She started crying, and they waited to go on until she’d calmed down.
She made the call from the Tibodeaus’, imitating Lucy’s voice, not a difficult thing. Almost anyone could do a decent impersonation of Lucy. After that, Stone had her climb the hill with him and they waited. She’d asked about the Ecstasy. He told her to be patient, gave her some grass to smoke in the meantime. She lay down on the top of the hill. It was evening by then, and she remembered staring up and thinking how soft the sky looked, like a big bed with dark blue silk sheets. She was tired and was almost asleep, when she heard the car from the Sheriff’s Department coming down the road. She got up and saw that Stone had the rifle to his shoulder and was sighting. He started shooting. She freaked and ran. She barely remembered stumbling down the backside of the hill, and then she was standing in the dry bed of Tick Creek, crying uncontrollably, with no idea where to go. Stone came charging down the hill, grabbed her arm, yanked her after him, and they ran for the Land Rover. After they drove away, he told her if she said anything to anybody, she’d go to jail for sure. She was confused and scared.
“Did he tell you why he shot at the sheriff and deputy?” Simon Rutledge asked.
He’d said a guy paid him.
“He didn’t tell you the guy’s name?”
He hadn’t.
“Did he say anything at all about him?”
Nothing she could remember.
Rutledge asked a few more questions about Stone, then Ed Larson said, “Tell us about your relationship with Eddie Jacoby.”
She met him in her father’s bar when he went there to see Stone. Jacoby made passes at her, the usual kind, and she didn’t pay much attention. He gave her a business card, one with a Hollywood logo, and told her he could get her into movies. She still didn’t want to have anything to do with him. She got weird vibes from him, creepy.
“But the night he was murdered, you went looking for him at his hotel. Why?”
Because after the shooting at the Tibodeaus’, she was scared. She’d decided it was best to get out of town, and she thought maybe Jacoby was being straight with her and could get her to Hollywood. She left him a note saying if he was interested in partying to meet her at Mercy Falls.
“Why Mercy Falls?”
It was isolated and easy to find. She didn’t want anyone to know she was seeing Jacoby, didn’t want it to get back to Stone. When he showed up, she got into his SUV. They snorted a little coke. He gave her a beer. They drank, talked. He touched her. She didn’t like it, but she wanted to get out of Tamarack County and she thought he might be her ticket. She felt trapped in the SUV, so she got out and went to the overlook. She was feeling woozy, light-headed. Jacoby joined her, began going at her again with his hands. She got tired of it and tried to push him off. He seemed to like that and began getting rough. He hit her, then he hit her again. She tried to make him stop, begged him. He pushed her down, fumbled with her jeans, worked at pulling them down. She fought him, and then he really laid into her. She remembered the blows, but she didn’t remember any pain. Everything seemed to go kind of distant.
She stopped talking, and Cork and the others waited. Will Fineday’s eyes were hard as agates, and deep hollows ran beneath his cheekbones. The scar on his face had turned bone white.
“Did he assault you sexually?” Larson asked gently.
She cried again, huge sobs that wracked her body, but she managed to say yes.
They took a break from the questioning. Cork asked if she’d like something to drink, a Coke maybe. He got one from the machine in the waiting area. She drank a little, and when she seemed calmer, they continued.
She didn’t remember him leaving, but she remembered being alone at the overlook, hearing the water of the falls, feeling the ground very cold under her. Then a strange thing happened. An angel spoke to her.
“An angel?”
That’s what it had seemed like because of her voice. Gentle, kind.
“ Her voice? It was a woman?”
Yes.
“What did she look like?”
She didn’t know. The night was dark, the moon gone, and she wasn’t thinking clearly.
“But a woman, you’re sure?”
She thought so.
“What did she say?”
It sounded like “Poor vaceeto.”
“‘Poor vaceeto’? Vaceeto, is that a name?”
She didn’t know.
Larson looked at the others. “Vaceeto?”
They shook their heads.
“What happened after the angel spoke to you?”
After a little while, she roused herself. Her pants were down and she pulled them up. She could see Jacoby’s SUV still parked in the lot. She was afraid, so she ran like crazy to her own car, locked the doors, and got out of there fast. She drove straight home.
“Edward Jacoby was stabbed to death. Do you know anything about his murder?”
She said she didn’t.
“Did you see him again before you left the parking lot?”
No.
“When we tried to locate you for questioning, you’d gone to Stone’s place. Why did you run to him?”
She’d gone to Stone because she didn’t want to talk to the police, and Stone promised he’d keep them away. He also promised to keep her high. That was something she very much wanted. To be high and to forget.
She broke down again. This time she couldn’t stop crying.
Cork said, “Let’s call it a day.”
“An angel?” Rutledge said.
They sat in Cork’s office. Larson, Rutledge, Willner, and Cork. It was almost noon. Cork had changed into his spare uniform, and he’d eaten a ham-and-cheese sandwich and had drunk some coffee. He was tired. The food and the coffee helped a little, but sleep was what he needed most. Days of uninterrupted sleep.
“‘Poor vaceeto.’ Mean anything to anybody?” Larson asked.
“A name? An endearment?” Rutledge said.
“Not a personal endearment, apparently. It didn’t mean anything to Lizzie.”
“It was a woman, yes?” Rutledge said.
Larson cleaned his glasses with a small soft cloth he kept in his wallet for that purpose. “Between the beating and the drugs, Lizzie was pretty far gone, so who knows. Think Jacoby slipped a little Rohypnol into her beer?”
“That would be my guess. It’s what you found in the glove box of his SUV.”
“A woman,” Larson said. “A passerby?”
“Who just happened to be there at midnight, and who just sympathized and left her?” Rutledge shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“How about a prostitute, then? Maybe beating and raping Lizzie Fineday wasn’t enough and Jacoby brought in some extra entertainment.”
“That’s a possibility. And maybe it was the prostitute who killed Jacoby, defended herself with a knife.”
“There’s another possibility,” Dina Willner said quietly.
The men waited for her to go on.
“Stone.” She looked every bit as tired as Cork felt, but her brain still clicked along magnificently. “He’s the thread that ties together Lizzie Fineday and Edward Jacoby. We know he had a personal relationship with Lizzie, and Cork believes he had a business relationship with Jacoby. He was certainly a man capable of a brutal killing.”
“Why would he kill Jacoby?”
