Killman Creek (Stillhouse Lake #2)(24)

“So,” I say to him, “Officer—”

“Turner, ma’am.”

“Officer Turner, was calling me by a dead name a power play, or just a mistake?”

He leans back with a creak of plastic, and he considers me with the expressionless eyes of someone who’s been in law enforcement for years. He’s considering which approach to take: bully, or country-boy charm. Neither will work, but it’s a little interesting to watch his internal debate.

He decides to go with country-boy charm, and when he speaks again, his voice is warmer, with a touch more drawl, and he’s even managed a bashful smile. “I admit, ma’am, I thought that might throw you off balance. I apologize if I upset you. Mind if we start over?”

“Sure,” I tell him, with a smile every bit as false. “What can I do for you, Officer Turner?”

“I just need you to start from the beginning and tell me how you came to be up there around that cabin, ma’am. How you got the idea to go up there, what happened, that sort of thing.”

I sigh. “I don’t suppose I could coax a cup of coffee out of you for it, could I?”

He falls for it, though only to the extent of going to the hallway, motioning to someone, and presumably ordering up my caffeine. He’s all smiles when he comes back. I summon up one in answer, though I’m not feeling it. “Now,” he says, settling in again, “you were saying?”

I toy with just answering I wasn’t, and asking for a lawyer; I’m still not sure I don’t really need one. The evidence can read a lot of ways, and neither Sam nor I planned on having to answer these questions. So I say, “Mind if I ask one question first?”

He considers, then nods. “Go ahead.”

“Did you find any bodies in there?”

More considering, and then a slow shake of his head. “Can’t rightly say. So what exactly brought you up to that cabin, Ms. Proctor?” He’s allowed to lie to me, of course. It’s a time-honored tradition in interrogations, although I haven’t yet been advised of my rights. Which is telling.

I stick to my story, the first part of which is true: that we were hoping to discover some information about someone who was helping my ex-husband evade capture. That gets an eyebrow raise, but no comment. It’s exactly what Sam’s going to say. We’ve already determined that truth is our best defense, up to a point . . . any other explanation is going to invite suspicion, with my obviously sinister ex in the background. I tell him about the open door and how we cautiously ventured inside. Just as I rehearsed it.

“And what did you find?”

“Nothing,” I lie, easy as breathing. I’m not giving up what we brought out of there. “We didn’t have time.”

“You just . . . went on in?”

“The door was open,” I say blandly. “We thought he might have been hurt or in trouble.”

“Never crossed your mind a guy like that might shoot you dead for walking in on him?”

I shrug. Don’t answer. Stupidity isn’t a crime. He has nothing to coax out of that, except the fact that both Sam and I were armed, of course. But legally. Trespassing is a thin charge, at best. He won’t bother, unless he thinks he can pin something bigger on top of it.

Officer Turner alters his body language into let’s-be-frank. For him, it involves leaning forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, and tenting his big hands together. “Ms. Proctor,” he says, “right now, local officers in Tennessee are going through your house up there at Stillhouse Lake, looking for anything that links you to your ex-husband. Your phone records are being analyzed. We know you went to see him before he broke out. You got something you want to get off your chest now, before those results come to light? Might do you some good.”

Amateur. I went through years of this, from interrogators far better—and worse—than he is. I gaze at him thoughtfully for a moment, and then I say, “I hate Melvin Royal. He’s hunting me, Officer Turner. Do you know how that feels? Do you really think I want to help him? Because if you stand me in front of him and give me a gun, I will not hesitate to put a goddamn bullet in that man’s head.”

I mean every word of it, with an intensity that takes even my own breath away.

Turner slowly leans back, hands smoothing flat against his thighs. He’s got those lightless, merciless eyes that all cops seem to share, the ones that are constantly taking in everything and giving back nothing. For all his awkwardly folksy manner, he’s a shark.

There’s a knock at the door, and Turner gets up to retrieve two flimsy cups. He hands one to me, and I gratefully wrap cold hands around it. The coffee is a crime in itself, but at least it’s warm, and it cuts the astringent hospital smell. This place stinks of fear and despair and boredom, of unwashed people whose body odor has soaked into the couches. There’s a tiny, sad little play area in the corner for kids. It’s currently deserted, but I think of Lanny and Connor, only ten and seven when a car smashed into Melvin’s garage and revealed his horrors to the world. In my gut, they’ll always be that age. That vulnerable, shattered age.

“You want to tell me what was in that basement?” I ask Turner, cutting my eyes suddenly to him. It startles him a little. “Because our guy didn’t want anybody to see it. Whatever it was.”

“It’s pretty well destroyed,” he tells me. “Ain’t nobody going to get down there to take a good look for a while. Going to be hours before it’s safe. We might still find bodies.”