“No comment.”
“If that’s how you want to play it.” He turns to the deputy, who comes into view. “Get him into interview room five.”
“No comment,” I say for the tenth time.
There’s no clock in this room. Just a wall of glass on my left, a wooden table in front of me, and the sheriff on the other side of it with a black tape recorder that has spent the last twenty minutes recording a list of questions and me repeating “No comment.”
The sheriff doesn't seem to understand I'm staying silent until my lawyer gets here, then I'm leaving.
He leans across the table. “No one else had a reason to push him off that roof.”
“No comment.”
“Had he cut your allowance?”
“No comment.”
“Maybe you didn’t like the fact that he wasn’t going to leave you everything.”
“No comment.”
“You were heard arguing by a member of your household. And that same night, he turns up dead.”
I look him right in the eye after his barefaced lie when I tell him, “No. Comment.”
A muscle jumps in his jaw.
He leans closer, opens his mouth and?—
Knock. Knock.
He turns in his seat as someone twists the door open, and my attorney walks in, his eyes flicking from the sheriff to me and then to the recorder.
His attention returns to the sheriff as he asks him in a casual tone. “I hope you’re not questioning my client without the legal representative he requested, sheriff?”
With a muffled curse, the sheriff stabs his finger on the recorder off switch and shoves himself to his feet. “I was just chasing up a lead.”
“Of course you were,” my attorney says dryly, then looks at me. “Are you ready to go?”
I stand up.
“Now, wait just a second.” The sheriff’s back stiffens, and he glares at my attorney. “You can’t just?—”
“Unless you have material evidence rather than hopes and dreams tying my client to an accidental fall, I want him released in the next two minutes. And if you make me do this pointless drive again,sheriff, I’ll be filing a case for harassment.”
The sheriff steps aside, and I walk out with my attorney.
“Are you okay?” Otto asks me.
“Good. Sorry you keep having to make this drive every couple of months.”
He shrugs. “It gets me out of the house, and I don’t mind the drive. It’s scenic.”
I chuckle. “There is nothing scenic about Massey, except maybe seeing it in your rearview mirror.”
“So leave.”
“And have my uncle poison another town against me? No, thanks.”
