Abby shrugged. “Therapy.”
“Come again?” Tess asked.
“Well, therapy was one reason. Getting Reynolds to incriminate himself was another.”
Michaelson frowned. “I’m not following you, Ms. Sinclair.”
“Why does that not come as a surprise? Okay, here’s the story. Reynolds is the bad guy. He was behind the attack on Andrea’s house yesterday. He was also behind the murder of Andrea’s children twenty years ago. She didn’t do it. His thugs did. They put a bullet in her to make it look like suicide.”
Sometime during this explanation Michaelson had folded his arms across his chest, his body language radiating disbelief. “And you know all this-how? Clairvoyance?”
“I’m not clairvoyant-just unusually perceptive. And way smarter than, say, you.”
“Are you now?”
“Oh, yeah. Not that I’m bragging. Because, let’s face it, if I wanted to brag, I wouldn’t be comparing myself-”
Tess cut her off. “Abby.”
The low warning tone wasn’t lost on her. Abby smiled. “Pissing off the boss man isn’t such a good idea?”
“You ought to be taking these proceedings more seriously, Ms. Sinclair,” Michaelson warned.
“I never take anything seriously. It’s all part of my elusive je ne sais quois. Anyway, to answer your question, I knew the truth about Andrea’s past because of a conversation I had with her this morning.”
Michaelson folded his arms tighter, as if trying to hug himself to death. “You’re lying. You were never in contact with Andrea Lowry after the attack on Friday, which means you had no opportunity-”
“Oh, spare me. I met her in the ladies’ room of the Beverly Center while your idiot surveillance squad stood around window shopping outside. The garlic genius she picked up there-I bought it. Incidentally, is there any way I can get remuneration for that? Put it on the Bureau’s tab?”
Michaelson ignored the question. “Even if you did talk with Lowry, how can anything she told you possibly relate to the meeting with Congressman Reynolds?”
“I needed him to admit what he’d done. I wanted Andrea there to hear it-and to participate. The plan was for Reynolds to say too much, reveal that he’d sent his brownshirts after Andrea twenty years ago. I was hoping if Andrea heard this, she’d have a breakthrough. She’d remember what really happened that night. Not the phony, reconstructed memories the shrinks pounded into her, but the truth.”
“And did she?” Tess asked, sounding just the tiniest bit intrigued.
“She did. Big-time. It was, if I say so myself, a thing of beauty to behold. Up to a point.”
Michaelson still hadn’t released himself from his death grip. “What point?”
“The point when she pulled a pistol out of her pocket.” Abby shook her head. “Wow, try saying that three times fast.”
“You’re claiming you didn’t know she was armed?”
“How could I? You guys confiscated her revolver, right? She never said anything about a second gun.”
Michaelson finally unfolded his arms, but only to tent his fingers in front of his face, another sign of resistance. “So you didn’t anticipate that she would abduct the congressman?”
“Nope. I didn’t see that one coming. A rare lapse of prescience on my part.”
Michaelson spoke through his fingers. “But you accompanied her when she left the lobby with Reynolds.”
“I was trying to talk her down.”
“And I suppose you expect us take your word for that.”
“Not at all. It’s on tape. I recorded everything that happened.”
“And where is this tape?”
“In my purse.”
“And where’s that?”
“I lost it when I was scrambling around under Reynolds’ car. One of the crime-scene guys must’ve found it.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Abby felt her first flutter of anxiety. All along she’d assumed the purse would turn up. “They have to have found it. I mean, it’s a regular size purse with a microcassette recorder inside, and my wallet and ID…”
“Anything else?”
“Probably some condoms.”
Michaelson’s eyes narrowed. “Condoms?”
“Be prepared. That’s my motto.”
“You and the Boy Scouts,” Tess said.
“Do they carry condoms, too?”
Michaelson stood abruptly. “Ms. Sinclair, this narrative you’ve shared with us is all very interesting, but in the absence of proof it really doesn’t amount to much.”
“Andrea will vouch for me.”
“The statement of your accomplice isn’t likely to carry much weight.”
“Then find my purse and play the tape.”
“And will the tape also clear you in the murder of Dylan Garrick?”
She’d been expecting them to bring that up. She expelled a breath. “No.”
Tess straightened in her chair. “You met with Garrick when he left the bar. I have a witness.”
“Probably the bartender, right? That’s who I would’ve pumped for info.”
From the way Tess’s eyes flickered, Abby knew she’d guessed right. “The identity of the witness is unimportant,” Tess said. “What matters is that you left with Garrick, and he was shot later that night. When I asked you about it this morning, you lied to me.”
“I lie all the time, Tess. It’s a major part of my lifestyle. You ought to know that by now.”
Michaelson had turned away. Tess was handling this phase of the interrogation. “I don’t know why you would lie about Garrick unless you have something to hide.”
“I did have something to hide. I was in his apartment. I held him at gunpoint, using his own gun.”
Tess’s face hardened into an expression of contempt. “And you pistol-whipped him.”
“Yes.”
“And wrapped the gun in a pillow.”
“Yes.”
“And then you shot him.”
“No.”
“Why did you wrap up the gun, if not to muffle a shot?”
“I wanted him to think I was going to shoot him.”
“But you didn’t?”
“Again, N-O.”
“So who did?”
“No idea.”
“You were trying to scare him as part of an interrogation. Is that what you’re saying?”
Abby hesitated. “Not exactly.”
“What, then?”
“The interrogation was already over. I wanted to scare him just because-well, because he scared me. He put me through two or three minutes of hell in Andrea’s house, and I wanted to return the favor.”
“So you’re telling us Dylan Garrick was alive and conscious when you left?”
“He was alive. Not conscious. I KO’d him with the butt of the gun.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to toss his place, and I didn’t want him tiptoeing up behind me.”
“You searched his apartment?”
“Sure did. Found the gun he used at Andrea’s, and a slightly damaged silencer tube, and some other stuff. It was in his bureau in the bedroom, just like he told me.”
