Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10) - Lisa Gardner Page 0,64
distressed.
“Your father did not commit suicide.”
“I didn’t shoot him!”
“So you’re a liar, but not a killer. And Friday night, with your husband?”
“Sergeant! This line of questioning is over!”
“Not so fast, Counselor. Your client came to me yesterday, recanting her story from sixteen years ago. She’s the one who reopened this can of worms. Based on her new statement, the case of Earl Hopkins is no longer being considered accidental. We’re now treating it as an active homicide, and you know the statute of limitations on homicide—there isn’t one.”
“I didn’t do it!” Evie, still aghast, pounded her water bottle against the table. “I would never harm my father!”
“But your husband? The guy with rolls of cash and nearly half a dozen fake IDs?”
“We’re out of here.” Delaney was already on his feet, pulling at Evie’s arm. The woman, however, continued to resist. And it wasn’t the allegations about her husband that had her agitated. Clearly, she was still distressed about her father. Even sixteen years later, it was all about her father.
She was gazing at D.D. wildly now. “My hair. You took photos of my hair. Samples. I remember that!”
D.D. nodded slowly.
“Test it. Have it reexamined. You can, can’t you? I don’t understand it all, but I watch crime shows. You can prove directionality from blood spatter, right? Say, the difference between this blowback you’re talking about, versus contact smear from someone entering the room right afterwards.”
“I don’t know if we have enough evidence,” D.D. said, which wasn’t entirely untrue.
“Test it. Do whatever you have to do. I didn’t kill my father. I didn’t! All these years.” Her voice broke off. “I assumed the worst about him.”
“Him, or your mother?”
“She was with me. I’m telling you the truth. My mom is crazy, I know, but she loved him. They loved each other. I don’t know. Not all relationships are meant to be understood by outsiders—”
“Talking about your husband again?”
“My mom didn’t do this,” Evie repeated more firmly. She seemed to be pulling herself together now, allowing her lawyer to guide her to standing. “She, me, we didn’t do this. All these years, we thought he shot himself. That’s why we lied. Not to protect ourselves. But to protect him. If you’d met him, if you’d talked to him … My father was a great man. He deserved better than to go down in the history books as one more depressed genius.”
“Then who, Evie?” D.D. rose to standing. “Who would have motive to shoot your father? Did he have professional rivals? Failing students? Jealous husbands? Someone pulled that trigger. If not you, then who?”
“I … I have no idea.” Evie glanced helplessly at her lawyer. It was all he needed.
“This interview is over. You asked for answers from my client and she provided them. You want to learn anything else, Officers, I suggest you go out and—here’s a thought—do some detecting.”
Delaney guided his client around the table. But Evie’s gaze was still glued to the photos as she walked by. Fascinated. Fixated. Frustrated.
That she finally realized all these years later she’d lied for nothing? Or because she’d just discovered yesterday’s attempt at changing her story was never going to work?
D.D. still couldn’t figure it. But there was something about the way Evie looked at the photos that tugged at her, made her wonder if that woman hadn’t told her the truth yesterday after all.
Longing, she finally decided. Evie Carter looked at those photos like a woman who, sixteen years later, just wanted her father back.
It made D.D. wonder what other regrets the woman had, and how many might involve her husband and his own death just two nights ago.
Knock on the door. Neil poked his head in. He appeared nervous.
“Got something on the fake IDs?” she asked immediately, collecting her notes.
“Ah, no. You got a visitor.”
“I have a visitor?”
“A fed. SSA Kimberly Quincy from the Atlanta office. She’s here with Flora Dane and some other guy. Says she needs to talk.”
“No,” D.D. said.
“Too late,” a female voice drawled from behind Neil.
D.D. sighed. “Shit.”
Chapter 18
FLORA
MEMORY IS A FUNNY THING. There are moments that sear into our minds. If we’re lucky, it’s because we’re happy—first kiss, wedding day, birth of a child. The kind of experience where you both have it and stand outside of it, because your brain recognizes this is something so special that you’re going to want to relive it.
I have some of those memories. Being asked to prom by the cutest boy in high school, practically floating home to share