There Is No Devil (Sinners Duet, #2)(35)

“Did you see Mara there?”

I hesitate a fraction of a second, distracted by the vivid image of the first time I laid eyes on her. I see the wine splashing across her dress, soaking into the cotton, dark as blood.

“Well?” Hawks prompts me, leaning forward, blue eyes keen behind his glasses.

“Yes, I saw her. Only for a moment, early in the night.”

“But you didn’t see her leave.”

“No.”

Hawks lets the silence stretch between us. This is an age-old technique, to encourage me to add on to my statement. To get me babbling.

I keep my mouth firmly shut. Smiling at Hawks. Waiting with equal patience.

Hawks switches tactics.

“How long have you known Alastor Shaw?”

“We went to art school together.”

“Really.”

He didn’t know that. Sloppy, sloppy, officer.

I can tell he’s annoyed at the omission—color rises up from the collar of his shirt.

“The Siren called you rivals,” Hawks says.

“The Siren likes to stir up drama.”

“You’re not rivals?”

“I don’t believe in rivalry—I’m only in competition with myself.”

“Would you call yourselves friends?”

“Not particularly.”

“Just another acquaintance.”

“That’s right.”

Hawks is tiring of these bland answers. He sucks a little air through his teeth.

“I’m surprised you agreed to meet with me without your lawyer present. You were adamant that any communication with Mara go through your attorney.”

“I still am. She was treated disrespectfully by the police after she was attacked.”

“That wasn’t my department.”

“I don’t care who it was. It won’t happen again.”

“But you’re not concerned about being … disrespected.”

“I’m sure you know better than that.” I smile at Officer Hawks. He doesn’t smile back.

“Where were you the night of November second?” he abruptly asks.

“I have no idea. Do you remember where you were on random evenings weeks past?”

“Do you keep a calendar?”

“No.”

“Does your secretary?”

“No.”

This is true. I don’t allow Janice to keep any record of my appointments. Sonia memorizes my schedule—but she certainly wouldn’t recite it for Hawks.

“Do you know a woman named Maddie Walker?”

“No.”

Hawks takes a photograph out of the inside breast pocket of his sport coat. He slides it across the table toward me.

I look at the picture without touching it. It shows a dark-haired girl laying on a steel table, eyes closed, clearly dead. Her skin bluish-gray, mottled with bruises around the jaw. Shaw was rough when he wrenched her mouth open and stuffed a snake in it.

I recognize her from the top floor of the tenements, where Shaw had her strung up in his spiderweb.

I want to rip his fucking throat out, remembering how he lured me up there and trapped me, calling in a fleet of cops to catch me with the body.

It was a stupid mistake, one that still humiliates me. But I can’t let any hint of that emotion show on my face.

Hawks watches closely for a reaction. That’s why he gave me a photo of the corpse and not a picture of the girl taken when she was still alive. He’s looking for clues on my face.

Do I recognize her? Am I shocked by the image?

Or, most damning of all:

Am I man surveying my own work?

Am I satisfied?

Am I aroused …

Blandly, I say to Hawks, “I’ve never met her.”

“She was killed in the Mission District. Police saw a man fleeing the scene. He was tall and dark-haired.”

“That only applies to half the men in San Francisco.”

“It applies to you.”

“And thousands of others.”

Hawks takes the photograph back, tucking it into his pocket once more, right against his heart.

He takes this personally. It’s not only ambition for him.

And he is losing patience with my stonewalling. Slowly and surely.

“Have you injured yourself lately?” he demands.

I never visited a doctor when I sprained my ankle jumping from that roof. It’s possible someone saw me limping in the week afterward, when I wrapped my ankle in a Tensor bandage and swallowed handfuls of painkillers until the swelling went down.

“Nothing comes to mind,” I say vaguely.

“Don’t have much of a memory, do you?” Hawks sneers.

“I like to keep my mind occupied with more interesting things than the minutia of my schedule and the time people leave parties.”

“What’s interesting to you?” Hawks asks, his jaw rigid, his hand still resting against the breast pocket of his jacket.

“I’m curious why you’re talking to me, and not to Shaw.”

“You think he attacked Mara? And killed her roommate?”

“That’s what Mara says.”

“You believe her.”

“She’s very perceptive.”