Believe your lies and everyone else will too. I’ll never forget that phrase from Criminal Investigations 450 written on the chalkboard in a room full of expectant, soon-to-be lawyers. So long as they passed the bar.
“I should have …” I let the statement trail off and close my eyes. My mind drifts, wandering back to the front door of the home I grew up in. My throat’s tight as I remember opening it, the creak and the ominous silence that greeted me.
“It was supposed to be a girls’ night,” I say and my words are etched in agony as I stare up at the detective and let the pain of it all be revealed in the statement. “That’s what we should be doing right now. We should be out having fun while my father attends a conference.”
“As far as you know, there isn’t anyone who would want your father dead.”
Just as I’m about to respond by bringing up his cases from years ago or disgruntled former business partners, the door opens and Skov’s partner, Gallinger, comes in. The two are complete opposites. The clean-shaven, pristine cop is at complete odds with Skov’s disheveled state.
Even his polite smile and nod, plus the way he whispers to Skov, appear to be in direct conflict with the man’s appearance.
“How are you, Delilah?” Gallinger asks me, pulling out a chair and sitting across from me.
“It feels like everything is coming apart,” I say, making the admission because it does. And it adds to the testimony.
“You have to know how this looks,” Gallinger says while gesturing with his hand, sympathy in his gaze. Skov turns, still standing and paces behind him.
“I do. Trust me, I do,” I tell him and my heart beats harder, wondering what change brought him in. Did my mother say anything? Please, God, please, I will do anything.
“We found a note at the crime scene, did my partner tell you that?”
A flicker of hope lights with me like the small flame of an ancient furnace. “He didn’t, no.”
I was beginning to think Marcus never left it. Or it simply wasn’t found.
The small slip of paper flitters across the table and I make great effort to only touch the plastic edges of the evidence bag it resides inside.
Bad men die.
I don’t have the ability to read past the first line. My breath is stolen from me as my blood runs cold.
It’s Marcus’s handwriting.
He didn’t try to hide it. He’s pinning it on himself.
“We’re running forensics,” Gallinger starts to say but my head spins and a ringing in my ears drowns out his voice.
I can’t breathe. I can’t focus as the man speaks. Leaning forward slightly, I manage to control my breaths. In and out, in and out.
“Are you—”
I cut off his question, but I can’t complete the statement as I say, “I recognize …”
My throat is tight. With my eyes closed, all I can see are the glimpses of last night.
“Recognize what?”
He had to have known I would recognize it from the cases. Analysis will point them there. To my cases. The unsolved ones that the fucking reporter brought up only a month ago.
“I got my father killed,” I blurt out and I don’t know why it sounds so truthful to my ears.
My hands shake at the thought of this all leading to me. Shoving them in my lap, I try to decipher Marcus’s intent. Why lead them to himself? To cases I’ve worked on? Other than to keep me as a suspect or involved in some way.
“This is bad. I need …”
I can’t think straight as my head swarms with the onslaught of coincidence.
I come into town.
The handwriting of the note matches my cold cases.
I kept my mother from coming in, who now isn’t speaking.
The heat that runs along my skin is fire, but still I feel cold as ice.
“You can tell me whatever it is you need,” Gallinger presses and I don’t fail to notice that Skov has stopped pacing, watching me intently.
“I need Cody Walsh,” I tell him and focus once again on breathing in and out. My palms press against the metal table just to feel something in this moment. “When you run forensics, you’ll find they match cold cases. They’re our cases from years ago. We suspected a serial killer named Marcus.”
“You think he killed your father?”
“Or he’s framing me.” I whisper the fear at the same time a realization comes over me.
“According to the mortician, he was dead hours before you arrived,” Skov says, piping up.