Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(16)

Keith looked up, defiant. “They’re also my lawyers.”

Lonergan’s brows lifted, and he looked from one to the other, his mouth agape. “Both of them?”

The man sitting next to Keith stood and handed Lonergan a business card. “George Ainsley. This is my wife, Carole. We’re both partners in the law firm Scholden, Eagleton, and Ainsley. Our son, Keith, is formally represented. There’ll be no questions asked without either of us present. You got a free swipe at the hospital, even after he asked for us. There’ll be no more freebies.” He sat again, folding his hands on the table, his eyes and those of his wife as hard as mountains. “He’s aware of his rights. We agree to voluntarily submit to questioning. But we can and will end this at any time. Clock’s ticking.”

“He’s aware, but just so we’re covered . . . ,” Foster said. She read Keith his rights, inwardly pleased that his parents were there.

Carole Ainsley glared at Foster, contempt in the look. “You didn’t bother with that at the hospital. That how you treat all the Black boys, or is my son somehow special?”

“I asked for his cooperation; he gave it,” Foster said, matching Carole’s death glare. “It was just a conversation.”

“A white woman is killed, and you sweep up the first Black kid you see, that it?” said George Ainsley.

“We woulda swept up Jesus if we found him passed out next to a body,” Lonergan said. “Don’t make this something it isn’t.”

Carole’s wrath shifted to Lonergan. “It’s always about what it’s really about, isn’t it? With some of you.”

Foster took a seat across from them, opened her file, then rested her hands on top, letting the tension sit for a moment.

She turned to Keith. “Hopefully you’ve had time to clear your head. Can you tell us what you were doing on the Riverwalk last night? Where you were before midnight? Who you were with?”

It was his father who spoke. “First, what do you have?”

Lonergan sat quietly as Foster ran through the case briefly—Birch, Pratt, the officers finding Keith unconscious. She emphasized Keith’s proximity to the body and the blood found on his jacket, which made his presence on the scene suspicious and worthy of further discussion.

“Her blood?” Carole asked.

Foster didn’t answer. She didn’t have to be a psychic to see where this was going.

“You can’t say, because you don’t know,” the woman said. “You have a weapon? No, you don’t, or you would have revealed this, and he’d be in lockup already. So you have my son in the vicinity of a murder victim and a spot of blood of unknown origin on his jacket. And he was unconscious when the police arrived, so anyone could have happened by and touched him . . . even one of them.”

Lonergan leaned forward, his face growing red. “Wait. Are you sayin’ we framed him?”

George Ainsley ignored the question and jumped in. “Then he was transported to the ER, under guard, and after inexpert questioning, during which he was confused and dazed, he’s brought here for interrogation, suspected of murder.” He sat back, his eyes hard, prepared to go toe to toe. “Two things. One, there are enough holes in this to drive a Mack Truck through. And two, you’ve picked the wrong Black boy this time. This one’s got money, and he’s got us. You’re going to have to work a little harder.” The room quieted as his words landed.

“Where’d you get the Klonopin?” Foster asked, watching Keith Ainsley sitting small in between his parents. He looked shell shocked, overloaded. How quickly a life could turn. This had to be the worst day of his young life. He didn’t answer. “There was a march downtown yesterday. Did you go to that?”

Carole placed a palm over her son’s hands, which he’d folded on the table. “Don’t answer that.”

Foster sat back, dead in the water. “Look, we’re trying to figure this out.”

“Really?” There was no masking the woman’s skepticism. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a detective once who was in it to ‘figure it out.’” She flicked a distrustful look at Lonergan, whose face had turned to stone.

Foster slid a sheet with five photos on it toward Keith, Peggy Birch’s image among them. “Do any of these women look familiar to you?”

George reached out and picked up the sheet, studying it before passing it to his son. “You can answer.”

Keith took a look, then shook his head. “No.”

“Do you own a hunting knife, Keith?” Foster asked.

Carole banged her fist on the table. “He does not.”

Foster waited a moment. She needed an answer from the kid, not his mother. “Keith?”

He turned to his mother, then his father, checking to see if it was okay for him to answer. They each gave him a subtle nod. “No,” he said. “I don’t hunt.”

Foster studied him for a time. “Did you go into any of the restaurants or bars along the Riverwalk yesterday? Did you drive downtown or take the bus? Which friends do you think you were with on Sunday?”

Carole tapped her son on the hand again. A signal. There was, apparently, something in the barrage of questions she would allow him to address.

“Me and some friends went to the march. I remember that. Afterward, we hung out. Maybe I had a couple beers.” He slid his mother a look. Legal drinking age was twenty-one. He was in violation, though a murdered woman rather trumped the Class A misdemeanor.