Cara in order to help my brother. That this was my confession. I held his gaze. I thought he might arrest me on the spot. I was ready to lie on my belly again and put my hands behind my head.
“Let’s go talk in my car,” he said. “I want to hear you repeat everything you just told me. Everything.”
“In your car?”
“In my car. Come on, Terry.”
He should’ve dragged me to the precinct and gotten me on video. He was cutting me some slack, but he should’ve known better. We marched over to where his car was parked on the lawn. I didn’t want to see Cara’s corpse, but I couldn’t help staring. Forensics was still working on her, so they couldn’t cover her up yet. Her face had gone an ashen gray, and her protruding tongue looked exceptionally pink against her darkened chin. Her eyes were only half open but had bulged forward from the sockets. I stifled a groan. I was probably acting very suspicious. I was probably sealing my own doom.
He said, “In back.” We both got in the back, and I kept looking at the police crawling all over the area. Forensics was working on the tree limb, taking photos, checking the scuffs on the bark. Cara Clarke had been tall, nearly six foot, the branch was fairly low. It wouldn’t have been difficult for a strong man to heft her up and make it look like she x20had hanged herself. I couldn’t spot anything that Cara might have leaped from, but she could have conceivably climbed onto the branch herself.
“How was she done?” I asked.
“Hanged.”
“They said that on the news. But how?”
“Terry, I can’t talk about that with you.”
“I might be able to help.”
A squall filled Gilmore’s face. “How in the hell are you going to do that?”
I saw several thoughts whip through his eyes. He thought about grilling me. He thought about giving me friendly advice to get out of town. He thought about raiding the Rand house and seeing if there might be something around to implicate me in the girl’s murder. He was an almost-bent cop. That meant he picked and chose when he’d cross the line and when he wouldn’t. You never knew when he might go by the book and when he might not.
Surprisingly, he settled on simply answering my original question. “A nylon cord, the kind used to tie dock cushions and bumpers to the sides of boats.”
“Does her father own a boat?” I asked.
“Yes. A twenty-four-foot Wellcraft cuddy. Keeps it docked at a marina but apparently hasn’t taken it out in years.”
“Cord in the garage?”
“We’re not discussing this further.”
I thought of Sharon, the youngest sister, who would now be coddled obsessively by her parents. They were going to hold her close but not close enough, because the ghosts of her sisters were always going to get more attention.
“Did you find the.45?” I asked. “Or any gun? She was tough. She knew how to fire a gun. Check her hands for gunpowder residue.”
“I don’t need a career thief to teach me how to do the job of a police officer. She didn’t pull the trigger on you. You managed to talk your way out of it.”
“I wouldn’t have been able to talk her into showing up here. Was she done on the spot or strangled elsewhere and left here?”
Gilmore snapped his fingers under my nose. His expression had hardened. His eyes weren’t full of sadness anymore, they were like shale. “Focus now, Terrier. You don’t ask the questions. You answer them. You assure me of your sincerity and maybe I won’t throw you in jail tonight. Or maybe I will. Did you have anything at all to do with this?”
“No. How long’s she been dead?”
“Get out and go home.”
“Tell me, all right?”
He turned away for a moment, and when he turned back he stared deeply into my face, trying to read whether I was someone he could trust. I wasn’t, of course, but he was still giving me leeway. I knew why. On some level he was acting like I was his younger brother, the punk always getting his nose dirty but who was forgiven for it. He looked away again, and when he faced me I could see that he’d come to a decision.
“Early this morning,” he said. “And just so I know, Terrier, where were you this morning?”
I didn’t want to drag Eve Drayton into this but there was no choice. I told him about Eve and even my father’s figurine. Hcollecting, but I left out the bit about Higgins. Gilmore nodded.
“Your old man, he likes his Toby mugs.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“He’s showed them to me before. Now, give me the names of all the antidepressants again and exactly where I can find them in her room.”
I told him about the false outlet and the five-inch-deep cubbyhole.
Gilmore nodded. “She only had legal prescriptions for the Zoloft and Valium. All of those others, in combination-self-medicating on stolen pills, maybe expired-who the hell knows how someone will react with all of that in their system.”
“So you think she really offed herself?” I asked.
“That’s what it looks like so far,” he said.
“I don’t think she would do it.”
He frowned at me, his face mottled with emotion. “How do you know?”
“I just feel it.”
“You met her for what? All of fifteen minutes?”
“It was enough,” I said.
He scoffed. He seemed to take a dim kind of pleasure in schooling me on the realities of the world. “No, it’s not. Twenty years isn’t enough for you to really know someone, or do I need to remind you of that?”
I held my hands up in a gesture that might have been anger or helplessness. “No, you don’t.”
“She was a screwed-up kid taking powerful meds in dangerous amounts. With all the renewed coverage on the case of her sister’s murder, she was probably hurting worse than ever. And you showing up in the middle of her bedroom couldn’t have helped any.”
“Listen to me, she was sharp, she was on the ball, she-”
“You don’t know a thing, Terrier. Now go home. Don’t mention any of this to your journalist girlfriend or I’ll-”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“-pull you in on obstruction. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Then go.”
I got out. I walked toward the crime-scene tape. I glanced back at Cara. Figures in blue uniforms and white gloves worked over her excitedly. Who had iced her? Why now? I thought, My Christ, has he been watching me? Is he following me? Is he that close even now? Her dead eyes were aimed in my direction.
27
I headed back to my car. I sat heavily behind the wheel. I scanned the faces in the crowd. The only one I recognized in the area was Gilmore’s.
The dead girl continued to watch me. My body was a little ahead of my mind. I glanced in the rearview and saw that my face was pale.
