Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(50)

“Don’t answer that,” George said. “What developments?”

“A woman was found murdered this morning,” Foster said. “Stabbed like Peggy Birch. Her body discovered not far from the Riverwalk.”

“Keith was here all night,” Carole Ainsley blurted out, knowing full well where this was all going.

“Yeah, we’re kinda gonna have to hear that from him,” Lonergan said in his nice-nasty way, which Foster knew would put the Ainsleys off. It took less than three seconds to have that confirmed.

“You’re hearing it from us,” George hissed. “He was home. He’s been home since he was released. You have another murder?” He cocked his head toward his son. “He’s not your guy.”

Foster scooted forward on the sofa, cleared her throat. “There’s the matter of blood. There was a spot found on Keith’s jacket. It turned out not to be Peggy Birch’s or his.”

“Which is why you can’t connect him to any crime,” Carole said, anger building. “So why are you here?”

Foster waited a second to see if Lonergan weighed in. He did not. “There was a similar spot of blood on our second victim. It hints at a connection. If Keith remembers a little more about Sunday, maybe he can help us figure out where the blood came from.” Her eyes locked onto Carole Ainsley’s. Foster could see the fear in the woman’s eyes. She was fighting for her kid’s life. The outrage was just the part the world saw.

Foster sat quietly as the three Ainsleys conferred, their heads close together, their voices reduced to gruff whispers. Two murders ramped things up. The unanswered question of the unidentified blood on Keith’s jacket, its similarity to the blood found on Rea’s thigh, kept him in the frame. Though inwardly she felt for Keith and could see the toll all of this had taken on him, she had two killings to contend with. If there was even a possibility that he held the key to understanding it all, she needed him to tell her.

The conferring stopped. The Ainsleys’ heads separated, and all three glared at Foster and Lonergan. A united front. Keith flicked a look at his parents and got dual nods back. Foster’s heart raced.

“I can’t tell you anything else about Sunday,” Keith said. “But for the other time you’re talking about, I was playing Mortal Kombat.”

Lonergan laughed. “You what? By yourself? All night?”

“Online with a friend. Jean-Pierre. He’s in Paris. Maybe we played a few hours, not all night. But I never left my house.”

Foster let a beat go. Mortal Kombat. Reggie used to play it. “Did you record your game?” she asked. He nodded. “Show us?”

Keith checked with his parents, then got up and left the room, and the temperature, already frigid, dropped another thousand degrees, the contemptuous looks from the Ainsleys as corrosive as acid tossed on a marshmallow. Foster was sure they got Lonergan. He wasn’t a deep well. Foster was the one they looked at as though she’d ratted them out to slave catchers. But she didn’t wither under their stares. She hadn’t a single ax to grind. On the contrary, she was making sure Keith got the same benefit of the doubt everybody else got.

“You know, we didn’t come lookin’ for your son just for kicks,” Lonergan said. “He was there. We’re just supposed to ignore that?”

George Ainsley sat as cold as death itself. “This is probably the first place you came when you found the second woman, isn’t it? Keith’s name was the one and only that popped into your head, despite the fact you’ve got nothing on him.”

“We’re pursuin’ all avenues,” Lonergan said. “You explain the blood.”

“You know what’s at stake,” Carole said, and she said it directly to Foster.

Foster didn’t answer because she didn’t have to. Carole Ainsley hadn’t asked a question; she’d made a statement. And she knew full well Foster knew exactly what the stakes were.

Keith returned moments later carrying a laptop with a caduceus on the lid. Seated between his parents again, he cued up the recording, let it play, and then swiveled the laptop around so Foster and Lonergan could see it. Foster leaned closer. The game was a noisy clash of chains and crossbows, swords, and weirdly dressed alien-like characters hurling fireballs and jumping all over the place, the action fast and loud and incomprehensible to the average adult. She asked Keith to run it through to the end so that she could see how long he’d played, then pause it there so she could note the elapsed time. She didn’t know how the whole thing worked, but she could clearly see that Keith had been playing the game with someone.

“And your opponent in this is Jean-Pierre?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Keith said.

She underlined the time the game ended. Twelve thirty-nine a.m. Local. It didn’t matter what that translated to in Paris. Jean-Pierre wasn’t her concern, but to be thorough, she asked, “Last name?”

“Bernard. We started about nine thirty last night and played for about three hours. JP’s got insomnia. I haven’t been sleeping that much either lately.”

“Would you mind running it again?” Foster asked.

As the game replayed, Foster focused on the time in the right-hand corner, watching as the digital numbers advanced seconds at a time. The game had lasted two hours and forty-seven minutes precisely, followed by a two-minute sign-off, taking place at the very time Mallory Rea was thought to have been killed.