I shake my head.
“Are you sure you don’t know her?” the female detective asks, sounding more agitated.
I turn a little in my chair so I can look at her. “Do you want me to know her? I’m at the point where I’ll do whatever you want.” I begin to cry again.
“It would help if you could identify her.” She sits down with a smile.
Her partner leans back and tidies up his mustache.
Now that Crossbow is dead, I wonder who is paying these two. Why are they working me so hard over his murder? There’s no way they care that he’s dead. It’s not a righteous cause. The people of Selnoa don’t care either. Hell, most of us are glad someone had the balls to remove the bastard who’s terrorized the city for over a decade.
“Have you met this woman before?” the detective asks.
I nod.
“There you go, darling,” she says, praising me as if I’m her dog. “See how easy that was? Where do you know her from?”
“My salon?”
The woman scrunches up her nose.
No. Not the salon. “I know her from the grocery store?”
She shakes her head.
“A house call? From the house call she booked when she called me to get her hair done.”
The cop nods. “A house call. Which house?”
“I was at the gate that day because she called me to come do her hair at the Crossbow mansion.”
“Now you’re catching on,” the male detective says. He pushes a bottle of water toward me. I’m parched, but I think they might poison me. Call me crazy, but violent things have happened since I arrived at the station.
“What is your relationship with her?” the woman asks.
“Um, she’s a client.”
“Or maybe you haven’t come out of your closet yet. Your daughter?—”
“Leave my daughter out of this,” I bark.
The detective smirks. “I don’t think I will.”
“If you mention my daughter again, I’ll clamp my mouth shut. You’ll get nothing from me.”
“Are you threatening me?”
I spit on her.
She slaps me. Hard. I fall off the chair and can’t get up. I don’t even try. I cry again. They’re going to pin me with murder or, at the very least, accessory to murder. It’s what corrupt cops and lawmakers do, and everyone is corrupt in Selnoa.
It doesn’t even matter if they’re paid by Crossbow or someone else, or hell, maybe they’re not even paid by anyone. Maybe they just want to get ahead in their careers. They want to impress their boss. Something, anything, to get ahead when a case like this presents itself. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work on a major case like this one.
She’s young, younger than me even. A newbie with connections in corrupt places, probably, getting her feet wet in the dirty business. She’s also a woman in a male-dominated field. Lots to prove. Lots to learn. I’m her ticket to a big promotion.
The police have circled the mansion for a week with no suspects, no explanations. They’ll lose their funding; their jobs are at stake.
The male detective bends to lift me. His badge slips out of the top shirt pocket and falls onto the floor. I read the name. Detective Belvich. Once I’m seated again with my face heating up on the side that she slapped, he picks up his badge and slips it into the front pocket of his pants.
