Gathering Dark, Candice Fox [inspirational books for students .TXT] 📗

“Was it his idea to lie?” Jessica asked.

“Yeah,” Kristi said. “He said I was going to tell the cops that Harbour shot Adrian for some bullshit reason. That would get them focused on her. On her house. On her life. We didn’t want them walking around our house, trying to come up with reasons why Adrian would want to hurt me like that, trying to, like, find out if the shooting was justified. I was going to be really upset, stricken with grief, you know? That way I’d get them out of the house as soon as I could. It was me who came up with the crazy stuff.”

“What crazy stuff?”

“The weird stuff I said Harbour did. Like with the cheese sandwich,” Kristi explained. “And the, uh, the poisoning of the orange juice. See, I had an uncle with schizophrenia. He thought he was being followed around. That people were poisoning him. That Jesus was talking to him all the time. He went crazy in a Walmart and the cops shot him. Nobody asked any questions. He was crazy, right?”

“So you never went into Harbour’s house?” Jessica said. “You never tampered with her food?”

“No,” Kristi said. “Oh, I mean, we did scratch her car, accidentally, but she was fine about it. She knew we didn’t mean it. And she would complain to us about the noise, but she was never crazy. Not like I made her sound in my statement. I just followed the patrol officer around the house and pointed to things and said, ‘Oh, yeah, she came in here and made a sandwich. She said the clock was talking to her, telling her to burn the house down. She stood here at the sink staring at nothing.’ Half that stuff was from my uncle. When they shot him in Walmart he was trying to make a cheese sandwich behind the deli counter. I figured if I made Harbour sound crazy enough she might get off. You know, like, not guilty by reason of insanity?”

“Ingenious,” Jessica said.

“The plan worked,” Kristi said. “The cops stayed on the main floor. They took photos of the crime scene, took Adrian away, sat me in a corner where I could see what everybody was doing, gave me a drink of water, and listened to what I had to say. Nobody went upstairs for very long—they did a quick sweep to make sure no one was there. When Brosh turned up they let him walk right in. He said he’d go upstairs and get my laptop, get my contacts list, start calling people to tell them the news. No one stopped him. He took the bag with the coke and walked right out the back door with it. By the time the cops did a proper search later, the coke was gone.”

Jessica could see Brosh Orlov, another big, broad man, exiting the house, skirting the boundary of the property, walking out into the street with the bag, unnoticed, like someone walking to the gym in the early hours with his bag of sweats and towels. Jessica knew exactly where she had been when this happened eleven years earlier. She’d been asking questions of Harbour on her doorstep while officers searched her house. She’d been telling Harbour to turn around. She’d been reciting the Miranda warnings and unhooking the cuffs from her belt while Harbour stood there stiffly, shell-shocked, trying to understand what was happening while her world closed in around her.

Jessica took her phone from the tabletop and slid it into her pocket, drained the last of her bourbon.

“Where are you going? We’re not done here.”

“We’re done enough,” Jessica said. “For now. I’m going to tell Harbour that her time as a known cold-blooded killer is over.”

“What, right now?” Kristi Zea stood with Jessica. “But you said the case isn’t being reopened. I mean, what’s the point? Aren’t you just going to upset her?”

“Upset her? No, I don’t think so.” Jessica put more money on the table. “I’m sure she’ll be fucking elated. She’s trying for increased custody of her son. The case isn’t reopened yet, but this will reopen it. That’s for damned sure.”

“Okay, hold on, whoa.” Kristi grabbed Jessica’s shoulders. “You’ve got to think about me for a second here. Brosh and his guys, they’ve been relying on me to keep quiet all these years. If this gets out, they’ll come looking for me. This was all meant to be for you. You made it sound like it was just for you.”

“It wasn’t,” Jessica said. She turned to go. People were beginning to stare at them.

“I’ll deny everything,” Kristi said. She was shaking all over, her mouth twitching with rage. “You put me on a stand and I’ll say exactly what I did the first time. That she shot him. That she’s crazy. That she beat me, and-and-and for weeks she’d been threat—”

Jessica crossed the room, went out into the gravel parking lot, took her phone from her pocket and stopped the recording app. The scrolling numbers froze, sealing the end of her interview with Kristi Zea. She emailed the file to herself and unlocked her car. As she slipped into the driver’s seat, an email from Diggy landed in her inbox.

It’s aliiiiiive! the subject header read. Interesting bits recovered from Lawlor laptop.

BLAIR

Ada arrived in a Mercedes S-Class, matte black with gold rims. The teenagers who had scammed me for the slushie were across the street, pacing and chatting and planning their next ingenious caper, and they stopped at the sight of the car, staring. I was surprised to see Fred and Mike slip from the back seat of the long, wide vehicle. More still when Sneak climbed out of the front passenger seat.

“I found this dummy trying to hitch a ride on Virgil.” Ada jerked her thumb backward toward Sneak as the group walked in. “I half expected her to give Fred a hand job when she got in.”

“I made it,” Sneak muttered to