“Sure is gonna be awkward living next door to the mayor when he’s out there on the six o’clock news talking shit about you,” Scott taunts. “I won’t need a scholarship after this. You’ll fund my entire college education. Probably my future son’s college education, too.”
“Can we save the personal jabs, please?” I dig my hands into my pockets and bring both out again. One, to check my phone and the results Minka hasn’t sent yet, and the other, to hold the bouncy ball I kinda wanna stuff down Scott Prim’s future son’s smug throat.
Slipping my phone back into my pocket, I breathe a tired sigh and tossthe ball from hand to hand. “This is my job, and I’d really like to do it without fielding personal attacks, too.”
“You shoulda thought of that before you dragged my daughter into the police station and violated her legal rights! She didn’t hurt anybody, least of all an overpaid high schooler who wasn’t worth the money we gave her every week.”
“We were the reason she and her mom could even pay their rent,” Scott gloats. “Did you know that?”
No you weren’t, you snot-nosed sack of shit.
“It’s tragic she died,” Geoffrey adds. “Young, pretty girls like that deserve better. But this had nothing to do with Tara. Did you even look at her boyfriend?”
“Josey’s boyfriend?”
“Yeah. Statistics prove this was probably her boyfriend.”
“Word around school was that she was a frigid bitch.” Scott smirks. “Statisticsalsosay that girls from single-parent homes almost always repeat cycles and hook up with trailer trash dudes. Why isn’t he in here being questioned? It’s like you’re not even trying.”
“Well.. He has been questioned,” Drake inserts carefully. “We spoke to him before we spoke to you.”
“And?” Geoffrey demands. “Why isn’t he in cuffs?”
“Because people are not guilty until we can prove it.” I back up and rest against the mirror. Crossing my ankles, I settle in, since this shit is gonna take a while. We’ve got two hours to kill. “We need physical proof someone was at the scene of the crime. A murder weapon. A witness. DNA samples, if we’re lucky.”
“Or a confession,” Drake adds. “We have none of those things from her boyfriend.”
“You can’t possibly have any of those things from Tara either!” Scott snarls. “She’s too fuckin’ weak to kill someone. She’s too stupid. She wasn’t anywhere near Josey when she died.”
“But we have a confession.” Softening his expression, Drake drops his eyes and studies the silent, weeping girl slumped in her chair. “A confession is a big deal in our world.”
“A confession under duress is not a confession at all,” Rhonda murmurs. She takes Tara’s hand and looks hesitantly from me to Drake. “A confession from a scared, confused, grieving girl won’t stand up in court.”
“She told us about the knife,” I insert. “And how she walked from the mall to the movie theater while you were running errands.”
“No! She didn’t—” Pale-faced, she stares at her daughter. “That’s not true.”
“She told us how she texted Josey and asked her to meet up. And since Josey was a sweet girl, she agreed.”
“Impossible,” Geoffrey growls.
“We’ve made an application for phone records,” Drake adds. “We’re just waiting for a judge to sign off, then we’ll prove those texts exist.”
“Tara took Josey’s phone after she killed her. She thought that would be enough to cover up those last communications.”
“That’s so dumb!” Scott barks. “Everyoneknows that’s not how it works. If you want disappearing messages, you’d use Snap or something. My sister’s a social fucking retard, but even she knows this.”
Horrified, Rhonda looks to her son. “What?”
“We know Josey’s killer wore coveralls,” Drake continues. “Because slicing a person’s throat makes a huge mess.”
“And we know she took those coveralls from your garage.”
“You’re insane!” Geoffrey booms. “You can’t possibly prove any of this.”
“You had an asbestos problem late last year, right? It was just a small section of the exterior wall.”
“So?”