Fenway rushed over and pulled Leda Nedermeyer away from Judith Cygnus.
“Get your dirty hands off me,” Nedermeyer shouted, shaking out of Fenway’s grip. “She’s the one responsible—she forced him into it.”
“I didn’t force my husband into anything,” Judith Cygnus spat, holding the side of her face where Nedermeyer had slapped her. “And it’s not like I could, anyway.”
“If you hadn’t insisted on those treatments—”
“If you hadn’t started an affair with a married man, you bitch, you wouldn’t even be in this courtroom today.”
Leda’s jaw opened and shut.
“Yes, it’s true, I did want those expensive cancer treatments my,” Judith Cygnus said, “But don’t blame me. Blame the greedy insurance company. Or the money launderers. Or, you know, the actual killer.”
Leda was silent.
“But no, you blame me instead. The cancer patient. The woman who’s been married to Virg for forty-one years. Just because some asshole with a gun murdered him and now you can’t ride off into the sunset with him when I die. Boo hoo. Cry me a river, Leda.”
“He worked his ass off for you. You knew he was getting money for your treatment and he wasn’t telling you where it was coming from.” Leda pointed an accusatory finger at Judith. “You’re not stupid, Judith. You didn’t want to know.”
Judith gave Leda a tight-lipped smile. “I have to admit, you’re right. I didn’t want to know.” She crossed her arms. “But he’s a grown man. Was a grown man.” Her voice hitched, but she continued on. “It’s not like I was in any position to stop him. I couldn’t get even him to stop screwing you, after all. Even though I was supposedly the love of his life. Even when I’m dying of cancer. He still had his late-night staff meetings.” She set her jaw. “So if I couldn’t even get him to stay faithful to me, what makes you think I could have stopped him from laundering money through his precious scholarship fund?”
Leda’s pale face flushed beet-red all the way to her ears, and she started to gasp and shake. Fenway reached out to grip her by the shoulders. At the first touch, Leda spun around and started crying, the tears coming loud and sudden, as the shorter woman sobbed on Fenway’s shoulder. Fenway hesitated, then put an arm around Leda’s back, and began to gently guide her toward the side, away from Judith.
“It’s just,” Leda whispered between gasps, “it’s just that I loved him so much.”
“I know,” Fenway said, nodded, feeling her shoulder dampen from the older woman’s tears. “I know.”
“It’s not fair,” Leda murmured. “I spent over a decade of my life on him. Years when I should have been falling in love and getting married and having a family.” She sighed. “Don’t ever fall in love with an older man. It hurts too much.”
Fenway patted Leda’s back, trying not to think of the fourteen-year gap between her and McVie.
“You okay?” Fenway said as gently as she could.
Leda sniffled and nodded.
“You’ll say nothing else to Mrs. Cygnus today, Leda.”
“But I—"
“No, Leda, you can’t. I mean, I won’t be able to arrest you or anything, but it’s not a good idea. Virgil Cygnus is gone. I know it hurts. I’ve lost people who have meant the world to me, and I’ve been there.”
“I can’t even go to the funeral,” Leda said, a fresh set of sobs welling up inside of her, making her breath hitch. “No one wants me there.”
Fenway nodded, thinking again of how she started her romance with McVie before he had started divorce proceedings. Before he and his wife were even officially separated. It was a part of her that she didn’t really want to acknowledge—she’d been in Leda’s shoes. And if McVie hadn’t left Amy, if instead they’d stayed together for the children, or for financial reasons, or for convenience, would Fenway be unable to stay away from him, the way that Leda had been unable to stay away from Professor Cygnus?
And had Cygnus told Leda he loved her?
Leda staggered down into her seat and put her head between her knees. Fenway looked up, desperate to see if anyone could soothe the brokenhearted English Department Head. Fenway had gotten the gun but she wasn’t watching over it. The murder weapon could be picked up by anyone. The murderer could pick it up and claim that their prints were only on it because they’d picked it up. The police would have nothing to go on. She spied at the front of the room that the gun was still sitting on the table—in the evidence bag. That was somewhat comforting. No one could “accidentally” get their grubby little mitts on it.
“I’m so sorry,” Fenway said, “but I have a murder investigation to conduct. Will you be okay?”
“The love of my life was killed in front of me,” Leda choked out between sobs. “I don’t think I’ll be okay ever again.”
Fenway nodded.
“Go,” Leda said. “You can’t help me. No one can help me.”
Fenway gave Leda what she hoped was a reassuring pat on the shoulder, then she stood up and made a beeline for the gun. She wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before.
“Can I have your attention, please?” she called out to the room. People lowered their voices. Bryce Heissner and a few others loitered near the back of the room. Cynthia Schimmelhorn had moved to a seat in the prosecutor’s side of the gallery. Nathaniel Ferris and Charlotte were sitting in the back row. She caught her father’s eye and he looked up, and soon everyone else, even Rose Morgan, was looking at her.
“Thanks,” she said. “Since the gun was found in this courtroom, there’s a higher possibility that the killer is still in here.”
People started to murmur.
“It’s not a foregone conclusion, but I’ve thought of a way we can determine that no one in here is the perpetrator. Then we can contact the sheriff and maybe we can all get out of here. Maybe back to our jobs in time for that important meeting, or back to Nidever University in time to make your afternoon classes.” She caught the eyes of Xavier and Amanda, who both nodded.
“How do you propose to do that?” asked Bryce Heissner. The sneer was still in his voice. Her father apparently hadn’t punched it out of him.
“I’ve got some gsr pads in my case,” Fenway said.
“gsr?” Amanda asked.
“Oh, sorry—gunshot residue. Whoever fired the weapon has a good amount of it on their hands. It might not be visible to the naked eye, but it’ll be there.” Fenway held up the evidence bag. “I used one of the pads to determine that the gun we found had recently been fired. And now, since none of you are wearing gloves, and none of you have washed your hands with a weak bleach solution since the shooting, I’ll test each of your hands. If you were the one to fire the gun, the pad will turn blue.”
“What if the killer got hand sanitizer or something?”
Fenway shook her head. “Doesn’t get rid of all the residue.” She stepped next to her fingerprint kit case on the table and began to leaf through it. “I’ll first use the pad on myself. Yes, I picked up the gun, but I was wearing gloves when I did it. I may have a miniscule amount on my hands, but nothing that would rival what actually would be on my hand had I been the one to fire the weapon.”
“And I’ll go next,” said Jennifer Kim, standing forward.
“Great, thank you, Ms. Kim,” Fenway said, continuing to search through the kit. “And if we get through everyone and no one has gunshot residue on their hands, we’ll contact McVie. I can’t promise that he’ll open the doors, but it will indicate strongly that the killer isn’t in here. And we can get the gun to the lab for further… um, further analysis.” The gsr pads were in a cylindrical vial. It shouldn’t be that hard to find. Where was it?
“Are you looking for the jar you had those white pads in?” Kim asked.
“Yeah—I know for sure I packed a brand new vial in here this morning.”
“You left the vial on the floor next to the speaker cabinet,” Kim said, gesturing behind her.
“Oh—right,” Fenway said, although she thought she had put it back in the kit. As she went through the gate and toward the speaker enclosure, she wondered if she’d forgotten that she’d taken it out of her kit again. She shook her head. She wasn’t even thirty yet—she shouldn’t be having memory lapses.
She turned the corner past the last aisle.
The floor was empty under the speaker enclosure.
Fenway stopped in her tracks and tried to remember. Maybe she hadn’t left it on the floor. Maybe she’d put the gsr pads on the shelf on the speaker enclosure instead.
She walked up to front of the speaker enclosure and opened the side with her fingertips again. But the shelf was empty. No vial.
Where could it have gone?
She stared at the empty shelf, holding the speaker grate open with her right hand. She tried to retrace her steps. Okay—she’d wiped the shelf clean. Then she’d—
She blinked. She hadn’t held the pad with the rapidly spreading blue spots in her hand for more than a minute or two, had she? She didn’t think so. And she’d obviously taken her gloves off at some point. Could she have been paying attention to something else?
She tried to remember if she’d taken the vial out of the kit and brought it over to the speaker.
No.
She remembered—she’d unscrewed the lid while holding the vial over the bag. She took out a pad, and….
Hmm.
She’d focused entirely on finding out if that ledge had gunshot residue on it. She must have done something with it. Back in the bag, or on the floor? Jennifer Kim said she’d put it on the floor. And maybe she was in a good position to notice, since she was holding the enclosure open and out of the hole in the wall. She might have been staring into space, looking right at the vial on the floor for the five or ten minutes Fenway had her standing there.
Well, it didn’t much matter now. The vial was gone.
And with it, any chance of swabbing everyone’s hands, and maybe getting out of here in time for lunch. Lunch at Dos Milagros—the warm, spicy carne asada tacos would hit the spot on an overcast, dreary November day like today.
Fenway shook her head as her stomach growled. “Focus,” she muttered to herself.
She slid the speaker enclosure back into the wall, then knelt to look under the seats. Maybe it had slipped out of her bag—but no such luck. As calmly as she could, she walked to the front of the courtroom again, up to the judge’s bench. She could see the concern on Piper’s face, peeking out above the laptop screen on the judge’s desk.
“What’s wrong, Fenway?”
“I can’t find the gsr pads. They were in a vial and I could have sworn they were still in my fingerprint kit. Now they’re not there, and Jennifer says I put it on the floor back under the speaker enclosure, and it’s not there either.”
“Okay—slow down. You’re breathing really fast.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Fenway forced herself to inhale slowly, trying to get to the count of ten, but only reaching four. But her second inhalation got up to seven, and her third hit ten. Her heart eased its pounding in her ears.
“I’ve never seen you that close to a panic attack,” Piper whispered. “What are you worried about?”
“Nothing,” Fenway said, giving Piper a weak smile. “I’m mad at myself for misplacing that vial.”
But that was a lie.
If someone had taken that vial—whether from her unattended fingerprint kit or from the floor—it meant that someone in the room didn’t want anyone to know there was gunshot residue on their hands.
Finding the gun made it more likely, but the stolen gsr vial confirmed it: the killer was definitely still in the courtroom.
Fenway emptied her purse and her fingerprint kit on the prosecutor’s table, but the vial of gsr pads was still nowhere to be found. She stared at the array of items. Was she really reduced to the everyday stuff in her purse and a kit full of work tools?
She raised her eyes from the table and looked at her father, several rows back in the gallery, sitting with Charlotte. Stress lines stood out on his brow as Charlotte put her head on his shoulder, the corners of her eyes turned down.
After the revelation of all the additional charges—in addition to the murder charges that Fenway wouldn’t think would stick—her father must realize that he wasn’t going home that night. That he might not go home ever again.
Even if he were to somehow get bail, or even if he were to beat the false charges—assuming they were false—he had no more job, no company to call his that he built from the ground up. The board had taken that control away from him.
Nathaniel Ferris closed his eyes and leaned against Charlotte slightly too. He looked like he was at peace, even with the small telltale stress creases in the skin of his forehead. But the two of them supported each other.
For richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health.
The bottom dropped out of Fenway’s stomach and she gripped the table for support. It didn’t make sense. She’d thought for years that her father and Charlotte weren’t really in love. That she was using him. That Charlotte hated that Fenway was in her husband’s life—that is, when she thought about Fenway at all. That Nathaniel Ferris only gave a shit about having a hot piece of arm candy. Vapid. Airhead. Slut.
Ugh. The evidence against all of that was sitting right in front of her, and Fenway could barely process it. If her father had fallen in love, and if Charlotte had loved him too, really and honestly and truly, she couldn’t hate their marriage. She couldn’t hate their relationship. She couldn’t really even hate Charlotte.
Fenway focused her attention back on the items scattered all over the table and began to hastily put them back in her purse and in the fingerprint kit. First the purse items, the wallet, the keys, the tampon case.
Then the fingerprint kit. The stab of pain and fear about the missing gsr pads. Then the container of fingerprint dust, and the brush that went with it. Then the inkpad and a large stack of cards for left hands and right hands.
Hold on a second.
She might not have had the gsr pads, but she did have something else. The fingerprint dust.
No one had worn gloves. Not that Fenway had seen.
The gun might have the killer’s fingerprints on it.
And she had a dozen suspects—thirteen, counting herself—who could easily be fingerprinted.
Yes, it was true that the gun had a lot of rough surfaces from which it would be impossible to lift fingerprints. Yes, it was also true that fingerprint analysis from the naked eye wasn’t nearly as accurate as lab analysis. So there was no way to make an identification with the tools that Fenway had that would stand up in court. But she didn’t need to. She knew the killer was in the courtroom. She might be able to tell if the fingerprints matched or not. It might be good enough for reasonable suspicion. It might even be good enough for McVie to take someone into custody.
Assuming, of course, that the killer didn’t cause any trouble. That they didn’t have another hidden weapon on their person, or that they didn’t try to think of a way to get away from them. She had thirteen suspects. Only one of them had pulled the trigger. She didn’t want to endanger anyone else’s life.
She sighed. Well, first things first. She’d have to fingerprint the gun. She examined the prosecution’s table. It was a good size, and there was good light, but it was out in the open, in front of everyone.
She looked around the courtroom. There wasn’t anywhere that was hidden or out of the way. There were no flat surfaces in the gallery. The nook had a couple of chairs but no truly flat surfaces either.
The jury box? Nothing.
Ah—of course, the judge’s desk. Flat and well-hidden. The killer might not see what she was doing right away. She didn’t know how she’d take everyone’s fingerprints without tipping the killer off, but she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.
Piper had her laptop on the far right side of the desk. Was there enough room to fingerprint the gun without getting the dust all over Piper’s laptop? Maybe. Fenway would have to risk it—otherwise the killer might realize what she was doing.
She placed the evidence bag with the gun carefully on the far left side of the desk, and then carefully took a pair of blue nitrile gloves out of her kit and slipped them on as silently as she could. Piper looked up from her keyboard, a questioning look on her face, but Fenway silenced her with a finger to her lips. Piper nodded, and then reached in the kit and handed Fenway the jar of fingerprint dust and brush.
Taking the Sig Sauer p226 cautiously out of the evidence bag, she set it on the table. The sides of the grip were mottled—an impossible surface for obtaining fingerprints—but the sides of the front of the barrel and a few areas on the front of the grip were smooth. The chances she’d get something usable were low, but since she couldn’t find the gsr pads, this would have to do. If the killer had grabbed the barrel to put the gun on the ledge behind the speaker enclosure, there was a chance she’d get something to check against other fingerprints.
She brushed the dust lightly over the side of the barrel and the area around the front of the grip. The trigger was too thin to grab anything usable.
She got out her phone and turned the flashlight on.
There were a couple of smudged prints, likely unrecognizable.
She turned the gun over and applied the dust to the other side as well. Shining a light on the barrel, Fenway blinked. There, above the Sig Sauer markings, was about half a print—clear and unsmudged.
She took a piece of fingerprint tape and carefully put it over the print, and then affixed the tape with the dark print to a card from her kit.
She exhaled loudly—she’d been holding her breath as she put the tape on—and stared at the card. The ridges of the fingerprint ran continuously from one side to the other, without any backward turn, but with a noticeable bump in the middle.
She closed her eyes tight and tried to remember her fingerprinting class—and she grasped for the words that described what she was looking at.
Tented arch.
It was, as fingerprints went, a fairly unusual pattern. Fewer than one out of every twenty fingerprints had them, and for the bump in the center to be so dramatic—if one of the others in the courtroom had this type of tented arch, it would almost assuredly be a match.
Fenway swept as much of the dust off the tabletop and into her gloved hand as she could, and dumped it into the trash can underneath the desk.
“Fenway?” Piper asked in a low voice.
“Yeah?” Fenway whispered back.
“I know you’re busy, but I need you to take a look at this.”
“Can it wait, Piper? I’m trying to figure out how I can get everyone’s fingerprints without making a big announcement.”
“I don’t know if it can wait. I found a connection between those money-laundering ledgers and the murder your dad is accused of.”
“Do you have another suspect?”
“Well—not really. But you know how the evidence that your dad killed your old professor hinges on the fact that he paid Peter Grayheath to kill him?”
“Yeah?”
“The computer used to open the account under your dad’s name is the same computer that moved the money between several of the local businesses and the master account in the Caymans. It couldn’t have been your dad!”
Fenway groaned. “Piper, I think that’s exactly what they’re using to arrest my father on those additional charges. Unless you have another name, or another way to identify that the computer used wasn’t my father’s, I’m afraid it won’t help.”
“Well, no, proving it’s the same computer won’t help, but there are timestamps on the server during the online transactions.”
“So?”
“So—your father can prove he wasn’t at a computer when those transactions were made.”
“He can?”
Piper said, “Well, he might not be able to, but I can.”
Fenway paused. “Okay, you got my attention, Piper. Let me take a look—but first, let me see if ada Kim has any ideas on how we can get the fingerprints from everyone without tipping off the killer.”
Piper nodded, then furrowed her brow. “Is someone eating Indian food?”
Fenway tilted her head, then laughed. “Fingerprint dust. Cumin aldehyde. You can smell that over the varnish?”
Piper shrugged and went back to her laptop.
Fenway scanned the courtroom. Cynthia Schimmelhorn and Bryce Heissner were in the back row on the defense side, roughly where they were seated during the arraignment. Rose Morgan was in the back row on the prosecution’s side.
Leda Nedermeyer was in the sixth row of the prosecution’s side, all the way next to the wall. Judith Cygnus sat in the third row next to the center aisle. The two women had turned their heads away from each other.
Nathaniel and Charlotte Ferris were still lost in their embrace, eyes closed in the second row. Huh. Maybe her father had finally got it through his head that his hours of freedom were numbered.
Amanda and Xavier were about two-thirds of the way back. Xavier had his notebook out and was writing in it. Amanda leaned back in her chair, her eyes closed, a paperback open facedown on her lap, holding her place.
Evans Dahl was in the third row, leg still up on the seat next to him, looking more sore and more pale. Fenway wondered if his discomfort was due to his painful ankle was painful or if he had a different medical condition. She’d check on him after talking with Kim, who standing in the center aisle, leaning against the side of a seat, staring at the speaker enclosure of the back wall.
Fenway steeled herself and strode toward the assistant district attorney. She stood next to Jennifer Kim for a moment. The assistant district attorney had a faraway look in her eyes.
“You okay?” Fenway asked.
Kim smiled sadly. “You ever wonder how different your life would be if you hadn’t gone into law enforcement?”
“I’d probably be finishing up my second twenty-four hour shift in a row. Exhausted and hoping I didn’t catch some weird avian flu from one of the snot-filled toddlers who came in with their worried parents.”
Kim laughed softly. “I wanted to go into propulsion engineering,” she said. “I loved physics in high school.”
“Wait—you wanted to be an actual rocket scientist?”
Kim shrugged. “Things turned out differently.”
“You got into law by accident?”
“Oh, it was no accident,” Kim said, looking up at the ceiling. “I could tolerate being the only woman in the propulsion engineering major for just so long. It’s not like my fellow students or my professors wanted to make it any easier for me.”
Fenway nodded. “So—speaking of unfairness, the gsr pads have disappeared.”
“What do you mean, ‘disappeared’?”
“I mean I put the vial back in the fingerprint kit, but when I went back five minutes later to look for it, the pads had disappeared.”
“The whole vial?”
Fenway nodded.
“Maybe you misplaced them. Maybe you thought you put them back, but you didn’t.”
“I don’t think so,” Fenway murmured, shaking her head. “And even if I had, where would I have put them that I haven’t already looked?”
“They’ll turn up.”
Fenway shook her head again, more emphatically this time, then took a step toward the ada and lowered her voice. “Jennifer, I think the killer took them. I think the killer is in this room.”
Kim turned her head slowly, looking at Fenway’s face for the first time since she’d walked up. “No, I don’t believe that. The killer might have left the gun in the wall behind the speaker enclosure, but then they took off. They’re out in the courthouse, trying not to look guilty.”
“Even if that’s the case,” Fenway said, “I’ve got a partial print on the gun. A good partial print—about two-thirds of the whole thing. And if we fingerprint everyone in the room, we can see if we have a match.”
“Partials are always iffy in court,” Kim said.
“But McVie will know who to hold. We can make sure they don’t get away, that they have to go to the sheriff’s office and get screened for gunshot residue. That whoever it is will get questioned in a real interrogation room. Where the recordings are guaranteed to be admissible.”
Kim scrunched up her mouth but didn’t say anything.
“Are you okay with me taking everyone’s fingerprints?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll round that up to a yes. Now, ideally, we could do it without letting the killer know we’re taking fingerprints, but I can’t think of how best to do it.”
“Why don’t you want the killer to know?”
Fenway widened her eyes. “Because the killer might still be dangerous. Yes, there’s twelve of us and one of him—or her—but people do crazy things when they feel backed into a corner.”
Jennifer Kim considered it for a moment. “Usually, when we try to trick people into giving us their fingerprints, we’ll give them a soda can or a water glass or something. That might work for one person, or maybe two if you do it at the same time, but there’s no way that will work on thirteen people.”
Fenway looked around the room. “Everyone is touching things, though. We could take fingerprints from the books that Xavier and Amanda are reading. The same thing with Leda Nedermeyer. “
“You can’t be sure that those aren’t contaminated with other fingerprints,” Kim pointed out. “If the killer picked up Amanda’s book when she dropped it earlier, for example.” She folded her arms. “No, it’s got to be something where you’re positive you’re getting the right print. You’ll have to use your fingerprint cards and deal with the killer potentially trying to get away.”
Fenway frowned.
“Look, the killer no longer has their gun. I don’t think they managed to sneak one past the guards, either—not if they went through the trouble of bribing the audio installation company to put the gun in the speaker enclosure during installation.” Kim leaned back against the chair again. “So I don’t think they’ve got any lethal force to use. And if they try to beat us up or make an escape, you said it best: there’s a dozen of us. Those are favorable odds.”
Fenway put her hand through her thick, curly hair and scratched her scalp. “I don’t like it,” she said, “but I can’t think of any way around it.”
ada Kim set her jaw. “We should divide and conquer. I’ll start on the defense’s side. You start on the prosecution’s side.” She gazed over Fenway’s shoulder at Nathaniel Ferris and Charlotte. “Think you can get them to agree to the fingerprinting?”
Fenway nodded. “Yes. My father has been telling everyone he’s innocent. I can’t imagine he won’t relish the opportunity to clear his name.”
“Even if he’s guilty?”
Fenway sighed. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you—he wasn’t anywhere near where the shot was fired.”
“And I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that I’m not taking your word for it.”
Both women went to the judge’s desk to get fingerprint cards from Fenway’s kit. “Should we announce what we’re doing?”
“I don’t think so,” said Fenway. “If we made an announcement, that would give some people reason to opt out, even if it was to show solidarity with their compatriots. Let’s do the ones least likely to say no first. I’ll start with my father and Charlotte. Maybe you can start with the brain trust from the Ferris Energy board of directors. They seem to trust you. We’ll save Rose Morgan for last.”
“That sounds like it could work,” Kim said, nodding. She brought herself to her full height—at five-foot-three, she was more than half a foot shorter than Fenway—and smoothed down her suit jacket. She grimaced and looked for a moment like she might throw up.
“You okay?”
“It’s fine. Haven’t eaten today. I was running late this morning.” She paused. “You have more than one ink pad?”
Fenway held up three. “I used to get made fun of for being overprepared.”
They split up the fingerprint cards, eight each of the left hand and eight each of the right. Fenway took a deep breath and walked along the back of the judge’s bench, behind Piper, still on her laptop, and walked up to her father, who still had his arm wrapped around Charlotte.
“Hi,” she said.
Nathaniel Ferris opened his eyes. He gave his daughter a tight, tired smile. “Hey, Fenway.” He glanced at the ink pad and the fingerprint cards in her hand. “I see you’re still hard at work. I take it you want to take my fingerprints?”
Fenway nodded. “Found a print on the gun.”
Ferris patted Charlotte on the shoulder and she stirred. They both began to stand.
“No,” Fenway said. “Do it sitting down. I don’t want to call too much attention to us doing this.”
Charlotte gave Fenway a quizzical look.
“Because, first of all, if the killer is still in here—and I hope he’s not,” she quickly added, “I don’t want to broadcast this or give him time to prepare.”
“And second?” asked Charlotte.
“Well—look, there are probably a couple of people who will refuse, and if we make a big production out of it, then they might convince everyone not to give out their fingerprints.”
Charlotte shrugged, taking two of the cards and balancing them on the wide wooden armrest of the chair. “Mine are already on file, and I know we didn’t shoot Professor Cygnus.” Fenway opened up the ink pad and Charlotte gamely placed each of her fingers on the pad, then the cards, taking care to center her prints in each of the boxes.
It suddenly struck Fenway that Charlotte was being respectful of the process, and more than that, respectful of Fenway’s job. She wasn’t fighting the request, or telling Fenway that fingerprinting was a waste of time, or asking Fenway when they’d be able to go home. A knot formed in Fenway’s throat and she forced it down with a hard swallow.
“Here you go.” Charlotte handed the cards back to Fenway, reaching for the handkerchief Nathaniel Ferris proffered.
“Your turn, Dad,” Fenway said, not looking in his eyes as she handed him the cards, then held the ink pad for him.
He began to follow the same order Charlotte had.
“Oh—Charlotte, I wanted to ask you something.”
“What?”
“I heard something strange during the shooting. You know guns and ammunition and stuff like that, right?”
“Sure.”
“There were two shots, but also a loud snapping noise.”
“A snap? Low or high in pitch?”
“High-pitched. Maybe a ricochet or something.”
Charlotte crossed her arms. “Where did it sound like it was coming from?”
“Right next to my ear, but I think the acoustics of the room were playing tricks on me.”
Charlotte slowly shook her head. “Right next to your ear, huh?”
“Uh—yeah, I think so.”
“I didn’t hear it, so I can’t tell you for certain, but it sure seems like the noise a bullet makes.”
Fenway’s face fell. “A bullet? Right next to my ear?”
Charlotte nodded, and Ferris’s head snapped up.
His eyes were wide. “A bullet? Right next—”
Fenway put a hand on Ferris’s shoulder. “Shh, Dad—quiet.”
He looked around, then lowered his voice. “Do you think someone took a shot at you?”
“I don’t know, Dad. I just found out the sound might be a bullet. I don’t know anything yet.”
“Who’d want to shoot at you?”
Fenway shook her head, her curls moving side to side. “I can’t even process this now. Stop making me worried. It could have been any number of things. And you heard Charlotte—it might not even have been a bullet.”
Ferris gave the completed cards to Fenway. “Listen,” he said quietly, “I want you to be careful. Maybe it wasn’t intended for you, and maybe it wasn’t even a bullet. But be careful.”
Fenway scoffed.
“What?”
She shook her head. “Sorry. It’s just—you weren’t around to tell me to be safe when I was growing up. It—” Fenway stopped and chose her words carefully. “It’s weird that you’re telling me to be safe. I don’t need you to protect me now.”
“I’m sorry, Fenway.” Ferris lowered his eyes. “I wish there were something I could do to get back to a good starting point with you. With us.”
“I know, Dad,” Fenway said miserably. “I have no idea what that is, though. I’ve been so mad at you for so long, and everything you’ve done—I know you’re trying to make it better, but for some reason it makes me angrier. I know you’re trying.”
“I am, Fenway. I am trying.”
“Your good intentions don’t mean your actions are the right ones,” Fenway said. “I think we have a lot of work ahead of us to get to a decent relationship.”
Ferris was silent.
Fenway cleared her throat. “Anyway, I have a killer to catch. Maybe we can go back to see a family therapist once this is all behind us.”
Ferris smiled. “Assuming I’m not rotting in jail for the rest of my life.”
“You’ve got a great lawyer, and you’ve got Piper on your team now. My money’s on you.” Fenway turned before another knot could form in her throat.
She walked down the side aisle, then through the next row, finally planting herself two seats away from Judith Cygnus.
“Hi, Mrs. Cygnus.”
Judith Cygnus’s keen eyes focused on Fenway, and she put down her purse on the seat between them. “Hello, Miss Stevenson. Quite a situation we’ve found ourselves in, isn’t it?”
“Indeed.” Fenway looked closely at the older woman’s face. No grief touched her eyes.
Mrs. Cygnus spoke as if Fenway wasn’t there. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, myself. I was so worried about what Virg would do without me. Now I suppose I can die in peace.”
Fenway was taken aback by the candor, and pretended she hadn’t heard it. “I need your fingerprints, Mrs. Cygnus.”
“My fingerprints?”
Fenway nodded. “We’re trying to eliminate suspects.”
“Surely you don’t think I—”
“We’re looking at all possibilities,” Fenway said, “and we can eliminate you as a suspect with your fingerprints.”
“Oh,” Judith said, eying the fingerprint cards and the inkpad. “All right, then, if it will eliminate me as a suspect.” She held her left hand out to Fenway.
Fenway blinked at the woman’s hand for a moment, and suppressed the urge to tell her off. Judith was treating Fenway like her manicurist or a servant. But Fenway didn’t want to call attention to herself, and she wanted to get Judith Cygnus’s fingerprints, so she pushed the feelings of indignation down and inked all of the woman’s fingers, carefully getting the prints inside the box on the proper cards.
When she was done, Judith Cygnus tutted. “Do you have a cloth for my hands?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Cygnus, I don’t. I had to make do with what I have with me.”
Judith clicked her tongue and tilted her head to the side, but carefully removed a tissue from her purse. “This is nasty stuff. It really gets everywhere.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Cygnus. I appreciate your cooperation.” Fenway stood.
“I knew, Miss Stevenson.”
Fenway paused. “I’m sorry?”
“I knew about Virg and Leda since the beginning. Virg was not a man who could keep his passions bottled up, and I’m afraid Miss Nedermeyer was caught in his web.” Judith thoughtfully cleaned each finger with the tissue, the white material turning gray with the black ink. “I suppose I was angry at him about the situation—but not at her. How could I be? I’d known it wasn’t in his nature to be faithful and I married him anyway.”
Fenway was quiet.
“I don’t have the head for theater that Virg did. Nor the interest. He and I were a match in many ways, but not that one. And he and Leda were horrible together, except when it came to Shakespeare.” She chuckled to herself. “Before he started his affair with Leda, I would attend every performance, and then we’d go home and I’d have to listen to him spout off about all the actors who hadn’t hit their marks or said their lines perfectly, and he’d talk about a new realization he’d made about the play. I found it perfectly boring. And for him to have so much emotion wrapped up in it—well, it was exhausting. It would have put me to sleep if Virg hadn’t kept me up all night talking about it. And then—well, my dear, the passions would enflame him, and I’d get even less sleep after that.”
Fenway blanched, but kept her face neutral.
“Then Leda came on the scene, and she was as, well, enflamed about the performances as he was. I came opening night, and the three of us went to a late-night diner afterward, and after an hour of Virg and Leda hanging on each other’s every word, I excused myself and took a cab home. I knew the two of them would sleep together that night, and as much as I hated the thought of my husband with another woman, part of me—most of me—was flooded with an intense relief. The six weeks of hell that I’d endured every year was now another woman’s problem.”
Judith stared off into the corner of the courtroom, above the flagpoles. “I knew he still loved me. I knew he’d never leave me. But I also knew that there was this part of him that had to have an outlet for this. And I couldn’t fulfill it for him—and I had no interest in filling it for him.”
Fenway wished she had turned on the recorder on her phone.
“Part of me wanted to be the kind of woman who’d be jealous enough to kill him.” Judith’s eyes unfocused. “But it seemed like such a waste of energy. I was free to have my own affairs, or simply have six weeks to myself. If I weren’t so ashamed about it, it would have been perfect.”
“You felt ashamed?”
Judith sighed. “It was all over the campus. I’d meet people at university functions and they’d look at me with pity in their eyes. That was the shame. That I was some poor, ignorant woman who couldn’t control my husband.”
“But you didn’t do anything about it.”
Judith smiled. “It sounds so banal, but one year, I had an affair with my tennis instructor. He was much younger than me. Younger than Leda, even. I remember thinking he’d be so, I don’t know, vital. But he didn’t care about anything. There was no passion there. He didn’t even try, just because he was young and handsome, I suppose.”
Fenway was silent.
Judith’s eyes came back into focus, and she startled at Fenway, who sat a seat away from her. “Oh. Anyway, listen to me, rambling on.” She paused. “I knew you were interviewing people and I knew that his affair with Leda would come up.”
“I—I appreciate your honesty.”
“You know I don’t have long to live, Miss Stevenson. If I had killed Virg, I’d tell you. I wouldn’t want to drag this out, waste all that money on an investigation, and for what? The cancer will take me in another six or eight weeks if I’m lucky. And without Virg, even that much time doesn’t feel lucky at all.”