Deja Who (Insighter #1)(49)

“You can’t arrest her for making you mad!” he yelped, torn between taking a swing at a cop and getting his own set of cuffs, or trying to stay calm so he could bail Leah out.

“No, but he can arrest me because I have motive, means, and opportunity,” Leah told him, and the horrible hilarity of it was, she was trying to soothe him.

“But you were with me!”

“Yes, but we’re each other’s alibi.” Soothe, soothe. “If one of us is the killer—”

“What?”

“—my alibi is worthless. Oh, and so is yours. Plus I was recently here; my prints will be here somewhere.”

“You were her daughter! Of course your prints are here!”

He tried to beg her with his eyes. Leah liked his freak mismatched eyes, so he stared at her and thought really really hard: Do something! Come on, Leah, be your brilliant self and read my mind.

And she did.

“I do not deny it: I wanted her dead.”

Just not the way he expected.

“Wanting her dead is not a motive!” Archer howled.

She blinked. “I’m pretty sure it is. Also, my mother died in the picture of health. If someone hadn’t coshed her over the head with my Emmy, she could have lived for decades. Perhaps I was after her money. Which, the police will soon discover, is my money. She spent her life robbing me and my resentment is a matter of public record. I knew I should have told that stupid judge he used to be Lavinia Fisher.”

“Leah, stop it!”

“What? I haven’t said one thing that isn’t the complete truth. The judge was stupid, and he did used to be the first female mass murderer. And of course, all the things I said about Nellie, and my relationship to her, are true.”

“Don’t be . . .” He stopped, tried to calm down, tried again, softer. “Don’t be stupid.”

“I’ll be stupid whenever I like!” she snapped, a crack in her control showing at last. “You don’t get to decide when I’m stupid. I decide when I’m stupid. You are not the boss of how and when I am stupid!”

“Do you hear yourself? This is nuts. Tell him you didn’t kill her.”

And I thought it was weird when she stabbed me. That was the most normal interaction I’ve had with this woman. The stabbing!

“Oh, that reminds me, the murder weapon: my Emmy. Come on.” She glanced over her shoulder at Preston, who was cuffing her. “That’s pretty indicative, don’t you think? Symbolic of my crushing resentment, which I then used to crush her skull? It’s pretty perfect.”

“You have the right to remain silent,” Preston said, but he was talking like he wasn’t at all sure what he was saying. In fact, Preston looked like someone had hit him over the head with an Emmy. Just not repeatedly. There were three dangerous adults in the room (well, two at least) and none of them seemed to know what they were doing. Leah had that effect on people.

“Don’t feel bad, Aaron.” Leah actually sounded comforting now, instead of chilly. “It’s not your fault that the Boston Strangler was able to kill many more women because you were an ineffectual crybaby.”

“Leah!” Archer screamed, fingers plunging into his hair and yanking, hard.

“Don’t mind him,” Leah told the cop as he dragged her away. “He thinks I have it in me to be a good person. Isn’t that hilarious?”

“Actually,” Preston replied in a low voice, carefully steering her out of the room, “yeah.”





THIRTY-FOUR


“I’ve never had to do this before.”

“What?”

“Bail someone out of jail.”

Cat shrugged. “It’s easy. It’s just paperwork, right down to the money part. How much do you need?”

Appalled, Archer stood—no, practically leaped off the park bench. He’d watched them haul a weirdly cheerful Leah away, asked questions of the cops remaining at the scene, then came to the park to tell Leah’s only friend what had happened. “I’m not here for a loan.”

“Oh yeah?” She squinted up at him, deep brown eyes narrowed, one side of her mouth tipping up in a smirk. “You’ve got . . . hmm, let’s see . . . fifteen percent of a six-figure bail bond to piss away?”

“Uh . . .” Oh, shit. “Six figures?”

“If they arrested her for aggravated homicide, which it sounds like they did, yep.”

“Okay, I guess I am here for a loan.”

“Mmmm. Might not need it. I’m betting that detective’s boss is gonna look over the paperwork and have a chat with—what’s his name?”

“Preston. Except Leah kept calling him Aaron. I guess he used to be related to the Boston Strangler.”

“Trust Leah to not keep that to herself,” Cat said dryly, and Archer barked laughter. “Okay, well. Here’s how it goes: they would’ve arrested her and hauled her to jail, booked her. They would have taken her before the magistrate, but that’s assuming they’re really gonna stick with the homicide snatch. I don’t think they will.”

“Why? You weren’t there, Cat. She practically dared them to arrest her.”

Cat waved that away, then dug in one of her many sizeable tote bags and extracted a bag of carrots from the depths. She offered them to Archer, who declined with a head shake, then helped herself. Crunching, she continued. “Yeah, but they can’t afford to piss off the Insighters. Leah’s not popular, but she’s generally acknowledged as the best. Her colleagues will get pissy about it, and that’s gonna put pressure on the suits. The suits will pressure the cops, and shit flows downhill. The detective might let her go, or he’ll knock the homicide charge down to disturbing the peace or some horseshit like that. In which case, bail’s gonna be much cheaper. Since she was born here—”