“It’s the truth! I’m not making this shit up!”
“Listen, I don’t want to fight with you—”
“Samuel T.,” he said in a level voice. “Have you ever known me to get violent. Especially toward a woman?”
Samuel T. stared at him for a long time. Then the guy put his palms out. “No, no, I haven’t known you to be like that—and I want to believe you, I really do. But even if everything you’re telling me is the God’s honest, we have two problems here, a legal one and a PR one. The legality stuff will take care of itself assuming Lizzie will vouch for you, and there’s no forensic proof on Chantal’s body or yours. The PR problem? That is going to be so much harder to handle. This is big news, Lane—especially if you’re right and your father is having a kid with your wife. Hell, this is nationwide news—and you’ve got to know that the press never lets the truth get in the way of a good story. And even though it shouldn’t, this kind of scandal will have an effect on things like stock prices and the perceived value of the products your family’s company sells. I’m not saying this is right, but it is reality. You are the Bradford Bourbon Company. Your family is the Bradford Bourbon Company. I might have been able to erase your sister’s trip through the system, but this one … I can’t un-ring this bell. It’s already on the local news.”
Lane paced around the man’s front hall. Then he looked over at his buddy. “Speaking of my family, do you have any bourbon in this house?”
“Always. And I only serve the best so it’s Bradford.”
Lane thought of Mack and the fact that the stills had been shut down. And then of his father … and everything the man had done.
“We’ll see for how much longer,” Lane muttered.
FORTY-THREE
Six hours later, as Lane sat in an interrogation room down at the county jailhouse, he tried Lizzie’s cell phone for the sixth time—and decided that she must have found out about the situation. Maybe someone had called her? Or maybe she’d turned on her radio, after all? She didn’t have a television.
Hell, maybe somebody had put up a neon sign in downtown Charlemont and she could see it all the way in Indiana.
“We’re almost done here,” Samuel T. said as he came back in the stark grey room. “The good news is that you’ve been downgraded to a person of interest, but things are going to be in limbo until the investigation is concluded. At least you can go home now, though, and there’s no mug shot.”
Lane ended the call and rubbed his aching eyes. They’d given him his phone and his wallet back about fifteen minutes ago, and the first thing he’d done was try to get ahold of Lizzie again.
Given the way he’d left her house, there was no scenario where she wouldn’t have picked up his call if she’d wanted to speak with him.
Clearly, she had no interest in hearing his side of things.
“How much longer?” he said as he rubbed his aching head. “Can I leave now?”
“Almost. They’re just checking with the DA—who happens to be a hunting buddy of mine.” Samuel T. sat down. “I know it’s politically incorrect, but thank God the old boys’ network is alive and well in this town—or you’d be getting strip searched right now.”
“You’re a miracle worker,” Lane said numbly.
“It helps that Chantal’s story had some holes in it. She obviously was operating on her own when she came up with this bright idea. Who the hell takes a bath right after they’re attacked—and is careful to clean under her broken manicure? Makes no damn sense. And then there was the happy little fact that she called both the paper and two TV stations—from her ER bed.”
“Told you.” He checked his phone in case Lizzie had called back and he’d somehow not heard the ring. “She’s ruining my life, that one.”
“Not if I have anything to do with it.”
Lane tried Lizzie a seventh time. Put the phone back down. “What did she look like? You know, Chantal. When she got to the hospital.”
“You sure you want to see the photographs?”
“Yeah, I need to know how bad it is.”
Samuel T. got up again. “I’ll see what I can do.”
As the interrogation room door opened and shut once more, Lane fiddled with his phone. He thought about sending a text, but doubted that was going to make any difference at all.
Unbelievable. He literally could not believe this was happening to him again—same two women, same vocabulary … as for the outcome?
He was shit terrified he knew the answer to that one already: Lizzie had locked him out once. Clearly, this was the way she intended to handle him again.
Samuel T. came back ten minutes later with a manila envelope. “Here you go.”
Lane took the thing and opened the flap. Sliding out four glossies, he frowned at the top one.
Two black eyes. Bruises on the sides of her face. Ligature marks around her throat.
“This is bad,” he said roughly. “Jesus …”
There was no love lost for him when it came to Chantal, but he didn’t like to see anyone in this condition—especially a woman. And no, he thought, there was no chance she had done this to herself. Someone must have hit her—repeatedly and hard.
Had she paid somebody? he wondered.
The second and third photos were close-ups. The fourth was—