Maybe it was time to invoke my right to an attorney. But I knew how that would look.
I didn’t respond to Nichols’s question.
She opened a file folder she’d brought with her. Glanced over the contents. “I have a witness statement that you met with Danny at a bar last Thursday evening. Things got heated. You argued.”
My stomach churned. I said nothing, and Nichols went on.
“You and Danny were speaking, and you got angry. Slammed your fist on the table. You said something about crushing him under your boot.”
Hell, the old timers at the bar that night had been listening to every word, huh? I wondered how Nichols had heard about the incident.
But it didn’t matter. I didn’t bother to correct her about misquoting me. I hadn’t directly threatened Danny that night at the bar.
I’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time earlier. I had no idea why Danny had been driving down Piper’s street, bleeding from a wound in his side.
But from the minute the local cop had seen me there, recognized my name, I apparently became the number one suspect.
They couldn’t pin this on me. There was just no way.
“We took fingerprints from the scene,” Nichols said. “I’d like to bring in someone to get copies of your prints now. Your prints are in the national database, obviously, given your criminal record. But this will be quicker and easier for our techs.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“It’ll be easier if you just agree. The more you work with us, the quicker we can rule you out as a suspect. If you didn’t do this.”
My mouth was stone dry, but I didn’t reach for the water. “Fine. Go ahead and take my prints.” What difference did it make, anyway? My prints and DNA were forever on public record.
Nichols called another officer in for the printing. I stared at the dark ink as it smudged my fingers.
Usually ink on my hands meant I was working on a sketch. Ink represented my artwork. The very thing that had saved my soul during my darkest days.
But this ink was a stain. An accusation of guilt.
Bands of anxiety were tightening around me. Dread increasing by the second, sinking down to my bones.
Piper wouldn’t believe I’d done this to Danny. Right?
But she’d seen me lose my temper with her ex. The day I found Danny with his hand on her throat, I’d done the same to him. Slammed him against a wall and nearly cut off his air supply. She’d had to tell me to stop.
I’d told her about my anger problems before my prison sentence. The incident at Leavenworth when I’d punched a guard. Piper had said she understood. She didn’t judge me for those mistakes.
But she’d had that moment of doubt when she saw the package of so-called drugs at my place.
If she believed me capable of stabbing her ex, like I was some kind of violent thug, it would destroy me.
I sat there, listless, as the tech finished the fingerprinting. Nichols had sat silent across from me the entire time.
When we were alone again, the chief said, “Was Piper afraid of Danny? She sounded pretty angry at him the other night, when I spoke to her on the phone.”
Can you blame her?I wanted to say, but managed to keep quiet.
“Did she tell you she was afraid? Did she ask you to keep Danny away from her and Ollie? Maybe for you to get rid of him for her?”
“No,” I blurted, fury heating my skin like a furnace.
Fucking hell. Over the last hour or so, I’d come to terms with how bad this looked for me. But now Nichols was dragging Piper into it? Trying to pin guilt on her because of me?
I knew Chief Nichols was manipulating me. But that didn’t make it any less effective.
