Sweet Poison (16 page)

Fiddling with his key ring, he found the one to Christopher’s Volvo, which was parked on the other side of the underground lot. Rushing across to it, he drew back the door, surprised to find an empty bottle of AriZona Tea in one of the beverage cups. As far as
he knew, he’d been the last person in the car. Christopher had driven it to the church on the day he was attacked. The car had stayed in the parking lot until Luke had returned from his business trip and moved it to the lot under the building, where it had sat unused ever since. But if nobody was driving it, where had the bottle come from?

The Volvo started instantly. So did the radio, which was tuned to a classical music station. Luke never listened to classical music. His first instinct was to head back up to the loft and confront Christopher. If he’d been out driving around, why hadn’t he mentioned it? But as he thought about it, he decided the question could wait. Christopher didn’t need anything more on his plate right now.

Four hours after Corey had been picked up by the police, he and Sergeant Emerson were still at it.

“Let’s go over it one more time,” said Emerson, arms folded across his barrel chest.

Corey was seated at a table in the same sort of utilitarian, bland meeting room he’d been in so many times before, where the smell of desperation hung in the air like the smell of dirty laundry. He hated the impersonality, as if he was just one more in a long line of nobodies, people who didn’t even rate a decent color scheme.

“You say you met Charity the first time you went to Raymond Lawless’s campaign office. That was last Sunday.”

“For the six hundredth time, yes.”

“And the next time you saw her—”

“A couple days later. On Tuesday.”

“Where?”

“I dropped by the bank where she worked. She opened a checking account for me. It was lunchtime, so we walked over to the park across the street and had something to eat.” Corey had said the same words so many times, it was like he’d memorized them. Emerson kept asking him the same damn things over and over again. He knew why. He was looking for even the slightest discrepancy. It was all a
game. If they wanted to arrest him, they would, no matter what he said or didn’t say.

“Where’d you get the food?” asked Emerson.

“Like I said, I stopped at a deli before I hit the bank. I bought some stuff to eat for after I was done opening the account. I had it in my saddlebag, so I shared it with her.”

“And you don’t have a receipt.”

“I don’t save receipts.”

Corey was tired, hungover, and so hungry his stomach was about to eat itself alive. They’d given him a cup of coffee. Big fucking deal.

“When did you see her next?” asked Emerson, chewing on a toothpick.

“The next night, at the campaign office.”

“Wednesday night?”

“Right.” He leaned in toward the table, dropped his head on his hand. “We talked. Maybe I flirted a little. Again, not against the law. And then I drove around awhile on my bike, had something to eat—”

“Where?”

“I told you. At a Burger King.”

“And after you went to Burger King?”

“I ended up at my ex-girlfriend’s house.”

“What route did you take?”

Corey repeated the same thing he’d been saying for four long hours.

“Your girlfriend’s name is Serena Van Dorn.”

“Right. But she wasn’t home, so I talked to the ‘new man’ in her life for a couple minutes. We exchanged pleasantries. I told you what we said, almost verbatim. And then I went back to my aunt’s house. And no, Mary can’t vouch for when I got back because she was asleep.”

“And yesterday? Take me through the entire day one more time.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Do it.”

Corey began again. He told the cop everything he could think of, ending with him going out to a bar with a few of his work buddies to watch a football game and have a couple beers.”

“For a workingman, you don’t sleep much.”

“I don’t have a curfew anymore.”

“And so, back to the night in question, Wednesday, from midnight until three in the morning, you have no alibi. Nobody saw you after you left your ex-girlfriend’s place.”

“Nope.”

“Come on, Corey. Are you really going to sit there and tell me you didn’t do it when we both know you did?”

He shook his head. “No way. I didn’t touch that woman.”

“You
want
to tell me, I know you do. If you get it off your chest, you’ll feel better.”

“I didn’t do it.”

The cop studied him a few more seconds. He seemed to like long pauses, seemed to enjoy watching Corey squirm.

“Let’s go over Wednesday night again.”

Corey groaned. But before he could begin his answer, a uniformed cop came into the room and handed Emerson a sheet of paper.

Emerson read through it quickly and thanked him. Sitting back in his chair, he sucked on his toothpick.

Something had changed. Corey could feel it.

“Let’s go back one more time to Wednesday night. What did you do at the campaign office?”

“I unloaded some boxes from a semi. Had a few smokes. Talked to a bunch of people, and then I took off.”

“You talked to Charity?”

“Sure. She was there. I even said I flirted with her.”

“And then you left on your cycle.”

“Yeah.” He looked away, wondering what the other cop had passed him.

“You didn’t take Charity with you?”

Corey’s trained his gaze on the piece of paper.

“Maybe you better think long and hard about your answer this time.”

He pushed back in his chair, crossed his legs. He’d been finessed before. It was best to wait, make them show their hand.

“We have an eyewitness who says she got on your motorcycle and left with you.”

“Okay.”

“Okay
what?”

His eyes strayed to the door. “Maybe we did go for a short ride. I figured if I told you, you’d jump to the wrong conclusion. I didn’t kill her, man. When I dropped her back at her car, she was alive and happy as a clam.”

Again, Corey looked away. What he’d said wasn’t precisely true. Thinking back on it, he remembered kissing her good night. But then she got a call on her cell phone. After she was done talking, she couldn’t get away from him fast enough. It was like, all of a sudden, she turned cold as stone. He got pretty pissed about it, too. He remembered standing in the middle of the street, feeling like she’d made a fool out of him. Hell, he’d been nothing but nice to her, and she just shut him down like he was nothing and nobody. He yelled some words his aunt wouldn’t like at her retreating car, shouted that he’d be in touch.

“How short was this ride?”

“What?”

“How short was the ride? Where’d you go?”

“Oh, God, I don’t know. Around. We just drove around.”

“Where?”

“Dinkytown. Then I cut back and we ended up on the West River Road.”

“Did you stop?”

“Hell, no.” He leaned into the table. “Like I said, I promised I’d take her for a ride and we took it.”

“You never said you promised her a ride. When did you tell her that?”

“Christ, I don’t know. I guess while we were having lunch at the
park. She’d never been on a cycle before, so I said we’d go for a ride. It was completely innocent, man. When we were done, I dropped her off at her car, said good night, got some dinner, and then drove over to my ex-girlfriend’s place. End of story. I did not kill her. I had no motive. I liked her.”

“You liked her.”

“Yeah.”

Emerson studied him. “You wanna know what I think happened?”

“Not really.”

“You were out for a ride with her, getting along real good. When you bring her back to her car, she smiles at you, you smile at her. Neither of you want to leave it at that, so she invites you over to her apartment for a beer, or whatever. You follow her back there, her in her car, you on your bike. But when you get to the apartment, she doesn’t come through. She shuts you down. And here you been thinking you were going to have a real sweet evening together. So you get mad. Things get out of hand.”

“That never happened, man.”

“Or—” He considered it a moment more. “Maybe you really liked her, so when you got back to her place, you took a chance. You told her the truth. But instead of saying it was okay, it didn’t matter that you’d been in prison, she freaked. Went fucking ape shit on you. Maybe it happened right there in the parking lot. And you got nervous, thought someone might call the cops, might think you were hurting her. You wanted her to quiet down, but she wouldn’t. So you pulled her into the shadows and roughed her up a little, just to get her to calm down. But instead of backing off, she came at you. Got right in your face and told you she was gonna contact your probation officer, get you in some serious trouble. You didn’t mean to kill her. Hell, you’d trusted her, told her the truth. Women can be like that sometimes, right? You think they’re thinking something, and they’re not. They’re thinking the opposite. You got mad. And, like always, you had a taser with you. Hey, like you said, tasers don’t kill people, not healthy people. It was an accident.”

“No way!”

“I can help you, Corey. I can be the best friend you’ll ever have—or your worst nightmare. You pick.”

“You’re so full of shit.”

“You tell me the truth, and I promise I’ll work as hard as I can to get the county attorney’s office to go easy on you.”

“Look. I’m telling you the truth, man. How many times do I need so say it? I’m not stupid. If I was gonna go after a woman, I wouldn’t do it the exact same way I supposedly did it before.”

“Maybe. Or maybe something drives you to do it exactly that way. Only this time, you weren’t so lucky. Your target didn’t walk away.”

“That is fucking ridiculous. I didn’t
do
it.”

“Do you hate women, Corey?”

“No.”

“Do you think they manipulate you? Lie to you?”

“Manipulate and lie?”

“Yeah.”

“If I say yes, does that make me a rapist and a murderer?”

“How about anger? Do you have trouble with anger, Corey?”

“No more than the next guy.”

Emerson watched him, tapped his fingers on the table. “You lied to me. What else have you lied to me about?”

“Nothing. I swear.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“No.” He shook his head vehemently.

“I
know
you did it, Corey. Maybe not exactly the way I suggested, but it comes down to this. You and Charity ended up in the parking lot behind her apartment building. You pulled the taser, and that was all she wrote.”

“If you can prove it, then arrest me. Otherwise I’ve said everything I intend to say. If you’re going to keep me here any longer, I want a lawyer.”

Emerson gazed at him for a long moment. “You’re making a big mistake.”

“I’ll live with it.”

Finally, nodding his head toward the door, Emerson said, “Go. But don’t leave town. You hear me?”

The words surprised Corey. He hadn’t expected to be dismissed quite so easily. Then again, he hardly needed any encouragement. “I hear you. It’s been real.”

I
wanna be Christiane Amanpour when I grow up,” said Cordelia, sighing loudly through the phone line.

“I thought you adored your work,” said Jane. She was up in her bedroom pulling on her boots. Kenzie was downstairs, building a fire.

“I do. But imagine what it would be like to be her. Chief international correspondent for a huge news agency, goes to all these exotic places and appears nightly on TV, looking brave, intense, windblown, gorgeous.”

“You’re only interested in the image,” said Jane. “You can’t tell me you’d like to hunker down in a hotel that’s being strafed by enemy rocket fire.”

“Heavens, no.”

“Can’t have one without the other.”

“Of course I can. I’ll stay home and be brave and gorgeous. I’ll use a fan to make me look windblown.”

Jane could always count on Cordelia to cheer her up with something utterly shallow. Cordelia considered shallowness highly restful. It was the light yin to the dark yang of the world. Jane was just grateful for a little mindless banter after what had happened to Charity.

“Where are you and Kenzie having dinner tonight?”

“At the River Port Inn in Stillwater.”

“Lovely. Candlelight. Fine wine. Fine food. Yes, please! You don’t want to double-date? I could yell over to Melanie and see if she’s interested.”

“This communication via window is going to get old. Don’t you ever spend the night together?”

“We spend lots of
quality
time together, Janey. Not to worry.”

“I don’t.”

“So, how do you think Kenzie will respond to your surprise?”

“I think she’ll be as excited as I am.”

“Oops, gotta go. Mel’s yelling at me. I’ll ask her if she wants to double and get back to you.”

“Cordelia, no! I’m not inviting—”

But she’d already hung up.

Later that morning, while Kenzie was out jogging, Peter stopped by.

“Where’s your main squeeze?” he asked, taking off his Twins cap. He crouched down to say hi to Mouse. The dog buried his muzzle in the palms of Peter’s hands and Peter rubbed his ears.