“Bonsoir,” came the feminine voice.
“Bonsoir. Er.” None of her high school French was coming back to her. Damn. “Uh, hello. Speak English?”
“Yes, I speak English.” The accent was pure American. “Can I help you?”
“My name is Detective Sofia Selinofoto from the New York Police Department. May I speak with Mrs. Caroline Laurent, formerly Devereaux?”
There was a long pause before the voice spoke again. “This is she.”
She let go of the breath she was holding. “I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Laurent, but I need to speak to you.”
“About what?”
“Lucas Anderson.”
Another long pause. She could practically feel the hesitation through the receiver. “Mrs. Laurent?”
“Look, I know what you’re going to ask me about. And I can’t talk about what happened that night.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“I’m not supposed to.”
Her firm answer made her think that she was either protecting Lucas or something stopped her from talking about that night. Like an NDA. “Will you talk about Kevin Hall?”
There was a sharp intake of breath. “Did Lucas do something? Is he under arrest?”
“He’s part of my investigation.” Technically, still true. “If you can’t talk about Lucas Anderson, can you at least talk about Kevin Hall?”
“If you think Lucas Anderson did something bad … you’re wrong!” Her tone was vehemently defensive. “He would never—”
“Kevin was your boyfriend, right? Did Lucas try to steal you away from him?”
“What?” came the incredulous cry. “No! Of course not. Lucas was sweet and I knew he had a big crush on me for years, but he would never do such a thing.”
“Then why did they fight that night?” She ignored the knot in her stomach as she continued. “I think his jealousy reached a breaking point and he snapped.”
“Ha!” Caroline bit out. “Lucas isn’t like that. I’ve known him since we were kids.”
Her detective’s instinct flared and she knew this was the breaking point. Years of experience interrogating all kinds of criminals and witnesses taught her when to push and when to pull back. Now was the time to drive Caroline over the edge. “Then why did he kill Kevin Hall?”
“He was protecting me!” Caroline exclaimed. “And my baby! I was pregnant, and I told Kevin it was his, and you know what he did? He laughed.” There was righteous anger in her voice as she went on. “We’d been together a year. I … I’d never been with anyone, and the night of homecoming we had sex. Then I found out I was pregnant … I was so happy! I loved Kevin. And then during the graduation party, I thought it would be romantic to get him alone in the woods and tell him. He thought it was a joke, then when he realized I wasn’t kidding, he became angry. Real Angry.”
Sofia swallowed the lump in her throat that began to build when Caroline started talking. She was just glad she wasn’t interviewing her face to face. Domestic abuse cases were one of her least favorite types of crimes to investigate. She would rather work for a dead victim than face a living one. Still, there was no going back now. “And then what happened?”
“He slapped me so hard I fell. Then he denied it was his. Accused me of being a slut. He knew about Lucas’s crush on me and he said that we … that the baby was Lucas’s. His buddy Jeffrey had been there the entire time, just watching. Kevin made Jeffrey call Lucas so he could confront him. In the meantime, he was kicking me while I was still down.” Her voice trembled, and Sofia could tell she was trying hard not to cry. “Lucas came right away. Kevin turned his anger at him and started screaming at Lucas. Then Lucas saw me and—” She let out a gasp. “Goddamn you! How did you—?”
“What happened, Caroline?” she pressed on.
“You sneaky bitch. I’ve already said too much.”
“Caroline, if you don’t tell me what happened next, I’m going to have to go after Lucas.”
“Fuck you. If it wasn’t for him, I might have lost my baby that night, and I would never have my sweet Amelie now.” She paused. “And I swear to you on her life, Lucas Anderson is not a cold-blooded killer.”
Before she could ask more, the click from the other end of the line told her that Caroline had hung up on her. She thought about calling her back, but she knew it would be fruitless. For one thing, the other woman could just ignore the phone, and short of flying to France, she didn’t know how to make Caroline reveal to her what really happened that night. And another? A seed of doubt planted itself in her brain. It was small; minuscule, really, but enough to make her rethink the whole thing.
If it was truly a case of defending Caroline or himself, why didn’t Lucas just let the authorities take over? If the cops had been called, they would have seen Caroline, match the evidence to Kevin Hall and arrested him. Even a cop fresh out of the academy would have arrived at the same conclusion. There might have been other witnesses too, some who would collaborate Caroline’s story.
A good lawyer could plead down to manslaughter, and a great one would have been able to ensure Lucas Anderson never saw the inside of a jail cell. Why go through all this trouble to cover up the whole affair and settle the civil suit out of court? To spare Caroline the humiliation? To preserve his family name? It seemed a little extreme.
It didn’t matter anyway. Her instincts were telling her to believe Caroline. Caroline was telling the truth. And if she had been in his situation and saw a man beating up a helpless, pregnant woman, she would have done what it took to protect
