“Did you see that?” Cynthia said. “She hates me.” I didn’t say anything. “She’s always hated me. Ever since high school. She was three years ahead and she dated Charles for a couple of weeks. He wouldn’t turn his life over to Jesus, though, and he got tired of hearing her talk about it. He broke it off with her, and for some reason she blamed me. She thought I was making fun of her behind her back.”
“Were you?” I asked, although I was pretty sure I knew the answer already.
“Hell, yeah. But Charles didn’t care what I said. He never cared. He always had to do things his own way.”
“Your brother sounds like an interesting guy.”
She didn’t take the bait. “I saw the way you were looking at her,” she said.
I shrugged. “She and the mayor don’t exactly look like a couple, do they?”
She laughed. “The whole town, men and women, felt the same way when they started going together. Frank was ten years older and even fatter than he is now-she’s worked on his weight over the years. He’s a good man, even if he’s kind of a wimp.” I didn’t mention that a real wimp wouldn’t have taken a bullet for her. “I think he’d be scooping ice cream in the back of a truck if he hadn’t married her. She’s the ambitious one. But they sure do seem to love each other,” she said. “No one really understands it.”
“Maybe he cast a spell on her.”
She turned and looked at me. She was measuring me, trying to see if I had dropped the word
I shrugged. I wasn’t ready to show my hand yet. She blinked and then shrugged, too. I wondered how much she knew about what was happening to the kids in town.
“Where’s your brother?” I asked her. “I’d like to meet him.”
She leaned back in her chair and looked at me sideways. “I’m supposed to be asking you questions, remember?” She had a half smile on her lovely face. It looked good on her, but it was too practiced. “I asked you to come to my house so I could shine a bright light in your face and pepper you with questions.”
“Okay, but let’s leave out the badge-wearing goons.”
“I think we can go goonless for now.”
We smiled at each other.
She asked me a couple of questions about Annalise’s meeting with Able Katz. I answered with harmless lies. The questions she asked told me more about her than she realized. I figured she must not have friends in the company or any pull with her brother or she would already know the basics.
Emmett Dubois arrived. He told us that he would need statements from both of us. Strictly routine, he assured us. Cabot had already confessed.
This time, I wanted to put him off until I could talk to a lawyer. Maybe Annalise would hire one for me, but Cynthia turned to me and said: “Why don’t you go first? I want to wait and explain things to… you know. Be nice to him, Emmett. He saved my life. Frank’s, too.”
“Of course I will, Cynthia,” Emmett said.
We left the waiting area and walked into an empty room. Emmett set his folder and his hat on the bed, then took a tape recorder from his pocket.
“Do you mind if I tape this?”
“I guess that’ll be all right.”
He turned on the machine and recited his name, my name, the date, and other information. Then he asked me what happened.
I told him, with a couple of modifications. I didn’t tell him about the fire on the basketball court. I didn’t tell him that I had gone there looking for Charles with the intent to kill him. I didn’t tell him that I chunked into the toilet, and I didn’t tell him that I’d cut the gun with the ghost knife.
I did say that the gun fell apart after it fired that first time. I said I felt lucky that I hadn’t been killed, and that I personally didn’t think I’d saved anyone’s life. Cabot’s gun was defective, and I coldcocked him. Even if I hadn’t been there, I said, he couldn’t have done more than he did.
We went over it again, this time focusing on why I was there, why Cynthia had invited me, and why I had gone. I had sensible answers for everything, and he didn’t seem concerned.
It was the friendliest conversation I’d ever had with a cop. It made me a little nervous, but I did my best to smile and act friendly in return.
Finally, he shut the recorder off. “That jibes with what Cabot told me, although he claims that you broke the gun with your bare hands.”
“Heh! Really? Weird. Someone should tell him guns are made of metal.”
Emmett chuckled. “That’s what I figured. We did take the gun into evidence, though. It was in a strange condition.”
“How so?”
“It didn’t explode, the way guns do when the barrel is jammed. It was sheared apart. Like it was cut.”
“Is that unusual?” I asked, being careful to look him in the eyes-but not too closely-and not to touch my face.
“I’ve never seen a weapon fail that way. Never heard of it, either.”
“Weird. And lucky.”
