“Are we on the same page, Deputy Witte?” he asked, using the formality to put a bit of distance between them. “If you undercut me in there, Lieutenant Frome will be the least of your worries.”
“Don’t fret yourself, Special Agent Merlo,” Cloister said as he hitched a shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I don’t worry about either of you.”
Javi smiled to stretch the tension out of his jaw, felt the hinge click, and said, “Then I guess it’s time to tell Lara that her son probably killed his brother.”
Chapter Seven
THE INTERROGATIONroom was a relic of the past. The walls were institutional green plaster, paint slowly leeching down into old cracks and a suspiciously head-sized dent roughly spackled in. Fifty years of nicotine stained the plastic cover of the florescent light on the ceiling. A metal ring was sunk into the center of the battered old table, scraped and dented from years of cuffs being snapped to it.
Billy couldn’t take his eyes off the grim semicircle of metal. He sat hunched over in his chair and picked at his nails with nervous fingers with his lawyer on one side of him and his mother on the other. Lara looked like there was a steel rod in place of her spine—so straight you could feel the tension of it in your own muscles—and her arm was tucked around Billy’s shoulder.
J. J. Diggs was the sort of lawyer who made sharks object to the comparison—rich, fastidiously dressed, and completely amoral. Saul had hated him, but Javi supposed it made sense for Lara to call him. If you were keeping count, Diggs had fucked the FBI over on four major cases, lost hard twice, and on a personal note, been thoroughly fucked by Javi once.
That didn’t count as breaking Javi’s “not where he lived” rule, although it did bend it a bit. Diggs was based in LA.
“Just happened to be in the area when Lara called?” Javi asked, raising his eyebrows.
Diggs smiled back at him, all perfect teeth and practice. “Isn’t that lucky?” He adjusted his tie and settled the blue silk knot over his Adam’s apple. “I assume this isn’t going to take long. My clients are obviously eager to get back to the Retreat and look for their son.”
“We all want to find Drew,” Cloister said. The rough drawl of his voice made Diggs glance his way with a quick, measuring look that took in the rough edges and wide shoulders. “If we didn’t think Billy could help, we wouldn’t be in here. We’d still be out looking.”
The simple sincerity in Cloister’s voice caught Lara and drained some of the steel out of her spine. Cloister looked like a terrible liar. It was written all over that not-exactly handsome face of his, but honesty could get you what you wanted as well. If you knew how to apply it.
Javi could hate himself for that later.
“Which is exactly what you should be doing,” Diggs cut in. “Not harassing the family on some trumped-up suspicions so Special Agent Merlo can improve his close rates.”
Billy shifted and unfolded himself from his slouch to sit as straight as a teenager could manage. He twisted his hands together on the table and squeezed his knuckles until they folded.
“I wanna help,” he said. “If you have any questions, I’ll answer them.”
“Billy,” Diggs held up his hand. “Let me—”
“No.” Billy shook his head. “I want to help find my brother. I didn’t hurt him. He’s mybrother.”
Javi leaned forward. “That’s not what we’re saying, Billy,” he said. Not yet, anyhow. “You’ve been telling us the truth, but not all the truth.”
“That’s not true,” Lara said. She tightened her fingers on Billy’s arm and wrinkled the fabric between her knuckles. “Billy already told you everything. He left Drew alone in the cabin, and something terrible happened. If he was going to lie, it would have been about that.”
Billy swallowed hard. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, knobby against razor-rash flushed skin, and he blinked twice.
“Because Drew didn’t stay in the cabin, did he, Billy?” Javi asked.
“I don’t—”
Javi ignored him and pushed. “We have a witness who saw you arguing with Drew that night,” he said. “He wanted to go with you, didn’t he? Hang out with his big brother?”
“No.”
“Had to get on your nerves,” Javi said. “When I was a teenager, I wouldn’t have wanted a ten-year-old hanging out with me. Not when I was trying to impress girls.”
Across the table, Diggs looked up long enough to give him an amused glance at that claim. His pen scratched across the pad.
“You aren’t my client,” he said. “Billy was a devoted brother.”
“Is,” Lara said.
“Heisa devoted brother,” Diggs corrected smoothly. He reached up and touched Lara’s hand briefly. “And we know Billy was taken from the cabin. So I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Agent.”
