The cold from the morgue had seeped into Ethan's flesh and made a permanent home. The interview room's chilly air did not help. He tried to rub some warmth into his arms then checked his watch for the tenth time. How long were they going to keep him in here before they started grilling him? It made sense they would consider Ethan a possible suspect by default. He had no illusions about Randy's intentions even after the detective's promise to seek justice. What bothered Ethan wasn't that Randy wanted to question him, but that he had already wasted so much time getting to it.
He glanced at the mirror in the wall. Were they watching him from the other side? Waiting for some clue, some tic in his behavior? Or, more likely, wearing him down, tugging his patience to the limit to make him careless when he started answering questions.
All a waste of time.
Meanwhile, his daughter's murderer was out there cleaning up his tracks.
He could feel a sob caught at the back of his throat. He swallowed it down. Time enough for that later. He covered his face with his hands, took a deep breath.
At last, Randy and another man entered the room.
Ethan jerked in his chair, wiped his eyes.
Randy's companion wore his hair nearly shaved to the skin, a shadow of stubble on either side of his skull betraying the bald spot down the middle. A pair of glasses hung on the front pocket of his sport coat. He took a seat across from Ethan while Randy stepped back into a corner and leaned against the wall with his arms folded.
The new guy offered his hand. “Detective Staver.”
Ethan stared at the hand a second, thrown by this new arrival. He'd had it in his head he would deal with Randy through all of this.
Staver smiled and rested his hand on the table between them. “I understand you're tired and this has been a hard night. We just need to ask a few more questions and we'll get someone to take you home.”
“I've been waiting a while,” Ethan said. “What took so long?”
Randy piped up from his corner. “Had to gather a few facts is all.”
Ethan looked from Randy back to Staver. “About me?”
“Please,” Staver said. “Let's try to stay focused on finding out what happened to your daughter. That's what we're all here for, right?”
Something about Staver's tone bothered Ethan, but he couldn't place it. In the swirl of all the other feelings and thoughts cramping his brain, he didn't know if he could trust his instincts. There was a time when Ethan would have snacked on glass before trusting a cop. Residue from those days could sometimes still dirty his judgment.
“Okay. Ask your questions.”
Staver gave a smart nod and leaned forward on his elbows. “Randy tells me you were waiting up for Alison when he arrived. Did she come home late often?”
“Yes. She's going through one of those phases. Doing the opposite of everything I say.”
“For example?”
Ethan frowned. “Like staying out past curfew.”
“Anything else?”
“I'm not sure I know what you mean.”
Staver cleared his throat. “Was she promiscuous? Involved with drugs?”
“If she was into anything like that, I wouldn't have let her out of the house.”
“Okay. But looking back. A lot of kids her age start experimenting with drugs and alcohol. Maybe it didn't occur to you at the time, but—”
“No.” Ethan rubbed his face. “If she was doing drugs, I would have noticed.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because her mother is a junkie and I lived with her long enough to know the territory.”
“Does your ex-wife visit your daughter often?”
“Never. I had a restraining order put on my wife. She can't come anywhere near me or the kids. If you were looking into me then you probably know all this.”
Randy unfolded his arms, tucked his hands in his pockets. “How did your wife react to the restraining order?”
“She never much cared what the kids were doing as long as they didn't get in the way of her drug habit.”
“Harsh.”
“It's the truth,” Ethan replied. “I'm no saint. I'm not even an altar boy. But Rain's problem is she never knows when enough is enough. Most people have a limit to how much they can screw up their lives. Not Rain.”
Staver leaned back and gave Ethan a long stare, as if sizing him up. “Does she feel the same way about you?”
“I pulled my life together.”
“Does she see it that way?”
“You'd have to ask her.”
A dull ache twisted through Ethan's lower back from sitting for so long. He tried shifting in his chair, but it clearly hadn't been designed for comfort. “Mind if I stand? My back is killing me.”
Staver gestured for him to go ahead.
Ethan stood and stretched while Staver continued.
“What can you tell me about Alison's daily routine?”
“What do you want to know? Every morning I go into her room at least a dozen times to rouse her out of bed. Then she spends an hour or more in the bathroom. She misses the bus. I drive her to school. On a good day she avoids mouthing off to a teacher and getting detention. But usually if she avoids detention it's because she skipped school after I dropped her off.”
“All part of that phase you mentioned?”
“Alison is . . .” He winced when he caught himself talking about her in the present tense. Still, he couldn't bring himself to start referring to her in the past. Not yet. “She's a lot more like her mother than I'd want to admit.”
“We keep coming back to your ex-wife.”
The pain in Ethan's back refused to unknot, yet the more he talked about Alison the harder it became to stand. He eased back into the chair and tried his best to ignore the discomfort.
“What else do you want to know?”
Randy stepped forward. “What about Alison's friends?”
Ethan stared at the center of the table. “I'm not sure.”
“Not sure about what?”
Alison had never been one to hang around the house, let alone bring friends over to meet her dad. At one time he had asked Graham who she hung out with at school. Mostly a bunch of emos, he'd answered. Ethan spent the next half hour trying to understand Graham's explanation of what, exactly, an emo was while missing the good old days of preps and burnouts. In the end, he had no better picture of Alison's friends except that they probably wore a lot of black.
“I don't know who her friends are.”
The room fell silent. Ethan kept his gaze locked on the table, not wanting to look up and face Randy and Staver's scrutiny, the questions in their eyes about how a father could know so little about his own daughter.
“I have a son,” Staver said, the turn in conversation pulling Ethan's gaze up. “He's just turned twenty-two. Still lives at home. Can't hold a job. Refuses to try college.”
Ethan glanced past Staver to Randy. Randy didn't seem to have any idea where this was going either.
“He was a good kid all the way through high school,” Staver continued. “Up until his senior year. Then he changed. Grew lazy. Grades dropped. Spent a lot of time out of the house. My wife and I figured it was a case of senioritis, something he'd get over eventually.”
Staver rubbed his mouth. While his eyes still aimed in Ethan's direction, Ethan had the sense Staver wasn't seeing Ethan anymore.
“Turns out he was hanging out with a new group of friends. Troublemakers. Nothing serious. But not the kind of kids an all ‘A’ student hangs around with.”
“I get it,” Ethan said. “And my daughter was probably rolling with a bad crowd. You think I don't realize that?”
“Just makes me wonder.”
“I know I'm not going to win any father of the year awards. Hell, I started my family when I was fifteen. I thought I ruled the world back then. I know better now. I'm doing the best I can.”
“I'm not judging you, Mr. Trent.”
“I got them out of that environment. I put myself through college while raising them both on my own. I gave them a home. I gave them a chance at a future people like me growing up never had.” He slapped his hand on the table. “Why are we in here? You should be out there looking for my daughter's killer.” He stood, paced the room, trembling. He'd held it in too long. Couldn't keep it contained anymore. Couldn't continue pretending he was strong enough to handle the loss. He pressed his forehead against the nearest wall and cried. Lost track of where he was and who was watching him. Lost track of time. Lost track of everything except the cold emptiness inside of him.
After a moment, he felt a hand on his shoulder.
Ethan dragged a wrist across his eyes and turned away from the wall, found Randy standing there.
“I'll get someone to drive you home. We can finish up another time.”
“You think it's my fault, don't you?”
“I never said any such thing.”
But he didn't have to. Ethan could see it written in the lines of Randy's face. They'd spent some time looking into Ethan's background before entering the interview room. The worst of what he'd done happened while he was still a juvenile. Those records were closed now, off limits. But they had probably learned enough to know where Ethan had come from. And they would look at him as if he had never left. That was how cops felt about guys like Ethan. Once bad, always bad.
With Alison gone, Ethan wondered if they were right.