The Frailty of Flesh (35 page)

“She had enough time to get from the Patel home to her own house, kill her father, help her brother escape, and return,” Zidani said.

“But why help her brother escape and not just go with him? And where would she help him escape to?” Ashlyn shook her head. “I don’t know, something just doesn’t seem right about this.”

“Two people have been murdered. ‘Right’ doesn’t have much to do with it,” Zidani said. “Give me another scenario.”

“I will when I figure one out,” Ashlyn said. “But you know what’s going to happen when Mrs. Reimer finds out Shannon’s here. She’ll want to see her daughter.”

Zidani nodded. “That’s our holdback. I want to be there for the reunion.”

“You and me both.” Ashlyn opened the door. “But first, we’ll see what Shannon has to say.”

The predawn quiet still lingered over the station, and they walked to the interview room in silence. Once there, Tain said, “We never did break the news about Richard’s murder to the Patel family.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Let Shannon lead.”

The teen was sitting at the table, hands free. There had been no waterworks, no hysterics. There was a tension in the girl, a stiffness in the shoulders, that suggested she wasn’t happy she’d been found, but no drama.

Her long brown hair framed her face, skin white, but her eyes weren’t red or puffy. If anything, they were sunken, the dark smudges underneath betraying her fatigue. Otherwise, Shannon seemed calm.

They sat down across from her.

“You’ve had a few rough days,” Ashlyn said. “The doctor was concerned.”

“Mae, the Patels’ housekeeper, she took good care of me.”

“Did she pick you up from the hospital?”

Shannon shook her head.

“Do you want to tell us what happened Friday morning?”

“You already know.”

Ashlyn deliberately wrinkled her face and looked at Tain as she shook her head. “No, Shannon. I don’t think we do.”

For a moment Shannon stared back. Then she slumped in her chair and looked down at the table. Ashlyn glanced at Tain, and he shook his head.

“We know you left the house that morning. It was early. We know Jeffrey ran after you, so you carried him in your arms as you went to the path that circles the inlet and leads to Rocky Point Park. We know Christopher followed you, and your parents followed him.

“And we know someone murdered Jeffrey.”

Ashlyn let the silence linger as she watched Shannon and waited. Finding the girl had produced a feeling of disappointment she hadn’t expected. It might have been satisfying, if it wasn’t for the fact that now, once she was finished with Shannon, she had to find Christopher Reimer.

They also had to sort out how they’d deal with Matt, Jody Nurani and her family. Mr. Patel had remained at the house with his younger children. Mae, Mrs. Patel and Nurani were all in interview rooms, charges pending.

It was hard not to feel conflicted about Shannon Reimer. There was no doubt in Ashlyn’s mind that Shannon was a victim of abuse and that social services had dropped the ball. Hell, it had been days since she’d first called, and they still hadn’t gotten back to her, despite multiple messages.

But that was the difference between systems and people. Systems could fail to fulfill their responsibility and face no serious repercussions. Social services wouldn’t go to jail or be fined or face punishment of any real kind. They’d just carry on, helping some, failing others. Although Ashlyn knew it really wasn’t any different from law enforcement, she still felt frustrated. With her own job, she knew her legal boundaries, and she knew that sometimes it meant murderers went free and criminals didn’t face justice. With social services, she assumed the reason things fell through the cracks wasn’t because of the limitations of the law, but because nobody cared.

It was easy to think nobody cared as much as you did.

“Shannon, I think you’d feel a lot better if you told us what happened.”

“I did it.” She lifted her head, but didn’t look right at Ashlyn. Instead, her gaze went past her, a little above and to the left. “I’m responsible. I couldn’t take Jeffrey with me.”

“That’s not what our evidence tells us, Shannon.”

“Then it’s wrong!” She smacked her fist against the table. “It’s my fault.”

“There’s a difference between it being your fault, and you actually killing him,” Ashlyn said quietly. “I saw the pictures at the house, in Jeffrey’s bedroom. You adored your little brother.”

Shannon’s shoulders shook as the tears streamed down her face. She cried silently and made no attempt to hide her grief.

It only took a moment to go to the door, ask someone to get a box of Kleenex and have them return with it. Ashlyn slid the tissues across the table.

“I’ll tell you what I think. You were running away. Something went wrong, Jeffrey saw you, and your parents figured out what was going on. They tried to stop you from leaving. Now you blame yourself, because Jeffrey was murdered, and if you’d just stayed home that morning he’d still be okay.”

Shannon reached for a Kleenex and wiped her nose. The tears weren’t streaming down her face as fast as before, but she remained silent.

“Only you know that’s not true, Shannon. Jeffrey wouldn’t have been okay. We know about the abuse.”

As Ashlyn spoke she watched the girl deflate. The truth was, they were still guessing about the abuse. They had the indications, they had the eyewitness next door, they had what the doctor had told them, but they didn’t know the extent of it. Shannon remained as still as stone, her gaze fixed on the table, but she was limp, and the energy she’d shown in her insistence that she was responsible for Jeffrey’s death was gone.

“We want to help you.”

Shannon’s head snapped up and she stared at Ashlyn. “You can’t.”

“How do you know that if you don’t give us a chance?”

The girl looked away.

“If you won’t tell us what happened, why don’t you tell us what you want?”

“What I want? I want Jeffrey to be okay. Can you fix that for me?” The words echoed in the room, the shrill note that had crept into Shannon’s voice reverberating in the air. “I want to go to jail.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to go home.” The girl’s mouth twisted as she looked away. “If you want to help me”—she brushed a stray tear away—“you won’t make me go home.”

Ashlyn looked at Tain. Then she stood.

“We’ll see what we can do. Your mother will want to see you.”

Shannon’s jaw dropped. “I don’t want to see her. Please! I don’t want to see any of them! You can’t make me talk to my parents!” She was out of her seat, yelling, her face almost purple.

“Whoa. Calm down. Okay, we won’t make you see them.” Ashlyn touched Shannon’s shoulder lightly and the girl shrugged her off, but sat down. “Is there anything we can get for you? A drink, breakfast?”

Her elbows propped up on the table, Shannon’s face fell against her hands. Her head moved back and forth.

“If you change your mind the officer will get you something, okay?”

As soon as they were in the hall, Tain nodded. “She’s terrified of going home.”

“And you heard what she said. ‘Don’t make me see my parents.’ She doesn’t know her father’s dead.”

“We still need to do a GSR test, to be on the safe side.”

“We’ve tested Matt, and I gave instructions for them to test Nurani, then Shannon,” Ashlyn said. “Jody Hoath and Dan Patel will be tested as well, although I don’t see how they could have gotten out of the house. Sims is questioning them, and they’re also taking all their fingerprints and DNA.”

“Maybe that will help us sort this out once and for all.”

“You are turning into an optimist. The way this case has been going, I wouldn’t be surprised if elves from the North Pole were responsible for the murders.”

He grinned. “That would be quite a headline.”

“Seriously, though, what are we going to do? Social services still hasn’t called me back from the weekend.”

All traces of amusement vanished from Tain’s face, and his lip curled with obvious distaste. “Unless we have charges pending against Tracy Reimer, I don’t see how we can keep her from taking her daughter home. We could charge Shannon, but once we put her in the system we can’t undo that.”

Zidani stepped out into the hall.

“Do you think she’ll change her mind once she learns her father is dead?” Ashlyn asked.

“We still don’t know she’s not involved in her father’s murder. She might think because we found her that we prevented it, if she didn’t pull the trigger herself.” Zidani passed Ashlyn a stack of message slips. “No sightings of Christopher. Early estimate for time of death is approximately one
A.M.
, give or take an hour.”

“Which makes it look like the ransom really was a decoy for the murder.” Ashlyn groaned. “You know, if we play that theory in court we can charge them as accomplices to murder, but where does that leave the extortion charge?”

“Sims uncovered an account in Shannon’s name in the Cayman Islands that has more than two million in it,” Tain said. “It’s pretty easy to argue she didn’t need the cash, but unless Nurani or the maid testify that she knew about the setup to murder her father, I don’t see how that charge could stick based on what we’ve got.”

“If we don’t have a case against her on the murder, it will be almost impossible to get them to implicate her on the extortion charge. And if they argue it was an attempt to rescue Christopher from his abuser, these guys could all get a slap on the wrist.” Ashlyn thought about the crime-scene photos from Craig’s case, the extent of the beating, the way that girl must have suffered. And the boy had been about sixteen. Ten years later and he was out of prison with a civil suit for millions of dollars, and he just might win. Twenty-six years old and he could be set for life. No wonder Craig couldn’t let it go.

“Ash?”

“Hmm?” She realized Tain was waiting for her to continue. “Well, it wasn’t like Shannon was a wanted criminal. She was a suspect, but Mrs. Patel and the housekeeper could both argue they never saw the news. I mean, unless someone recovers a current newspaper in the house, how can we prove they actually knew we were looking for Shannon? We never spoke to the family, just Nurani.”

“We have a dead child, a dead father, a teenager who’s been stabbed and yes, who did have enough time to get to the house, commit the murder and return to the Patel residence before you found her there. If she pulled the trigger we can look at post-traumatic stress arguments and mitigating circumstances and the courts might call it a justifiable homicide. We still don’t know where Christopher Reimer is,” Zidani said. He nodded at the door to the interrogation room as a team entered. “They’ll do the GSR test, which won’t help us if she wore gloves.”

“Goddamn Parker falling asleep on the job,” Ashlyn muttered.

Zidani pointed a finger at her. “Rule Shannon in or out, based on the evidence. You know what that means.” He turned and walked away.

“We could have sent someone else to do this,” Tain said after the fifth house.

It had started to rain. With the temperature hovering just above zero, it was a cold rain, driven by a wind with an icy bite.

“I just don’t want any more screwups,” Ashlyn said as they approached the next house.

They’d started their canvas with the Patels’ neighbors. So far, nobody had seen or heard anything unusual. Mr. Patel had insisted no vehicles had left his property that he knew of, and he’d been home all evening.

“Although it is clear that I do not know everything that happens in my own home,” he’d said as he’d shut the door on them. They couldn’t disagree.

“We could send Luke out,” Tain suggested.

A devilish gleam flickered in Ashlyn’s eyes, and her face broke into a smile. “Don’t tempt me.”

They knocked on the door, and when an older woman answered they repeated the process. No, she hadn’t seen anyone come or go from the Patel house all evening, until the police arrived. No, she hadn’t seen anything unusual at all the last few days.

Tain held up a photo. “Do you recognize this girl?”

The woman nodded. “She’s been in the news, and I thought I’d seen her at the Patel home.”

“Recently?” Ashlyn asked.

“No, not for a few weeks.”

They returned to the car and repeated the process on the street near the Reimer house. Crime-scene tape had it marked off, and an RCMP car was positioned out front. After they confirmed that there hadn’t been any other activity at the house, they started going door to door.

The results were the same as before: nobody had seen anything unusual, until the police had arrived. Not even Eleanor Pratt.

“It’s going to make it a lot harder to prove Shannon did this, unless the GSR test is positive,” Ashlyn said as they drove back to the station.

Tain glanced at her. “I thought this is the result you wanted.”

“What I want is the truth. I know, I know. How cliché. This is all very good for my ego and confirming my gut’s right about Shannon, but we didn’t just cast doubt on her involvement. We have nothing to prove anyone entered that house last night.”