But then another thought seemed to come over her as she was trying to recall the truck.
“You know,” she said. “Now that I’m here—there is something else. But I can’t be sure.”
Nic looked at her with urgency. “What is it?”
She paused, squinted her eyes, lifted her arm and pointed at the road.
“When I saw it drive off with your mother and it passed me, I looked at it through my rearview mirror. I’m not sure I saw two taillights. I think one might have been out. At the time I thought it was just a distortion from the rain. It was so heavy it was like looking through a pool of water. So I thought the two lights had just looked like one.”
Reyes studied her face. “And now?”
“Now,” she said. “I think it’s possible there was just one taillight.”
“Which one was out?”
Edith Moore shook her head. She didn’t know. “I’m so sorry that I didn’t get the plate number or the make and model. It wasn’t on my mind that I would need those things.”
Reyes was uncomfortably silent as he stared at Edith Moore. He seemed irritated, shifting into a more hostile stance.
“Let me ask you something else,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Are you sure you were coming back from New York City?”
There was a long pause.
“Yes. Of course I’m sure.”
“I see you have an E-ZPass. Did you leave on the east side or the west side? The east side would take you over the Triborough Bridge. There’s a toll scanner on that bridge.”
Edith Moore’s eyes lit up. “No—I definitely didn’t go that way. I went on the west side.”
Something wasn’t right about her answer. Nic could hear it inher voice and see it in the creases of Officer Reyes’s eyes. A little smile.
“The thing is,” Reyes said, going in for the kill, “your E-ZPass has no record of you entering or leaving New York City in the past sixty days. You can’t get into the city on the west side without passing under a scanner.”
Shit.
If she was lying about this, what else was she lying about?
“Well, maybe I was wrong. Maybe I went on the east side. Maybe that other bridge without a toll. On Willis Avenue.”
Reyes let this bone go. But he moved on quickly to other parts of her story. And her life. She was a nurse practitioner in Schenectady. Lived with her boyfriend. No kids. She had three cats.No, she was not in any financial trouble, andwhy are you asking me that? The reward money, of course.That wasn’t why I came forward.
Where did she go when she left the scene, left Molly Clarke to disappear on Hastings Pass? Did anyone see her when she got home? Did she stop along the way? What time did she go to work the next morning? And, the last question—are you sure you weren’t with someone in Hastings and not New York City?
What was he saying? That she was conspiring with someone in the town to fabricate a story about her mother?
“No!” she said defensively. “Why would you ask me that?”
Reyes backed off then.
“Just dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s.”
They drove back to the Gas n’ Go, got out of the car and stood in an awkward silence. But Reyes wasn’t through.
“Do you have time to come to the station—maybe look at models of trucks? It would help to narrow things down. You’d be surprised how different they can be,” he said.
