Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(62)

DeMarco checked his wristwatch again: 10:07. “Where the fuck are you?” he said.

Finally he had to admit to himself that he had been wrong. Huston was not coming. DeMarco sent a text message to both troopers: Send her out. With luck, one of them would feel the vibration through the booming rattle of Def Leppard.

A quarter of an hour later, the door at the rear of the building swung open. A woman stood there in the yellow light, peering out, slowly scanning the row of vehicles. DeMarco could not see her face because she was backlit, but she was wearing loose slacks and a short-sleeved, collared shirt—not a dancer’s outfit. DeMarco opened his car door, leaned out, and said, “Over here,” blinked his flashlight once, then pulled his door shut.

Now Bonnie came toward him without hesitation, long, angry strides. Whispers’s door banged closed behind her, and in the sudden darkness, he lost her for half a minute, then found her again as she neared the front of his car. He leaned across the seat and popped open the passenger door.

She put both hands on the roof, bent down to look in at him. “All right, so what’s this about?”

“We’re having a conversation,” he told her. “Get in.”

She blinked twice, and now he saw the anger in her eyes for what it was, a mask for something else. When she spoke, there was no heat in her voice, only the chill of fear. “I have a business to run, you know.”

“Not if you don’t get in,” he said.

She drew back then, straightened up, looked toward Whispers. “This is bullshit,” she said. DeMarco said nothing. He was feeling better now, less jittery.

She climbed in and slammed the door and sat there glaring at him. He shut off the radio. Then he turned to her and smiled.

“This is harassment,” she said.

His smile did not waver. “Where were you two Thursday nights ago?” he asked.

He felt the flinch more than saw it, knew that even with the dome light on, he would not have seen it on her face but he had felt the negative energy of it, sudden and brief and then gone. “Where do you think I was?” she said. “Same place I always am. I was here. Working. Tending to my business.”

“If you’re going to start this conversation with a lie, Bonnie, we can have this conversation somewhere else. Someplace where the seats aren’t as comfortable.”

“Someplace I can have my lawyer present,” she said.

“That’s fine with me. I can hold you for questioning for seventy-two hours. You and me and your lawyer can have several conversations in seventy-two hours.”

She stared out the windshield.

DeMarco said, “I know you were with Thomas Huston that night. The Thursday night he missed coming here.”

“Yeah, right, I went to a literary reading. Probably my favorite thing to do.”

“Last time we talked you had no idea where Huston was that night.”

She was sitting hunched forward now, silent and still. Half a minute passed. She said, “I swear to God I didn’t do anything.”

“I know you didn’t. Why would you? You liked Thomas Huston; he liked you. You spent a lot of time together talking, didn’t you?”

“Who told you that?”

“So where did the two of you go on that Thursday?” he asked. “I know you were together. I know you spent the night together and it wasn’t at a literary event in Cincinnati. So you can either tell me where you were, or within twenty-four hours, I’ll find out for myself and be back here to arrest you and shut you down.”

“This is illegal, what you’re doing.”

“I’m questioning a witness, Bonnie. There’s nothing illegal about that. So far I have no reason to arrest you. But if I know that you’re withholding evidence, I do. And I will. So the choice is yours.”

He allowed her a few seconds to mull things over, then added, “Bear in mind that this is a homicide investigation. Not a trivial matter. Four people are dead. Three of them children.”

With every minute in the car, she had leaned slightly more forward in the seat, and now sat with her forehead nearly touching the dashboard, fists pressed tight to her stomach. He waited for her to sort out her options. A full minute passed. The thump of music from Whispers no longer bothered him. He was feeling calmer now.

“He took me to get an abortion,” she said.

Now it was DeMarco’s turn to flinch. “Thomas Huston did?”

“That’s who we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

“Took you where?”

“Cleveland. I had it done Thursday afternoon. We spent the night at the Super 8 out by the interstate. Then came home in the morning.”

“You know I can check all this out,” he told her.

“Do it,” she said. “It was the Cleveland Women’s Center on Water Street. I gave my name as Bonnie Jean Burns. He came up with the name. Apparently it’s from some old poem by somebody.”

“Why Huston?” DeMarco asked. “Why was he the one to take you there?”

Now she turned her head his way, looked at him through the darkness. “Why do you think?”

“You’re telling me that it was his baby?”

She sounded exhausted when she answered. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

“He was cheating on his wife with you?”