She stared at me for a moment, then said: “I’ll get Sugar.” She left the room.
A few minutes later, she returned with the tall red-haired cop. He was all knobby muscles and bulging Adam’s apple. His name tag said S. DUBOIS.
“Is there a problem, sir?” he asked, just like a real TV policeman.
I went through the whole spiel again, but it was a little more polished this time. Sugar listened without expression. Finally, he held up his hand. I stopped. “I’ll be right back, sir,” he said. Then he left the room.
The woman watched him as though she didn’t know whether Sugar wanted her to follow or stay where she was, and that it was an important question. She decided to stay.
A minute later, Emmett came in. He looked relaxed, smiling like the host of a well-planned dinner party. “I understand there’s a problem of some kind?” he said.
I went through it a third time, making it much shorter and much less emotional. I did my best to make it sound like Annalise was a land mine. I didn’t want to sound like I was threatening anyone.
Emmett cut me off after I’d barely touched on the points I wanted to make. “Nothing is going to happen to her. This may not be the Ritz, but my brothers and I are professionals.”
I rubbed the goose egg swelling on the back of my head. “Then there aren’t any problems at all, I guess.”
He looked at me. I looked at him. He didn’t seem to like me much.
“I know who you are,” Emmett said. I didn’t answer. “Come along, Shireen.” He led the others through the doorway and bolted the door from the other side. The lights switched off.
I lay back on the bench. It shouldn’t have bothered me that Emmett Dubois knew me and my history. It was part of the public record. Anyone with an Internet connection and the correct spelling of my last name could dig up the newspaper articles in a few seconds.
But it did bother me. He knew about the time I’d served, the enemies I’d made, and the people who were dead because of me. I didn’t know a thing about him, except that he was hiding something. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it was all over his face.
I wondered, not for the first time, why he’d picked us up. My fight with Floyd was reason enough, but had Sara called him, too? And there was the incident at the toy company to consider.
Somehow, I doubted it was the latter. The further that morning’s fight slipped into the past without comment, the more convinced I was that no one could remember it. The Dubois brothers didn’t strike me as the souls of restraint-one of them would have said something. Also, Sara and Bill hadn’t heard about it hours after it happened.
One person I expected to remember everything was Charlie Three. The fires at the toy offices tied him and his company to the burned kids, but how was he doing it and why? And according to Bill, the latest Hammer patriarch- although it was funny to call him that since he was barely older than I was-had cut the Dubois brothers loose. His father and grandfather had used the police to control the town, but they were on their own now.
And there were the seizures to consider, too. Bill said they ran in the family.
Actually, he’d said they came on when the patriarch was successful. That was something to talk about with Annalise, if I ever got the chance.
Had Hammer made a phone call and had us picked up? It was possible, but if I had a whole town under my thumb, I wouldn’t have the cops bring my enemies to a cell. I’d have them run out of town or shot.
Of course, the Dubois brothers might march in like automatons and breathe fire on me, but I didn’t expect it. They could find a better place to kill us than their cells.
Then again, maybe Hammer hadn’t sicced the cops on us after all. Maybe Floyd and Emmett were bowling buddies, and I was going to get stomped by the rest of the league before morning.
It wasn’t a pleasant thought, but I’d been around scary people before. I was a light sleeper, too, especially when people were thinking naughty thoughts about me.
I stayed awake a good long time. When a suspect falls asleep quickly in a cell, cops see that as a sign of guilt. No one came to check on me, though, and eventually, I slept.
I heard the lock on my cell door clank open very quietly, and I was sitting up before I was even fully awake.
“Skittish, ain’t he?” Luke Dubois smiled down at me. His fat brother stood beside him. It occurred to me that I’d never heard him speak. “Stand up and turn around,” he said.
I did. He cuffed me and led me to an interrogation room. Emmett was waiting.
“Welcome, Mr. Lilly,” Emmett said. “Have a seat. Wiley, set up the video, please.”
Luke shoved me into a chair and left the room. Wiley, the fat cop that Bill had told me to be careful with, pulled a video camera out of a corner and set it on a tripod. The camcorder was a new model.
Emmett smiled at me as we waited. He had a pair of folders on the table in front of him, but he didn’t open them.
Wiley started the camcorder, then sat in the corner. He pulled his gun from his holster and held it in his lap, staring at me as if he was trying to come up with a reason not to shoot me then and there.
Emmett recited the date for the benefit of the camera, then his name, Wiley’s, and mine. I glanced at his watch. It was 3:15 in the morning. I wiped sleep out of my eyes. I needed to be alert.
“So, Mr. Lilly,” Emmett said, smiling and leaning forward. “Tell me what you know about the murder of Karoly Lem.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Uh, Carol E. Lem? Who’s she?”
