Mary was a tiny thing. Threadlike. She had long, wiry fingers, which reminded me of a professional piano player. She probably didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. Every single strand of her white, curly hair was groomed to perfection, and though I suspected she’d been waiting here for a while, she looked like she’d just emerged after a day at the salon.
Sitting across from her now, it was hard to believe she was capable of killing an ant, let alone two people. And yet, I detected something—a coldness perhaps—something impure. Perhaps beneath her layers of perfection was a different person—one many in her life hadn’t seen before.
I began our meeting by asking her to relay the previous night’s events. I didn’t interrupt. Instead, as she talked, I wrote down a list of questions on a pad of paper. It was something new I was trying. I’d come to realize it was better to let people talk once they were on a roll. Interrupting, even to clarify a simple question, screwed up the thought process, especially when someone had as much to say as she did. After about a half hour, she finished with, “The gun they found. The one responsible for Darryl’s death and the girl’s ... I don’t know where it came from. It isn’t mine. I told Chief McCoy, but I don’t think he believes me.”
“It was found next to you, wasn’t it?”
“They said it was, even though I never saw it next to me personally. I’m telling you, I didn’t put it there, and I’ve never seen it before.”
“What’s the last thing you remember happening before the police arrived?”
“I realized Darryl was alive, like I just told you. I went to call for help. There was a person, a shadowy figure, hiding behind Darryl’s bedroom door. I remember the door moving, someone stepping out, and then hitting me over the head.”
“Could you tell whether a male or a female assaulted you?”
“I ... ahh ... I have to think. It was dark. There was a bit of light coming in from the hallway, but I still didn’t get a good enough look at my attacker.”
I waited, let her stew on it for a minute.
“I want to say it was a man,” she said. “Yes, yes. A man. Definitely.”
“Why a man and not a woman?”
“When he hit me, it was with great force.” She bent her head toward me. “See?”
I noticed a minor bump, which could have happened any number of ways. “How long did you interact with him?”
“Not long. It was fast. A few seconds maybe. He was tall and strong. Very strong. All it took was one hit, and it was ‘lights out’ for me.”
Given Mary’s tiny figure, I wasn’t certain she could be sure the person who attacked her was actually a man. Anyone larger than her could have been perceived the wrong way in the dark, and plenty of women packed enough punch to sustain the kind of injury she had.
“Miss Monroe. If they try to charge me for this, can you help me? Can you get me out of it? I’m innocent.”
“I’m a private investigator, not a lawyer,” I said. “If you haven’t called a lawyer yet, you should.”
“I’ve never hired a lawyer, not once in my entire life.”
“It doesn’t matter. You need one now.”
“But you can find out who really did it, can’t you? Then I won’t need one.”
“I can try.”
She rolled her eyes, frustrated with my answer.
“I can’t guarantee anything,” I said. “But what I can say is this: I’ve solved every case I’ve ever had.”
“I know. I wouldn’t have called you otherwise.”
I suspected it wasn’t the real reason she called me. She called because I was the only one who did this kind of work within two hundred miles. I gave her my rate. She accepted. I then went over the questions I’d written on my notepad, paying close attention to not only her words but also her body language when she answered.
When she finished, I said, “If I’m going to help you, I’m going to need you to be completely honest with me, or this won’t work.”
“I have been honest with you.”
“If there’s anything more you’d like to say, now’s the time to say it.”
“There isn’t. I told you everything I know.”
“Then you’re lying to me.”
She leaned back in the chair, batted her eyelashes a few times, looking at me like she was a sweet, unassuming old lady, and I was the one taking advantage. “Excuse me?”
“During most of the questions I asked, you were calm when you answered, but when I started talking about what kind of neighbor Darryl was and how well you knew him, you became agitated.”
“Maybe I was. How does it make me a liar?”
“You also cleared your throat several times on the same question, and then you looked away. Before, you had no problem looking me in the eye. So, I’m going to ask you one more time, and if I get the same reply, I’ll get up, walk out the door, and you can deal with the mess you’ve gotten into yourself.”
“Everyone in town knows you’re screwing Chief McCoy. If I tell you, you’ll tell him. I’m not stupid. I know how it all works.”
“First, I’m his girlfriend, not a whore he sleeps with when he’s bored, so watch yourself when you throw around a word like screwing. And second, if I agree to help you, you’ll become my client, which means whatever you say stays with me unless it’s something I’m obligated to share. If you’re innocent—if you didn’t kill those people—no matter how bad it is, you have nothing to worry about.”
She fidgeted, rubbing her hands together in her lap, thinking. “What about what I say right now? You won’t tell anyone?”
“I won’t.”
“Fine. You want to know the truth? I hated Darryl. He was lazy, messy, and unclean. I didn’t go over to his house last night because I heard a gun go off, or a woman scream. I went over last night intending to kill him.”
I wasn’t sure what I expected to come out of her mouth, but that wasn’t it. “And yet you want me to believe you didn’t kill him.”
“Once I saw him, still alive in his bed, when he reached out his hands, pleading for my help, I realized he may have been a messy, lazy sloth, but he didn’t deserve to die. I didn’t kill him, Miss Monroe, and I didn’t kill that girl either.”