“About your personal safety.”
“Oh. That’s the other problem. Frank has worked it out so that I’m never alone. If he can’t be with me, then someone else is. Our friend Jack is in your waiting room as we speak.”
“Does that seem unreasonable under the circumstances?”
“No, but I saw Parrish take out seven men in about three minutes flat, so I’m not comforted, either.”
“Is that what bothers you about it?”
I didn’t have to think long about that question. “No. It bothers me because it’s confining.”
I have to admit that she was very slick. She managed to get me to talk about my fear of confined places, and somehow that led to talking about being in a tent, which led to talking about the expedition and what had happened on it.
Jack had a long wait.
After a while, she asked, “Before you left for this journey, you were uneasy being in the mountains. You struggle with claustrophobia, yet you agreed to be part of a group that would be sleeping inside tents for several days. Detective — Thompson, was it?”
“Yes.”
“Detective Thompson had been unpleasant to you on a number of other occasions, yet you decided to become a member of the expedition he was leading.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t have any say over who would lead it.”
“Why did you agree to go on this journey to the mountains?”
I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a glutton for punishment.”
She waited.
“I went for work,” I said testily. “It was a good opportunity for the paper.”
She kept waiting.
“My hour was up a long time ago,” I said, picking up my purse.
“Why did you go?” she persisted.
“Julia Sayre!” I snapped.
She didn’t respond.
I set my purse down. “No, not Julia, really. Her daughter, and her husband and son. For years, they’ve wondered what happened to her. I was trying to help them resolve their questions about her disappearance.”
“A good purpose.”
“At a damned high cost.”
“Yes, but you didn’t set that price, did you?”
“No.”
“In fact, it cost you much more than you bargained for.”
I shook my head. “Other people paid much more.”
“What can you do about that?”
“Nothing.”
“Have you talked to any of the families of the men who went up there with you?”
“God, no.” I felt myself color. “No. I feel terrible about that, but when I think of facing those people . . .”
“What will happen?”
“I don’t know. They might ask — just after I came back, Gillian asked about her mother. I couldn’t tell her. I can’t — I can’t talk about what I saw. Not to the families. Not yet.”
She poured a glass of water, gave it to me. She waited for me to calm down a little.
“You talked to Gillian before her mother’s body was released to the family?”
“Yes.”
“But by now, the families have already been through funerals, right?”
I nodded.
“I doubt they’ll have questions of that type, but if they ask,” she said, “and you politely tell them that you’d rather not talk about that just now—?”
“They’ll still be angry, even if the subject never comes up. They must hate me.”
“Because you survived?”
“Yes. And because media attention was probably one of the reasons Parrish killed all of those men. You’re
