close. “You don’t have a mommy and you don’t have a home. You don’t have anything at all anymore, except her.” He jerked his chin toward Jeannie. Then, something seemed to occur to him, because a wide, open, entirely cheerful grin spread across his sharp face. “Her and me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“Elizabeth Jean Fraser,” the detective said as she sat down on the other side of the table from Beth. “I’m Detective Nalini Patel.” Beth had already been in custody for hours, and she’d been passed along to a lot of different people. They’d photographed her face and hands. They scanned her fingerprints. They scraped under her nails. They took her clothes and bagged them up and gave her a receipt to sign. They brought her here to this interview room, where she sat wearing some outsize sweats and paper hospital slippers.
Nalini Patel was a woman about her own height. Her skin was a warm, earthy brown, and she wore her black hair in a herringbone braid. She had a small diamond stud in her nose and another above her eyebrow. She favored thick slashes of rosy eye shadow. She wore a gray jacket and a blue blouse and black slacks. Her accent told Beth this person came from a family that had lived, worked, and died in the Windy City for generations.
“Are you okay, Ms. Fraser?” The detective dropped the stack of stuff she’d carried in onto the table. There were manila folders and a zippered envelope and, of course, a lot of forms. “You want anything?”
I want my daughter. I want my parents so I can choke the life out of them. I want Doug to be alive so I can send him home for Susan to clean up and for his other children to pity.
I want to never have been born. I want to have never believed I could have a child.
“I am exercising my right to remain silent,” Beth croaked. “I want to have my lawyer present for any questioning.”
Detective Patel did not seem particularly perturbed by this declaration.
“You are not currently under arrest.”
Detective Patel opened the top file and started flicking through papers. Her demeanor remained cool and tired. She was another member of the system—chronically overworked and surviving on habit and some remaining belief that she was making a difference.
It was hot and stale in the room. There was the one-way mirror, just like on all the cop shows. Beth wondered if there was someone back there now.
Probably.
There was no clock or window or any other way to tell how much time had passed since the patrol had hauled her out of the hotel room and away from Doug’s body.
“I’ve been told your lawyer is on his way, or is that your boss’s lawyer?” Detective Patel raised the eyebrow with the diamond stud.
Beth did not answer. The police had taken away Beth’s cell phone. Since then, she had been given the obligatory phone call on the station’s landline. She’d used it to wake up her lawyer.
I have to get out of here.
“What were you doing in room one twenty-one of the MaxRest America Extended-Stay Hotel?” Detective Patel asked.
Dana, what were you doing there? How did they get you there? What have they done to you?
“Did you arrange for Mr. Hoyt to meet you there?”
Saying nothing was easier than Beth had thought it would be, especially as tired and strung out as she was. Although, if she stopped to think about it, she had a lot of practice saying nothing to the cops. She could do it for a little longer. She just had to remember the feel of that improvised knife in her hand and all the blood. And Dana’s phone, smashed on the floor beside her murdered father.
I have to get to her.
Patel didn’t seem to mind Beth’s actual silence any more than she had her declaration that she intended to keep quiet.
“I understand you and Mr. Hoyt have a long history. He is your daughter’s father, I think?” She paused, waiting for Beth to confirm this. “We’ve been talking to Mrs. Hoyt. She says he might have been having some money trouble.”
Poor Susan. All that time trying to keep Doug’s life together. Trying to make everything just perfect for him so he’d finally, finally be happy.
“Had he said anything to you about needing money?” Patel flicked through another few pages. Her nails were neatly filed and polished navy blue. The color of a Chicago cop’s uniform, Beth realized. Detective Patel had a sense of