Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(54)

“The third thing we’d look at for a suicide,” D.D. continued relentlessly, “is the blood spatter. If someone else was in the room, if someone else pulled the trigger, that person would be subject to blowback, or spray from the impact of the shotgun pellets entering the body. Meaning we should have at least one person covered in spatter.”

She stared hard at Evie, who sputtered: “I walked in … the blood … it dripped down on me …”

“We’d also have a void in the spatter. A clean spot in, say, the floor or countertop, where the shooter’s body blocked any droplets from landing.” D.D. tapped a third photo, where, sure enough, bloody spray appeared above and to the sides of Hopkins’s body, but directly in front …

“Your father didn’t commit suicide,” D.D. stated firmly. “The evidence has now been reviewed several times by several different experts. There was someone else in the room, and that person shot him.”

Evie opened her mouth, shut her mouth. “You think I’m lying now,” she whispered at last.

“I think your story sixteen years ago is a better fit with the evidence than the line of bull you tried to feed me yesterday.”

“Sergeant,” Delaney started again.

“Why would I lie? I only did it back then to protect my father.”

“You father, or your mother?”

“My mother was with me! We’d gone out shopping. Surely, you can find a witness, pull store security tapes. A credit card receipt. Something that proves we were together.”

“From sixteen years ago?”

“I thought he’d killed himself! He’d been … off. Not himself. And genius and suicide …” Evie shrugged, sounding genuinely distressed.

“Your father did not commit suicide.”

“I didn’t shoot him!”

“So you’re a liar, but not a killer. And Friday night, with your husband?”

“Sergeant! This line of questioning is over!”

“Not so fast, Counselor. Your client came to me yesterday, recanting her story from sixteen years ago. She’s the one who reopened this can of worms. Based on her new statement, the case of Earl Hopkins is no longer being considered accidental. We’re now treating it as an active homicide, and you know the statute of limitations on homicide—there isn’t one.”

“I didn’t do it!” Evie, still aghast, pounded her water bottle against the table. “I would never harm my father!”

“But your husband? The guy with rolls of cash and nearly half a dozen fake IDs?”

“We’re out of here.” Delaney was already on his feet, pulling at Evie’s arm. The woman, however, continued to resist. And it wasn’t the allegations about her husband that had her agitated. Clearly, she was still distressed about her father. Even sixteen years later, it was all about her father.

She was gazing at D.D. wildly now. “My hair. You took photos of my hair. Samples. I remember that!”

D.D. nodded slowly.

“Test it. Have it reexamined. You can, can’t you? I don’t understand it all, but I watch crime shows. You can prove directionality from blood spatter, right? Say, the difference between this blowback you’re talking about, versus contact smear from someone entering the room right afterwards.”

“I don’t know if we have enough evidence,” D.D. said, which wasn’t entirely untrue.

“Test it. Do whatever you have to do. I didn’t kill my father. I didn’t! All these years.” Her voice broke off. “I assumed the worst about him.”

“Him, or your mother?”

“She was with me. I’m telling you the truth. My mom is crazy, I know, but she loved him. They loved each other. I don’t know. Not all relationships are meant to be understood by outsiders—”

“Talking about your husband again?”

“My mom didn’t do this,” Evie repeated more firmly. She seemed to be pulling herself together now, allowing her lawyer to guide her to standing. “She, me, we didn’t do this. All these years, we thought he shot himself. That’s why we lied. Not to protect ourselves. But to protect him. If you’d met him, if you’d talked to him … My father was a great man. He deserved better than to go down in the history books as one more depressed genius.”

“Then who, Evie?” D.D. rose to standing. “Who would have motive to shoot your father? Did he have professional rivals? Failing students? Jealous husbands? Someone pulled that trigger. If not you, then who?”

“I … I have no idea.” Evie glanced helplessly at her lawyer. It was all he needed.

“This interview is over. You asked for answers from my client and she provided them. You want to learn anything else, Officers, I suggest you go out and—here’s a thought—do some detecting.”

Delaney guided his client around the table. But Evie’s gaze was still glued to the photos as she walked by. Fascinated. Fixated. Frustrated.

That she finally realized all these years later she’d lied for nothing? Or because she’d just discovered yesterday’s attempt at changing her story was never going to work?

D.D. still couldn’t figure it. But there was something about the way Evie looked at the photos that tugged at her, made her wonder if that woman hadn’t told her the truth yesterday after all.