False Mermaid

“The blonde headed back up to the road. Walked right by me—she was pissed.”

“But you stuck to Dr. Gavin?”

“Yeah. She went back to her car, headed south on the river road.”

“And—?”

“And nothing. I went home.”

“But you knew somebody had fiddled with her brakes.”

“I didn’t know. I just—”

“You just what, Truman?”

“Assumed.”

“You saw what happened. How she started taking the curves a little too fast. You knew she didn’t have any brakes. And then she went over. Why didn’t you do something?”

“I panicked, all right? I knew you’d think I had something to do with the crash, and I didn’t.”

“If you were so concerned about her, why didn’t you stop to see if she was injured? You didn’t even call 911, Truman.”

“She didn’t land very hard. There were lots of small trees—I thought I could see her moving around, and there was no fire or anything—it looked like she was going to walk away. I couldn’t afford to get mixed up in it, okay? My mother depends on me for everything. I got back in the truck and went home.”

“But you were already mixed up in it, Truman—I guess you forgot about leaving your fingerprints on the car. It was just lucky for you that she was okay.”

Stark stared at the table with a miserable expression.

“Okay, let’s go back. You said you saw this blonde—the same one who was arguing with Dr. Gavin—following Tríona Hallett in Lower-town a few days before her murder.”

“Yeah. I’ve told you that, like a hundred times.”

“How can you be sure it was the same person?”

“’Cause I knew her. I saw her at work.”

Frank sat forward. “Tell me.”

“I never got her name. She was putting on some big charity thing at the building across the street—”

“The Great Northern Trust?”

“Whatever—I don’t know what it’s called. The boss brought her around on a tour. She was going on and on about VIP security—she had a couple of movie stars and some big football player coming in for the party. They were going to use our ramp for valet parking, and she wanted to make sure everything was cool on our end. The boss started bragging to her about our new state-of-the-art system, how it was going in the next week. She asked a lot of questions.”

Frank felt as if someone had pulled all the air from his lungs. Stark looked up, wounded and defiant. “Yeah. All this time, and you never knew about her. I could have told you—”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Because nobody ever asked. That was your job. To talk to me like I wasn’t just some piece of shit from the bottom of your shoe. But nobody ever did.”

BOOK SIX