50

Long ago, Mooney and I used to team up for a game called “good cop, bad cop.” At first, we’d taken turns, alternating sweet and sour, but it soon became clear that I owned the rogue role. Something about Mooney’s choirboy face makes him a natural-born good guy.

But since she already knew me, had reason to trust me, Mooney thought I should play the “good cop” role.

I felt miscast.

“Sorry,” Mooney informed her bluntly as we reentered the interview room, “but it’s not going to fly. I don’t have time to waste. Confessors! Geez, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, trying to save your kid. I’m sure we’d all try to cushion our own kid’s path, if we could. But your boy crossed over the line, lady, way over it.”

He started gathering pens, notebooks, and tape recorders, as though he were in a hurry to get home.

“But I killed Andrew Manley,” she said, sitting bolt upright. “You haven’t heard the details, taken my statement.”

“Try this,” Mooney said harshly. “By me, you’re about as credible as that woman claimed to be Anastasia, daughter of the friggin’ Czar of Russia, all those years. Yapped about it till the day she died—how everyone had stolen her birthright—and then a couple forensic scientists did some DNA testing, and guess what? Phony as they come. You should know this: If you’re a fake, we can find out.”

“I know.”

“Keep up on that sort of thing, do you?” Mooney taunted, “bad cop” all the way.

“Mooney,” I said reasonably. “Before he died, Dr. Manley came to me with some stuff about recovered memory syndrome. I did some reading, and believe me, after twenty-four years, she could be off on a few details.”

“Details!” Mooney snorted.

“What does he mean?” Thea asked.

I went on as if no one had interrupted. “She could honestly think she hit the guy with a trowel. Kept hitting him with it, until he bled to death. She could have blanked out on the part about strangling Nueves—”

“What do you mean, strangling him? Who told you that? He was a big man. I couldn’t have gotten my hands around his neck. I couldn’t have killed him with my hands.” Thea stood, clasping the edge of the table for support. Her words came faster. “Dr. Manley and I never spoke about those memories, not the killing memories. I never forgot killing Alonso, not for a single moment, not a single detail. I never will. I can hear the rattle in his throat. I can see the blood—”

“Prove it,” Mooney said scornfully.

“I can’t,” she murmured, staring at me like I could help her if only I had sufficient desire.

“If we had his body,” I said carefully, “there are tests that could be done, even now, to show how he’d died.”

“We don’t have a body,” Mooney said to me, explaining it slowly as though to a child. “And we’re not going to get one, understand? The Nueves guy did a flit, could be anyplace. She’s using him for credibility, so we’ll let her testify that she killed the shrink, get her kid off the big hook. But it’s too late. Her kid was at the scene—”

She looked him over from head to toe, slowly. Then, with ice in her voice, she said, “What exactly do you want?”

“What do you mean?” Mooney returned.

“I’m fairly perceptive,” she said, with an edge to her voice. “Since the two of you returned from your hallway conference, you’ve been behaving quite differently. You obviously have an agenda. You want something from me. Stop fooling around and level with me.”

Moon lifted one eyebrow, stared at me. We must have been rustier at the game than I’d thought. On the other hand, it’s seldom you bring in a perp half as sharp as Thea Janis.

After a pause, I led off. “We need you to request an exhumation, to sign an exhumation order.”

“And who, pray tell, would you like to dig up?”

“Dorothy Cameron,” I said, “also known as Thea Janis.”

“That might get my family in an uproar—and I don’t want them told about me, understand? How would it help me?”

I said, “It might help your son.”

As she thought it over, I could almost hear the gears spin. Without the concealing brown spectacles, her eyes were enormous. How could she bring herself to wear them day after day, like blinders on a racehorse?

“Where do I sign?” she said.

Quickly Mooney motioned me out of the room.

“Don’t try any more tricks,” Thea advised as he shut the door.

“I’ll have to get a judge’s approval,” Moon said urgently. “It’s not like we’re going digging tonight.”

“I know.”

“Where are we going to keep her?” he said. “If I arrest her, I’ve got press coming out of my ears, national TV. Can you take her?”

“No way. Someone’s already tried to crack my house, searching for her notebook.”

“Who?”

“Possibly her kid. Possibly Manley’s killer.”

“Which means you don’t think they’re one and the same.”

“Whatever, she’s not coming home with me. What about you? Your mom would love the company.”

“I assume that’s a feeble attempt at humor. How about Gloria?”

“No,” I said. “Gloria’s not up for guests yet. We could stick her in a hotel.”

“Sure,” he said, “with what money? And what makes you think she wouldn’t waltz out the door?”

“Don’t you have any federal witness protection bucks? Couldn’t you put a guard on her?”

“No extra money, no extra men,” he said. “Come on, Carlotta, if they’ve already tried your house, it could be the safest place. Roz can bodyguard her.”

“I thought you were concerned about a mob attempt on my life,” I said. “Aren’t you worried she might get in the way?”

“Oh, that,” he said coolly. “Turned out to be bunk, like you thought. Just a punk trying to plead.”

So that’s how I got Dorothy Cameron as a houseguest. The digs would definitely not be what “Thea Janis” had been accustomed to, but “Susan Gordon” seemed to require less splendor.