“He is the one who lied to you. This one you know. Catherine Lamb. Look at the picture. He did this. He sold this picture online.”
Leonor’s body became rigid. “I want you to leave. Get out. Now!”
Zoe knew she’d blundered. She should have kept her cool. Leonor would have given her something. But she was committed to her course of action now. She laid the pictures of Henrietta Fishburne on the table. Leonor glanced at them, the color rushing away from her face. She looked sick.
Zoe pointed at the picture. “This is Henrietta. Daniel did this. But his real name is Rod Glover. We need you to tell us everything you know. We need to catch him before he does it to anyone else.”
Leonor shook her head and shut her eyes. Her lips twisted as if she was about to cry.
After a few seconds, the toilet in the bathroom flushed, and Tatum stepped out. They exchanged glances, and Zoe shook her head. She then collected the pictures from the table and placed her card in front of Leonor.
“If you think of anything else, let us know,” she said, getting up.
For a moment, Leonor seemed on the verge of saying something, but instead she glanced away.
Zoe strode out of the house, furious with herself. She’d been so close; she was sure of it. If she’d only said the right thing, the truth would have come out. Leonor had wanted to talk. But instead, she’d made Leonor close up, like she invariably did with people.
“Patrick is probably at church,” Tatum said, unlocking the car. “Let’s find him. If we need to, we can get them both into separate interrogation rooms at the station.”
Zoe nodded, sliding into the passenger’s seat. She gazed through the window as they drove away, leaving the house behind them. “She said Glover told her about me as a child. He made it sound like we had a good relationship.”
“Glover lies. He says things people want to hear—you know that.”
“But why talk about me at all?”
Tatum sighed. “I know you feel the need to explain everything those people do, but you know what? Sometimes there is no real reason. He just felt like talking about you, and he did. And naturally, he made it sound like you two are best friends, because everything he says is supposed to cast him in a good light.”
“Yeah.”
They drove in silence for a while.
“You shouldn’t have shown her those pictures,” Tatum said. “Not in her state.”
“She knows something. I was trying to jolt her into talking.”
“Still, showing her a picture of her dead friend took it too far. If she complains to the police—”
“She didn’t seem to care about her so-called dead friend,” Zoe said impatiently. “She hardly looked at the photo. She seemed a lot more upset about the picture of Henrietta Fishburne.” She thought back to that moment. The way the blood had run from Leonor’s face. She hadn’t seemed disgusted or horrified. She’d seemed . . .
Scared.
“Well, I don’t blame her,” Tatum said. “If you showed me a picture of—”
“Turn the car around,” Zoe blurted.
“What? Why?”
“She wasn’t looking at Henrietta at all—she was looking at the arm in the picture.” Zoe took out the picture just to verify. Henrietta Fishburne, being strangled, only the arm of her attacker visible. And his skin was scraped in several places, long red scratches.
Leonor had seen those scratches before. That’s what had scared her. She’d seen them on Glover’s arm, and when she saw the picture, she realized that he was the man who was strangling Henrietta.
But that could only mean she had seen him very recently. And it was possible he was in Patrick and Leonor’s house right now.
CHAPTER 77
Leonor didn’t budge until she heard the feds’ car drive away. She’d heard of the phrase frozen in fear, but up until that moment, she’d thought it was just a way to explain that someone was very scared. Now she realized it was possible to be so frightened that the body didn’t respond.
She tried to convince herself it had just been her imagination. She’d hardly gotten a glimpse of that photo. Those scratches she’d noticed on the arm in the photo could be just a trick of the light. And even if they weren’t, it meant nothing, right? Scratches on the arm were hardly a rare thing. She’d managed to scrape her arms dozens of times just by working in the garden.
Still, there were three long scratches. Just like on Daniel’s arm.