Influence

Chapter 40

Maris forced her partner out.

"I want to question him. Alone." She expected Ryan to fight her. He'd kept her secret, after all. She still had her job, she'd been the arresting officer, and that was thanks to his loyalty. She would remember what he'd done for her—what he'd risked—next time he annoyed the fuck out of her.

Ryan didn't resist. She waited for him to walk around to the observation room before beginning to question her suspect. Paul DeAngelis' usually piercing blue eyes had clouded over.

He sat with a hunched back. It was a good sign, a sign that he already felt defeated. In her mind, he was. He had already admitted to his son, in so many words, that he'd murdered Goldie.

She shifted her face back and forth in front of him like a barn owl. "What happened the night you murdered your stepdaughter?"

His shoulders straightened. "I don't need to say anything without my lawyer present."

"That's true. I don't have to stop asking you questions you won't answer though. So, until your lawyer arrives, I'm going to shoot them off. If at any point you'd like to say something, you just go ahead and say it."

She didn't need everything answered in this initial interview. He'd assaulted Tam and confessed to Jasper. It was enough for now. But she could ask questions he wouldn't answer and see how his body language betrayed him. The question that burned through her, the one she couldn't keep from asking out loud even if he never answered it, was "Why?"

Refusing to hold her gaze, he turned away, his lower lip sucked in.

"You feel guilt." She read him like a fortune teller. "You're not without remorse for your actions."

"You're putting words in my mouth."

"No, I'm attributing human emotion to you. Maybe that's more than you deserve."

A spark of anger brightened the gloom in his eyes. "Does that make me a monster? You have no idea who the real monsters are."

Breathe in, hold. Breathe out, hold. "Was Goldie a monster to you? Is that why you killed her?"

He leaned forward. "Goldie was an ambitious young woman who wanted control of her future. She wasn't a monster, but she agreed to accept them into her life if it worked to her advantage. If she had stuck to that, I wouldn't be sitting here right now."

"If you hadn't been the biggest monster in her life, the monster who she trusted and loved and who then betrayed her in the worst way possible, then you're right. You wouldn't be sitting here now."

Paul shifted his weight back, eyes lackluster again, jaw clenched. "No more of this. Not without my lawyer."

#

She sat on a bench next to Tam, both with gazes aimed at Grand Park's towering fountain, drinking iced coffee, saying nothing for a few moments until Tam finally managed a word. "Well?"

"You've been all right?"

"You could call it that. I'm not wanted for murder anymore, so that's something."

Maris focused on the cold from the ice in her coffee cup. She slid the cup back and forth along her palms. "I am sorry. For everything."

"It's easy to be manipulating when you're grieving. I don't blame you."

Maris blamed herself, though, and not only for her shameful behavior with Tam. If she had been more understanding, if she'd listened more, reacted less, she would have been with Goldie when Paul jumped the balconies and attacked her. She would have prevented her death.

"Remember when Jasper blamed Goldie's murder on the fentanyl operation but you had this gut feeling there was more to it, that it was personal, and that Paul was behind it?"

Tam stared off into the distance. "Part of him is most likely still angry that I was right."

"You were both right."

"What do you mean?"

"Paul's lawyer sent us a statement. And we have Goldie's phone records now. You realize I'm not authorized to tell you any of this?"

"But you're going to anyways."

"You deserve to know. Jasper too."

"If you're hoping I'll convey a message to him, that's not likely to happen. Things are... difficult between us. I'm giving him space."

"You're not obligated to pass this along. I'll leave it to your discretion. But it wasn't that Goldie cut Paul off. I mean, she did. She fired him. We have records of her texts. She must have fired him in person or over a phone call—there's no direct message of that. But do you want to know the last text she sent to him, less than a half hour before she died?"

Tam nodded for her to continue.

"'It has to happen this way. Please don't be mad at me.' That's what she wrote. What could have happened that she'd cut her own stepfather out of the enormous fortune she was about to make?"

"That's what I'd like to know too."

"Because, Tam, there wasn't going to be any fortune. That's why."

"She'd signed the contract."

"Goldie wanted to nullify it. She fired Paul because he fought her on that decision."

Maris stared at Tam, watching her as the gears turned.

"Did Paul know about the fentanyl?"

"Yes. And obviously, he approved of it. How involved was he?" She paused, not sure if Tam would like this next bit any more than she had. "The feds will find out more."

"The feds?"

"Paul's lawyer wants to strike a deal."

"He gets off light for the murder," Tam said, "if he turns states evidence."

"That's not the right phrase, Miss Armchair Detective, but I think you've caught my drift."

"You can't let him get away with this. He murdered her for doing the right thing. She called me there that night to confess what she'd done and how she'd involved me with it all, didn't she?"

Maris shrugged. "That's something we can never be absolutely certain of. We must settle for middle of the road certainty. Deductive reasoning. That's where we're at."

The silence resumed. They sat, each stuck in their own silo of thoughts.

"And Shay. What did he say about Shay?"

"Not a damn word. Believe me, I questioned him about her, Tam. He refused to say anything. Kept claiming he didn't know her."

"He doesn't."

Maris tapped a finger to her lips. "He must. He's her source."

"Is there any record of him contacting her?"

"No, but we figured he used a burner phone."

"Someone used a burner. It just wasn't him."

"Who, then?"

Tam gave her the first tenuous smile she'd seen from the woman in a long time. "You're going to have to stop calling me an armchair detective once I tell you what I've come up with."

_____

What did Tam figure out? One more big twist (and two more chapters) to come!