hurt to see her so pale, so beaten down by the deputies. She was innocent and she was being treated like a criminal.
He was going to do everything in his power to find the bastard who had killed Whitfield and put him away. Permanently.
Hollie was almost too numb to realize what was happening as they booked her for suspicion of murder. The whole thing was surreal, like it was happening to someone else. How could this be happening to her?
Humiliation made her skin burn as she was cuffed like some dangerous criminal, patted down, then fingerprinted. This was beyond the humiliation she’d felt when she’d had to bail out her brothers from jail. Now she was the one going to jail. The reality was she could end up in prison if a jury determined there was enough evidence that would make them sure she was guilty.
Hollie had to fight back tears as her mug shots were taken. She’d lived with criminals, had suffered from their cruel words and actions. The police considered her a criminal now. Even if she was proven innocent, this was a stain on her life that could never be cleaned away.
The entire time she was being booked she didn’t see John. Her heart hurt. Did he think she was guilty now after hearing every accusation against her?
She kept her head bowed as Deputy Turner took her to a cell and removed Hollie’s cuffs. Three women were already in the cell that Turner opened. The deputy held the door open and Hollie stepped inside. The door clanked shut with a finality that sent a shudder throughout her body.
The cell had a toilet, a sink, and two bunk beds. One of the women in the cell had short dark hair buzzed at the sides and combed back on top, her expression hard and mean. A sick scared feeling churned in Hollie’s belly and she avoided the woman’s gaze. Another woman, who looked younger than Hollie, was leaning up against a concrete wall. She was squirming and brushing her hands over her arms as if snakes or centipedes covered her body and she was trying to shake them off. She made fearful helpless sounds that added to the sick feeling inside Hollie. The third woman lay on the bottom bunk of one of the bunk beds, staring up at the bed above her.
Hollie looked away from the women and retreated to a corner. Her legs gave out on her and she slid down the bars, finding herself sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest. She wrapped her arms around her knees and let her hair fall over her face in a curtain.
Moments later a shoe against her hip prodded her. Slowly, Hollie looked up to meet the mean gaze of the woman with short hair On closer look, Hollie saw she had a red spot that was likely a hole in her lower lip, a pair of red spots for holes through an eyebrow, a spot of red on her nose, and holes in her ears. She obviously normally wore earrings and facial jewelry that had likely been removed when she was booked.
“Whad’ya do?” the woman said in a heavy redneck accent.
Hollie knew she had to answer even though she didn’t want to talk. “They think I killed my stepbrother.”
The woman smirked. “I suppose you’re innocent.”
“I didn’t kill him.” Hollie knew she shouldn’t show any weakness by crying, but she was having a hard time holding tears back.
“I’m Gert.” The woman crouched beside Hollie and pointed at the squirming woman. “That’s Amber. She’s in here for selling crack and she’s got the DTs.” She inclined her head toward the woman on the bed. “The bitch on the bed is Mary and she killed a family of four while driving drunk.” Gert focused her attention on Hollie. “What’s your name?”
Hollie swallowed. “Hollie.”
“Well, Hollie. You look too goody-goody for your own good.” The woman’s face was unreadable. “What’d you do for a living?”
Hollie’s shoulders sagged. “I’m a kindergarten teacher.”
“We’ve got ourselves an innocent kindergarten teacher here.” Gert raised her voice. “What should we do with her?”
Fear caused Hollie’s heart to slam in her chest. Amber still squirmed against the wall, brushing away imaginary things crawling on her body. She had a wild-eyed look and continued to mutter under her breath things that made no sense.
Mary, who was lying on the bunk, turned her head and stared at Hollie in a way that made her skin crawl. Hollie felt like the woman against the wall must feel as she fought unseen creatures.
“You could use a friend, couldn’t you, Teacher?” Gert drawled, bringing Hollie’s attention back to her.
Hollie didn’t respond and bit the inside of her lip. She winced at the pain from her split lip.
“Friends are hard to come by around here.” Gert’s eyes roved over Hollie. “But I think you and me could be friends. Real good friends.”