“So what the hell is he doing on this side of the road? Why stop at a turnout on the downhill side?”
“Maybe he was headed back to Bakersfield,” she said, standing up straight now, starting to pace.
I shook my head. “When you found him, he still had the bloody clothes on. He hadn’t been home yet.”
She threw up her hands in exasperation. “So he stopped to take a leak! Big deal!”
“Why change directions? Why not relieve himself on the other side of the road?”
“Hell, I don’t know,” she said, half shouting. “You had me drive all the way up here to talk about why Powell crossed the road?”
“No, I already know why.”
She pulled the sunglasses off and gave me a look so fierce, I thought she might hit me. My own anger was all that kept me from cowering.
“You know, too, don’t you?” I said.
“I sure as hell do not,” she said, stepping closer.
“I thought it was a little strange — the woman who happened to find Powell’s body is the girlfriend of the cop who discovered the Ryan-Neukirk murders. That could have been coincidence, but it bothered me.”
She made a sound of derision. “You’re way off base.”
“Then this morning,” I went on, “you tell me that you handpicked this route that day. I’ve got to ask myself what led you to change your routine, to do something different on that day of all days.”
She was silent, still glaring at me, her fists clenched.
“I think someone made a suggestion to you,” I said.
“I don’t have to listen to this,” she said, breaking off her stare.
“I think someone told you to come up here.”
She turned on her heel, started walking toward the car.
“I think that someone was a Bakersfield cop.”
She stopped. She murmured something I couldn’t make out.
“What did you say?”
She turned back to me. The anger was gone; she looked shaken. “I said, ‘Frank will never forgive me.’ ”
“Forgive you for what? Not telling me the name of that cop? Believe me, he’ll thank you. His
As she had from the moment she met me, she studied me. This time with much less hostility than before. “You’re a member of the family now. Is that important to you?”
“Of course—”
“You know how much Frank loved his dad?”
“Yes. Loved and admired him.”
To my complete surprise, she started crying. Not with loud sobs, just with big, silent tears. She looked away from me, down toward the river.
“Cecilia? What has this got to do with—” But at that moment I understood what she was saying. “Oh, no. I don’t believe that for a minute.”
She wiped the heel of her hand against her eyes. “Believe it. It was Brian.”
“I don’t. I don’t believe it.”
“Well, too damn bad! It’s the truth.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” I said, my mind reeling. “Brian Harriman?”
She wiped at the tears again. I rummaged through my purse and found a packet of tissues. “Here,” I said, offering them to her.
She took them, said, “Thanks,” and walked away from me. Toward the river.
Frightened that she might be more despondent than I had guessed, I followed her, but she merely sat on a rock. “If one of the guys in my office sees my car — I don’t want them to see me like this,” she explained, crying harder now.
I sat next to her. “Cecilia, tell me the whole story.”
“I got a call from Bea on Father’s Day — Sunday morning. I hadn’t been seeing Frank for very long.”
She stopped for a moment and said, “Look, I want to get something straight with you. Bea and my mom are friends, and I think half the reason Frank and I started seeing each other was because of them. We were always — on again, off again, you know?”
“Cecilia—”
“I know Bea calls me Frank’s ex-fiancee, but technically that’s not really true. We were never formally engaged. When one of us wanted to get married, the other didn’t. We moved down to Las Piernas to get out from under the pressure our families and friends were putting on us, see if the relationship could stand on its own. We didn’t last long.”
