Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10) - Lisa Gardner Page 0,62

made them look more like an insurance company than an investigative unit. Sometimes, like now, when she had a suspect she didn’t want to spook, it was nice to pretend they were just hanging out at an office versus, say, starring in an old episode of NYPD Blue.

Given the circumstances, D.D. led Evie and her lawyer to homicide’s conference room, something a bit more hospitable than the Spartan interrogation rooms. Evie already had her attorney at her elbow. D.D. didn’t want to spook her prime suspect before extracting as much information as possible.

After a quick sidebar, Neil disappeared to find Phil. Neil would handle processing the evidence they’d recovered at the arson scene. Phil would resume his role as family man / father figure detective. Again, interviews were strategy and while D.D. liked a good full-court press, that was never going to work with a lawyer in the room. This would be a finesse job. Fortunately, she was a woman of many skills.

And like Evie, of much curiosity.

D.D. played nice. She got Evie and her lawyer situated. Brought them both bottles of water; then, at the request of Delaney, who seemed to enjoy having one of Boston’s finest waiting on him, she returned with a cup of coffee. By then, Phil had joined the room, armed with a heavy cardboard box. The outside of the box bore large black numbers: the case number for Evie’s father’s shooting sixteen years ago.

Phil set the box at the head of the table, away from Evie and Dick Delaney. He and D.D. had been playing this game for so long, they didn’t need to speak to know how to proceed. D.D. sat directly across from Evie and her lawyer, engaging in them in small talk about best brands of coffee in Boston, black versus cream and sugar, and, oh yeah, having to give up coffee while pregnant, which D.D. had never thought she’d be able to do, but in fact had come quite naturally.

In the meantime, Phil unpacked the box. Slowly. File after file. The murder book. Binders of evidence reports. Stacks of photos. Pile here. Pile there. Pile after pile.

Evie lost focus first. Nodded at whatever asinine comment D.D. was making while her gaze drifted to the head of the table, the growing stack of yellowing papers, frayed photo edges, dirty manila files. Records were all supposed to be scanned and stored electronically these days. And yet, if the average bureaucrat ever walked through the warehouse, saw the full magnitude of the job …

Walking the stacks to manually retrieve an evidence box wasn’t going away anytime soon.

“That’s evidence from my father’s case,” Evie said suddenly. The woman was agitated. Not even bothering to sip her water but spinning the bottle in her hand.

“That’s right.”

“You have photos?”

Delaney spoke up. “I would like to go on the record that I don’t recommend my client be here today, taking these questions, Sergeant Warren—”

D.D. kept her focus on Evie: “Do you remember your statement from that day?”

“A little.”

“Let me read it to you, from my notes: sixteen-year-old subject, female, white, appears in state of shock and/or traumatized. Subject states she had been in the kitchen with her father, Earl Hopkins, fifty-five-year-old male, white, after two thirty on Saturday. Father was showing her how to unload a recently purchased Model eight-seventy Remington pump-action shotgun. Father was standing in front of refrigerator when female subject, in her own words, picked up shotgun off the kitchen table and attempted to clear the chamber. According to female, shotgun discharged into her father’s torso from a distance of mere inches. Female states father fell back against the refrigerator, then sank to the floor. Female claims she set down gun and attempted to rouse her father without success. Female further claims she then heard screaming from the doorway, where her mother, Joyce Hopkins, forty-three-year-old female, white, stood. Mother claimed she’d witnessed the shooting. Detective Speirs interviewed independently.”

Evie didn’t say anything while D.D. read, just kept staring at the box. D.D. set down her notepad. “Does that fit your memory?”

Evie finally looked at her. “What do the photos say?”

“Phil?”

Phil stepped forward with the first set. They were gruesome. A shotgun blast at close range did a tremendous amount of damage. Evie had sat through the real event. In theory, there was nothing here she hadn’t seen before, though in D.D.’s experience, memory had its way with things over time. Meaning the photos could look far worse than Evie had allowed herself to remember, or