Josie sat across the table, letting Noah have the spot nearest Griffin. “Lieutenant Fraley tells me you were already aware of what happened to Maxine and her daughter before you spoke with him.”
What was left of his stiff smile drained away, leaving sadness and what looked very much like fear in its wake. Swallowing, he dropped his gaze to the table. “Yes, I saw it on the news.”
“It must have been upsetting,” Josie said.
His brown eyes filled with sorrow, and she couldn’t work out whether it was real or not. If her theory about him was correct, then he wasn’t a cold, calculating killer but a man who thought he was deeply in love whose delusions had driven him to violence. “Not just upsetting,” he said. “Devastating.”
“Even though Maxine was the one to break things off between you?” Josie asked.
“What does that have to do with anything? I didn’t stop loving her just because she?—”
His mouth clamped shut. Although he was looking in Josie’s direction, he was no longer mentally in the room. Some kind of internal struggle played out in the tight creases of his face.
“Mr. Holt?”
“I’m sorry.” Griffin dragged a hand over his mouth and then worked his jaw back and forth as though he’d been clenching it so tightly, it had gotten stuck. “This is very difficult for me.”
“Why is that?” Josie asked.
Griffin leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “I-I was in love with Maxine, and we were going to have a future together and then one day, she just wrecked it all. Told me she couldn’t see me anymore. Just like that. No warning.”
Josie was struck by the difference in his demeanor from only a moment ago. The smooth salesman had taken a back seat to a pouty teenager. One who wouldn’t or couldn’t take responsibility for his actions. It was right there in the language he used. Maxine wrecked it all. It came out of nowhere. Or had he been living so deeply in his own delusions that he hadn’t noticed the relationship deteriorating or Maxine pulling away?
“Did she tell you why she was breaking things off?” asked Josie.
His shoulders curled inward. The small motion, combined with how tightly he kept his arms crossed over his chest, made him look strangely vulnerable for a man of forty with a career based on swagger and smooth talking. “She just gave me a bunch of absurd explanations,” Griffin said petulantly. “I was angry with her. I’vebeenangry with her.”
Noah’s body language was the exact opposite. He sprawled in his chair, legs spread and relaxed, arms loose, palms on his upper thighs. “It seems like a valid way to feel when someone dumps you.”
Griffin studied Noah for a long moment, and she saw the slight easing of tension in his arms. When he spoke next, he sounded far more assured. Hints of the salesman returning. “Yes, I thought so, too. The problem is that I was still angry with her when I saw…” His voice caught, and for a fleeting moment his chest heaved as though he couldn’t get enough air. He uncrossed his arms and leaned his elbows on the table. A long breath shuddered out of him. “I was still angry with her when I saw the news, and it felt—feels—wrong. I did love her. I do. There was a time when I thought she would come back to me. That she’d get whatever had gotten into her out of her system. See reason. All I wanted to do was make her life better. Make Haven’s life better. To know that someone did something so horrendous to her and her daughter, well…” Tears appeared at the corners of his eyes and he blinked them back. “Maxi deserved so much better. They both did. If she had just listened to me, maybe they would both still be here.”
He moved so easily between sounding like a man giving a sales pitch—all I wanted to do was make her life better—to a grieving lover that Josie wasn’t sure how much, if any, of it was purposeful. He would have had to be charming and composed to seduce both Maxine and Dani, but now his frayed edges were visible.
She leaned forward, holding eye contact with him. “You tried to convince her that you’d make her life better if she came back, didn’t you?”
“Of course. That day, when she told me she was leaving me, I begged her not to do it. To stay.” His voice was low, almost as if he was whispering a secret to them. “I got down on my knees.”
He looked horrified by his own admission, as if saying it out loud to someone made him less of a person. Before he could think too hard about it, Josie moved on with her questions. “Shedidn’t listen, though. She still broke things off. What about after that? Did you call her? Text her?”
“She had a second phone, just for me. Couldn’t risk her husband seeing my number or our messages on her regular one. She turned it off or threw it away after she left me. I couldn’t get in touch with her.”
“What did you do?” asked Noah. “Surely, you wouldn’t let her go so easily.”
“I had to.” His voice was full of defeat. “It’s what she wanted.”
In Josie’s experience, killers didn’t care what their victims wanted. “Did you see her at her office? The practice was still on your circuit for work.”
Griffin picked a piece of lint from his sleeve. “No. I had to go in there a couple of times, but she wasn’t there.”
“The café near her building?” Noah said. “Did you track her down there? Try to convince her to take you back?”
Griffin shook his head.
“So you followed her,” said Josie. “Lurked around. She didn’t even know it was you, did she? How long after the breakup did you start doing that?”
His light brown eyes met hers, filled with confusion. “What?”
“How long after Maxine ended things between you did you start following her around?” Josie asked again.
