Though Clemens nearly begged to be allowed in the interrogation room, Abraham required he wait in the hall with an officer to ensure he didn’t try to barge in.
Abraham closed the door and stood until the jailer brought in a clear-eyed Monroe. Pain twisted his features, but by all appearances the man had returned to his right mind.
As soon as Monroe laid eyes on Abraham, he took long, urgent strides. “You have to go to Lydia now.”
The jailer restrained him, then shoved him down into a chair.
Monroe’s hand slammed against the table. The accompanying yelp left him curling around his injury in agony.
Was he still in the same crude bandaging as when he arrived? The thought that they would leave a man—even one deemed Billy Poe—in such obvious need sickened Abraham. He addressed the jailer. “Has a doctor tended to his burn yet?”
“No, sir.”
“I’ve got him. Go fetch whatever physician you can. We are not monsters. He obviously needs medical attention.”
The jailer left Abraham alone with Monroe, and he waited until the man no longer writhed in pain and gasped for breath.
Though sweat beaded across his forehead and his pallor indicated he should be lying down, Monroe leaned forward as if he meant to beg. “You have to go to Lydia now. Lawson’s going to take off with her and kill Ingram.”
“That’s a serious accusation to hurl at a long-revered detective, especially considering the proof we have thatyouare Billy Poe.”
“Any evidence you found was planted!” He hissed at the accidental movement of his hand but continued his rant. “Lawson burst into my home with Lydia’s scorched manuscript box under his arm and threatened to shoot me if I didn’t cooperate. He said someone needed to take the fall for Poe, and I was the easiest one to frame. He even forced me to burn my hand in order toproveI’d stolen the manuscript from her house.”
That was some story. “You’re too large a man to be forced to do anything. As severe as that burn is, your hand would have had to been held inside the flame. I can’t see you willingly subjecting yourself to that torture.”
“If you had a gun to your head, you’d hold it until your hand burned off. Lawson drugged me so that I couldn’t reveal what he’d done until he was gone. Tell me, how many hours have passed since you last saw him?”
“Your words don’t count as evidence.”
“What about the facthehas burned hands?” Monroe sat back and leveled a challenging glare.
“I saw him receive those burns myself when we were fighting the fire at the Planes’.”
“Are you sure that’s when he got them? Or was he only using that display as a way to cover up the fact he’d burned them when retrieving the manuscript himself?”
Abraham’s stomach soured. It would be a brilliant and very Poe-like ploy. But this was Lawson they were talking about. He had twenty years of experience serving as an officer in various places and positions and was admired for his ability to solve even the murkiest cases.
Monroe must have sensed the uncertainty he’d evoked. “Go to Lawson’s apartment. Search it. He might have planted things at my home, but I guarantee you’ll find more evidence in his.”
The door opened behind Abraham, but he wouldn’t allow the doctor to take Monroe away until he had his questions answered.
“What possible reason would Lawson have to kill those men?”
At this, Monroe deflated. “I don’t know. Maybe he was as angry as the rest of us that any criminal with the right connections or enough money could get away with their crimes.”
“I know why.” Clemens’s voice came from behind. “At least the first murder.”
Abraham was going to throttle that officer for failing his duties to keep Clemens out.
Clemens closed the door and strode to the table’s end. “The first murdered criminal was Otis Wakefield, the man who violated my Maggie and got away with it.”
Abraham stood, refusing to allow Clemens to tower over him. “Why would that matter to Lawson? It seems to me that would give you more of a reason to be Poe than it would him.”
“He never told you? Lawson was Maggie’s godfather.”
The photo on Lawson’s wall and his words that she was the reason he kept going slammed into Abraham. No picture of Maggie had been included in the Wakefield file, and Lawson had always talked about the case in such a detached manner that Abraham never entertained the potential for a personal connection. But was that really enough to make Lawson a suspect?
Abraham studied Clemens. He was wily enough to use that information to cast doubt over the character of a good man, but Abraham’s gut warned that everything he thought he knew about Lawson was about to be turned on its head in the worst possible way.
