Furious, I swing around and snarl, “I didn’t go searching for her, asshole. She came to us. She admitted to the crime, and she’s old enough to be tried in an adult court.”
“You have blurry images of a person driving Josey’s car. You see a hand and the top of a hat. Any decent lawyer will fuck you up the day this goes to trial.”
“I have hair inside a hat.”
“She could’ve borrowed her brother’s hat anytime!”
Scott scoffs. “I wouldn’t have let her if she asked.”
“I have a phone, and soon, I’ll have text messages attached to a warrant.”
“Teenagersknowabout disappearing messages, stupid. If she wanted to be sneaky, she’d know how to do it without texts being on record.”
“Her father hit on Josey, too!”
Rhonda releases a horrified gasp and spins on her husband. “You, what?”
Oop. Guess she didn’t know about that one.
“She was a child, Geoffrey!”
“She was an adult,” he barks back. “And it doesn’t matter anyway. I know I didn’t hurt that girl.” He brings smug eyes back to me. “You’re throwing spaghetti at the wall, Detective Malone. But keep going. It’s all on record, and it’ll help me in court when I sue your ass.”
“I’m not going down with this lawsuit,” Drake sneers. “I don’t do witch hunts. You’re on your own.”
“It’s not a fucking witch hunt.” I throw the bouncy ball until it slaps his chest and drops into his hand. “It’s doing our actual jobs. Maybe you could try it sometime.”
He pegs it straight back until I feel the slap in the center of my palm.
“Okay then, dipshit. You have circumstantial, at best: a hat, a pair of coveralls, and a grainy picture. How do you propose she got her ass back to town after she dumped Josey and the car?”
“Well… uh…” Stumped, I frown. “She’s run track her whole life. She has the stamina for it.”
“That’s five miles. You’re saying she did all that, didn’t get a single drop of blood on her, dug a hole and buried the evidence, jogged back to town—in August, by the way, so she would’ve been sweaty as hell—and made it back in time for her mom to collect her from the mall and drive her home?”
“Her mom didn’t drive her home! Are you even paying attention?”
“My friends drove me home,” Tara murmurs shakily.
I toss my bouncy ball straight across the table and watch with bubbling pride as the girl catches it with her right hand.
She lobs it back, so I throw it one last time.
Rhonda catches it. With herlefthand.
“The knife came with a left-handed grip, Detective Banks. The ironing board isweirdbecause it has a left-handed release.”
Horrified, Rhonda drops the ball and stares at it bouncing listlessly across the room.
“The medical examiner’s office said the killer cut Josey’s throat from behind, left-hand dominant, and sliced right to left.”
Wide-eyed, Scott studies his mom in shock.
“And just so we’re all on the same page, Tara didn’t confess to murder, Mrs. Prim. She confessed to lying during our initial meeting. She told us you drove her to the mall, and when she was done shopping, you apparently drove her home again. But today, she confessed only half of that was true.”
Fat tears well up in Rhonda’s eyes.
“You called her, didn’t you? While she was at the mall. You said she had to get a ride home with her friends, because you were busy running your errands and needed a little extra time.”