“Youwereworking at Bell’s on the night of the fourteenth, weren’t you, Ms. Noland?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
“Until four a.m.,” he continues, “isn’t that right? And while I don’t have kids myself, wouldn’t that have been a school night for your sister here? I would assume she was tucked in bed at home. Right where Marshal Wayne was headed.”
I want to argue. I want to point out that CCTV has him at Grendel and Marquist, that it doesn’t prove he was coming to our house, that people walk all kinds of places at night. But there’s nothing else around that intersection. No stores. No late-night diner. No reason for a cop to be on foot that close to our street unless he was headed to the one place he went regularly. I have nothing. And I’m already caught in the lie that Nix was with me.
I snap my mouth shut, my heart beating faster as the monitor gives me away. Jesus, I just made Nix all the more guilty with my fuck-up.
And Layton gets a front-row seat to see me realize this. Try as might to seem calm, he’s too perceptive, eyes flicking to the way I’m white-knuckling the hospital blanket before I can release it, and zeroing in on the sound my throat makes as I gulp. I’m a dead giveaway, and we both know it.
But after a moment, he finally sighs and his face softens. “Look,” he says, voice gentler, “I know you’re having some medical issues, and I’m not trying to add to that. I’m just tryingto find out what happened to Marshal Wayne, and if I’m being honest, I don’t think your sister here had anything to do with it.”
“You don’t?” I can’t help the suspicion that laces my tone.
He opens his mouth and then closes it, glancing at Nix. “Do you think we could have a minute alone?”
Nix doesn’t say anything and instead leans back in her chair, narrowing her eyes further and giving him her answer without words.
“Nix,” I hiss.
“Or,” Layton says to her, “I could take your sister here down to the station to get some privacy.”
She doesn’t budge, calling his bluff with a challenge.
“Nix,” I snap again, and this time my voice cracks around the edges because I’m not convinced it’s a bluff at all.
She sets her jaw but finally stands, letting the chair screech as she does. She stomps from the room with a flip of her hair. I grimace.
“Feisty,” Layton remarks once the door closes.
“That’s a nice way of putting it,” I confess.
“Must’ve been hard,” he says, his tone shifting and dropping into something like sympathy. “Raising her all on your own.”
The denial jumps up out of habit. “I didn’t—”
He puts up a hand, stopping me. “Doesn’t matter anymore now, does it?”
Everything in me wants to refute the truth because that’s what I’ve had to do for the past eighteen years, but he’s right, it doesn’t matter now, seeing as she’s of age, and I don’t need another lie stacked against me.
“How did you find out?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Kind of my job to find things out.” He taps the badge on his hip.
“Right.” A fresh wave of apprehension hits me. What else has he found out?
“And I assume Marshal knew as well?” he asks.
Reluctantly, I nod. I don’t know where he’s going with this, but it seems a harmless enough truth to admit.
“That’s what I thought,” he says. “I did some digging and found an old report that he responded to at your residence.” He drags the chair Nix was sitting in and sets it near the bed before taking a seat. “Someone called in a drunk and disorderly. Marshal Wayne was the responding officer. You had to be sixteen at the time, right?”
I nod again, remembering that night with a cringe. Our dad had made a random appearance a week prior, promising to get sober. It obviously didn’t last long. He took every photo we had of our mom out to the lawn that night. He was belligerent, tearing them up and crying and shouting. Nix was only eight, and she ran out after him, trying to get the pictures back. It was chaos as I tried to drag her back inside. Nosy Nellie came out to inspect, and the police showed up not long after—Marshalshowed up.
I was terrified that he was going to bring Child Protective Services and take Nix. But instead, after putting our dad in the back of his cruiser, he kneeled down and asked me if I needed him to call anyone. There was an edge to his tone, as if we both knew the only option was CPS and he was giving me an out. I took it. I always assumed he must have had his own run-in with the system when he was younger and that it wasn’t a pleasant one.
“Look,” Layton sighs, pity in his eyes. “I haven’t been in Cloverwick long, but it’s clear to me Marshal Wayne wasn’t the best example of a cop. I’m pretty sure he was involved in some shady affairs, and I’m pretty sure that extends to you and your sister.”
