Broken (29 page)

“How’s the baby?” Berg asked, not wanting to start with anything that would give away their agenda.

“Good, getting bigger every day,” she replied. If she was puzzled as to why they were at her office, she didn’t show it. “It’s a bittersweet time, though, because as soon as the baby is born, my parents will switch off Emma’s life support. So it’s hard to be overly excited about the impending birth.”

“Of course. And when do you think that will be?” Arena asked.

“In about two weeks. A few days and little Emma will measure approximately thirty weeks. They’ll give Em steroid injections to mature the baby’s lungs, and hopefully, after a few weeks in the NICU, the baby will be fine. She’s a fresh start for all of us.”

“That’s great news! You must be delighted?” Berg asked.

“Of course,” Elizabeth said without a smile.

They were interrupted by a timid knock on Elizabeth’s door.

“Excuse me, detectives,” she said. “Yes?” she called out then sighed, clearly exasperated.

“Ah . . . I’m sorry to bother you, Ms. Young,” a young man said timidly. “Mr. Bakker was after the Tindall brief he asked you to do last week?”

“He’ll get it when he gets it. I’m working on it now.”

“Uh . . . okay.”

Elizabeth glared at him until he left. Picking up the phone, she punched a few numbers. “Grant?” she asked icily. “Where is the brief I asked you to do? It was meant to be on my desk this morning!” She shook her head as the person on the other end obviously tried to make an argument. “I don’t give a crap if you think it’s your job or not, get it in here ASAP!” She only seemed to take two breaths before interrupting. “If you’ve got a problem, take it up with Edwin. Do you want to go and do that?”

Arena turned to Berg and mouthed ‘wow’ in disbelief as Elizabeth reamed her subordinate for not producing work she had been asked to do.

Berg inclined her head in agreement.

“I thought not. You’ve got thirty minutes,” Elizabeth said and slammed the phone down. “Sorry,” she said to the detectives. “The incompetence in this place is unbelievable.”

“So you’ve moved out? Were your parents upset?” Berg asked.

Elizabeth frowned slightly. “I’m sorry, why are you here?”

“We were in the area,” Arena replied. “Thought we’d drop in.”

“Okay,” she said, shrugging.

If Berg hadn’t suspected otherwise, she’d have thought Elizabeth was a normal, driven young law professional who had suffered an undeserved tragedy.

Elizabeth shook the confusion off her face and answered Berg’s question. “No, my parents understood. I can’t ever go back to where . . . the house belongs to the bank now anyway.”

“So you’re enjoying your new place?” Berg asked.

“It’s lovely to have my own space after years of living with my parents.”

“Lovely house. Must’ve been expensive?” Arena asked, feigning the kind of social gaucheness that people expected from him anyway.

Elizabeth shot him a look of irritation. “I got a good deal. Property’s slumped, as you know. And living with my parents for all those years meant I was able to save some money.”

“You put nearly ninety thousand dollars, in cash, in that house. That’s more than
some money
,” Berg said.

“You checking up on me?” Elizabeth asked, smiling.

Berg scrutinized the woman sitting in front of her. She was very cool and calm, and not in the least bit ruffled by their presence. Her smile was genuine—nothing about it forced. It looked almost like she enjoyed the unexpected questions.

“As I said, I managed to save a large amount of money over the years.” She leaned back in her very expensive chair, the view framing her like a mink stole, her hands clasped loosely in her lap.

Berg didn’t know much about law firms, granted, but her exclusive office seemed out of place for a paralegal, especially one who had only been employed for two years.

Elizabeth stared at them, calmly awaiting their next question. She volunteered nothing, not once feeling the need to fill the silences the detectives deliberately left.

Berg seethed inside but remained calm to an observer. “I guess you were happy to get out of the house anyway, given your parents’ behavior toward you.”

“What do you mean?” Elizabeth asked, frowning.

“Well, there’s the obvious . . . favoritism . . . toward Emma.”

“There’s no favoritism at all,” Elizabeth said. “Emma’s been seriously injured and is not going to recover. If my parents seem to be overly attentive to her right now, that’s only fitting, wouldn’t you say?”

“So the favoritism only started after Emma’s attack?” Berg asked, leaning forward.

“There is no favoritism,” Elizabeth repeated firmly, staring into Berg’s eyes steadily.

“Weird,” Berg said. “Do you find that weird, Arena?” Berg spoke to him without turning her head or breaking the strange eye contact she had with Elizabeth.

“Yeah, very. Because in all the interviews we’ve done, everyone has commented on the clear favoritism. Odd.”

A spark of irritation crossed Elizabeth’s face, and before she could smooth the mask back into place, her phone rang. Finally breaking eye contact with Berg, she picked it up and placed it to her ear, listening intently. “I’ll be there in a moment,” she said into the receiver. “Please excuse me,” she said politely.

As soon as Elizabeth walked out of range, Berg sprang up and walked around to the front of Elizabeth’s desk, opening drawers.

“Berg!” Arena whispered, looking around to check that no one was looking. “What the hell are you doing? We don’t have a search warrant!”

“Just looking.”

“In full view of about three hundred lawyers? Are you nuts?” Arena’s voice was frantic as he watched Berg quickly check through Elizabeth’s drawers.

“Calm down. Just let me know if she comes back.” Berg got down on her knees and looked in the bottom drawers, the top ones yielding nothing of interest.

Arena swore and got up to stand by the door. “Hurry up!”

“Bingo!” Berg cooed in delight, holding up a worn
Realm of Blood
handbook.

“So?” he whispered, keeping a lookout. “She’s a gamer, big deal.”

“Pretty coincidental, wouldn’t you say? Elizabeth plays the very game that caused Buchanan to attack and murder her sister. This could be the link between Elizabeth and Buchanan—how they met and how she manipulated him into killing Emma.”

“Not likely!” Arena argued back, his voice still low. “About eleven million people play the game worldwide!”

“Then how come she never mentioned it?”

“She didn’t mention she’s a gamer dork? Color me shocked. Shit! She’s coming. Get back in your chair!”

Berg scrambled out from behind the desk and plopped back down on the chair, not a hair out of place.

Arena was only a fraction of a second behind her.

“Sorry!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “Where were we?”

“We were discussing how your parents loved Emma more,” Berg said flatly.

Elizabeth’s laugh sounded a bit forced. “Actually, I believe I was saying that
wasn’t
true.”

“And we’ve got statements to the contrary,” Arena said.

Elizabeth sighed. “Look, I don’t really want to say anything unflattering about my sister.” Elizabeth’s face seemed to crumple. “Especially not when she’s only got a couple of weeks left.” She choked and made a show of wiping away tears with a tissue from a box on her desk.

Berg resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. “Why would you be saying anything bad about your sister?” she asked. “If anything, your parents are at fault here, not Emma, and not you.”

Elizabeth looked down, before making up her mind. “I love my sister,” she said. “But she has—
had
—her . . . problems. My parents were only trying to protect me with their behavior. Obviously, no one outside the family could possibly know this.”

“What do you mean?” Berg asked, curious. “How were your parents protecting you by playing favorites?”

“I am my parents’ favorite,” Elizabeth said. “I know that for a fact. How could I not be? I’m smarter, more independent, and more successful than Emma ever was, but they could never show it because Emma would fly into jealous rages anytime they showed me any affection. It was that way from when she was quite small. Believe me, detectives, I grew up with bruises all over me because my sister couldn’t control herself. Everything my parents did, they did to protect me.”

Berg and Arena were so stunned by the wild claim, that they were momentarily speechless.

“Your sister was physically violent toward you?” Berg asked after collecting herself.

“Yes. I remember, when I was young, she would pinch herself then run off to Daddy and tell him I’d pinched her, showing him the mark. But I loved and adored her anyway. As she got older, she learned to control herself a little better, but she still had her bad days.”

“And your parents never did anything about it?”

“What could they do without putting her in special care? And if they tried, it got worse. Emma would find ways to hurt me when they weren’t watching . . . find ways to leave no marks. If that failed, she would just hurt herself and say that I’d done it so I would be punished.”

Berg decided to change tack—the claims were getting more outrageous and she soon wouldn’t be able to stop herself from arguing. “You ever play
Realm of Blood
?”

“That’s a strange question,” Elizabeth said, raising her eyebrows.

“Are you stalling?”

Elizabeth stared at Berg then flicked her gaze to the desk drawer. A hint of a smile played across her lips before she rearranged it back to neutral once more. “Yes, actually. After what happened to Em, I wanted to try and understand what the killer was thinking, so I tried it. Didn’t get very far!” She rolled her eyes and chuckled. “It’s insane how people can get so caught in a make-believe world.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Berg cocked an eyebrow. “You didn’t play it before the attack?”

“No. Never.”

“So you didn’t know Buchanan before the attack?”

“Of course not!” Elizabeth threw her hands over her chest. With her mouth slightly gaping, she was the very picture of outrage. “Look, this chat has been lovely, but I have a lot of work to catch up on. Goodbye, detectives,” she said.

Berg stood, looking at Elizabeth’s spotless desk. There wasn’t a single scrap of paper anywhere on its surface, and she doubted the woman had ever done any of her own work at all. “Of course. We don’t want to take up any more of your time, do we?” she said, directing the last remark to Arena.

Arena also stood.

“And in future, if you want to know what’s in my desk, all you have to do is ask. I have nothing to hide,” Elizabeth said, smiling.

Berg and Arena turned to leave.

“You know,” Elizabeth said, grabbing the detectives’ attention once more. “I heard gossip around the courts about a couple of local detectives who nearly let a killer walk free because of bad police work. I do hope the department’s not becoming rife with that kind of thing. I can’t imagine that’s been good for their careers, can you?” She smiled sweetly.

Berg laughed softly, all semblance of civility gone. “I’ve heard that story, too. Turns out that murderer’s appeal was quashed two weeks ago. He’ll be serving two life sentences, right where all murderers end up if I have anything to say about it.”

The detectives walked out of the office without waiting for a reply.

Berg seethed. Elizabeth had drawn a line in the sand and was daring her to step over it.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Even flow, thoughts arrive like butterflies.

Oh, he don’t know, so he chases them away.

Someday yet, he’ll begin his life again.

–Pearl Jam, “Even Flow”

“B
itch!” Berg stepped onto the elevator and slammed her fist into the button for the ground floor.

“Yeah, wow. She’s a piece of work.” Arena scrubbed his chin and sighed. “I can’t believe she rubbed Feeny in our faces!”

Berg swore again.

At least the Feeny bit was true.

Carla had presented the new evidence to the judge—albeit through gritted teeth because of where it had come from—which had actually rendered Feeny’s asshole lawyer speechless, and Feeny’s appeal claiming a coerced confession had been thrown out. Thanks to the statement from the shooter, his testimony, plus corroborating voice recordings and CCTV footage of the money exchange from a nearby gas station, the appeal had never even gained traction. It had been a satisfying moment, which would have been improved only by seeing Feeny’s face when he’d gotten the news. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been in court seeing as he was still in protective custody in an out of state prison under an alias, where he’d remain for the duration of his life to shield him from gang reprisals.

Leigh cackled with laughter inside her head.