The woman sitting across from him beyond the glass barrier was like a phantom image from a dream that fades when you awaken, then returns as pieces of fractured memories. As he stared at her, he tried to match her appearance to his attic photos.
She didn’t look all that different, except for the orange jumpsuit. No laugh lines, no frown lines on the fifty-seven-year-old woman. Did she not feel any emotions that would be expressed on her face? No heart, no soul, no empathy?
There were few identifying marks of any kind, save for a scar on the side of her neck. Had she always had it? He couldn’t remember. It was hard to tell if this really was her or an imposter as Benny had suggested.
“Hello, Scotty.” Her voice, with the same auburn-flecked sparklers that matched her hair, brought the reality of her presence to his conscious mind at last. He might forget a face, but he never forgot a voice. He didn’t need DNA results. This was really her.
She leaned on the edge of the wooden table bolted to the floor. “I almost forgot how blue your eyes are. Even when you were a wee bairn, they were so bright and intense. You got those from my kin.”
Her accent was hybridized, mostly “American,” but her Scottish upbringing peeked through, at times. “Not your dark hair. You can thank your father’s Navajo grandma for that.” She tilted her head. “Dark hair, violet-blue eyes. Bet you’re a hit with the ladies. I imagined you’d be hitched by now.”
“Engaged, once. She wanted a pianist for a husband, not an FBI agent.”
Maura McCune clasped her hands in front of her and picked at her thumbnails. Like Drayco, she couldn’t seem to keep her fingers still. “The carjacking injury, when you were twenty. I ... I heard about it at the time.”
She’d kept tabs on him? Not that it mattered since she hadn’t bothered to contact him. “It’s ancient history.”
She looked at his hands. “Can you still play the piano? With your arm crippled and all. I mean—”
“I play. For myself and occasionally friends. The arm works, it just cramps up when I use it too much.”
She kept staring at his hands as if afraid to look at him in the face for too long. “You took to Bach right away. Bach’s always been my favorite. You said his fugues were rainbow-colored circles within circles.”
“It’s how I experience them. It’s called synesthesia, feeling sounds as colors, shapes, textures.”
“You got that from my father, who played the fiddle beautifully. The way he described it, it was a world of intense sensations in his head. I imagined it as a rainbow of counterpoint.”
Images from Drayco’s childhood flipped across his mind, at the piano with his mother next to him on the bench, a musical cheerleader who encouraged him from the sidelines. She was the one who’d set him up with piano lessons against Brock’s wishes.
“You probably shouldn’t expect a visit from Brock.”
“You call him Brock? Not Dad or Father?”
He bit his tongue. She would have known that had she been around. Or maybe if she’d been around, he wouldn’t call his father Brock nor have such a distant relationship.
He wasn’t ready for this, wasn’t ready to pick at the old scabs, to listen to her excuses or lies. He reminded himself he was in the presence of an accused murderer and sat up straighter. “What was your relationship to the victim?”
She’d unclasped her hands, and they were now in constant motion—rubbing her fingers together, fiddling with her sleeve. “We were good friends.”
“Lovers?”
She jutted out her chin. “Like I told the detectives, that’s all I’m going to say on the subject.”
“Did you know he was a TSA agent?”
“Ex-agent. And Jerold was the one who called me, wanting me to come see him the night he was killed. He didn’t sound angry, maybe a little strained.”
“What were his exact words?”
“I didn’t understand them, then or now. He said, ‘I need you to come over right away. It’s about that trip we’re going to take to Nevada. It’s important.’”
Drayco frowned at that. “What trip to Nevada?”
“That’s just it, I don’t know of any such trip. I think I once said I’d always wanted to go to Reno—that’s where they shot Melvin and Howard, isn’t it? That’s my favorite movie. Or maybe Jerold had a craving for some slot machines. It’s as good an explanation as any.”
“Let me get the timeline straight. You went to his condo, you were angry, and you admitted to the police you stabbed him. But you said he was already dead?”
She took a deep breath. “When I got there, he was lying on the floor. I could tell he was dead—his eyes were open, staring.”
“And then you just decided to stab him?”
“It sounds crazy, and maybe it is, a little. I’d been so upset with him, but here he was robbing me of my chance to tell him off. I wasn’t thinking straight, Scotty, I admit it. I would have wiped my prints and just left, but the police arrived first. How did they know to come?”
“An anonymous tip to the police.”
“But it was raining and dark. No one would have seen me.” Her eyes grew thoughtful, calculating. “The killer was watching. I was set up, don’t you see? I didn’t kill Jerold but whoever did wants you to think so.”
Drayco leaned back in his seat. If she were lying, she was good. Then again, she’d somehow managed to disappear off the grid for thirty years, so she was likely a practiced evader and manipulator. On the other hand, a convenient witness who disguised his voice when calling the police—what were the chances of that?
Her eyes were hazel, not true blue, and the way the fluorescent lights hit them right now, they looked more greenish-gold. There were hints of pleading in those eyes, but also traces of something he’d seen in other suspects. An almost-imperceptible shifting. He made a leap of intuition and asked, “Who are you protecting?”
She hesitated just a few seconds too long. “Why would you think that, Scotty?”
The way she called him by the long-ago nickname, the lying, the anger bubbling up inside—he needed to get away from her, to catch his breath. He also knew, as the warden came to signal that his twenty minutes were up, he was going to disappoint both Detective Halabi and Brock.
There was no way in hell he could walk away from this case. It was truth time. And just like with his board hearing, any and all consequences be damned.