“Where—” My chapped lip splits and starts to bleed. “Where is he?”
Kramer shrugs and settles back in his seat. “That, I couldn’t tell you. He walked out of here without saying a word, ma’am. He certainly didn’t ask after you.”
I flinch.
I don’t mean to. I really, truly don’t. But sometimes, the body does what it wants, and what my body wants to do right now is scream that that’s a lie.
He can’t abandon me here. He wouldn’t. We had a plan, dammit!
“He didn’t leave you any money for bail, either, if you were hoping for that,” Kramer adds, almost as an afterthought. “No contact info for you, no note, nothing. As far as anybody on the bond side of things is concerned, you don’t exist.”
He’s lying,I think.He has to be. Mat would never.
Mat said,I’ve got you, I’ve got both of you.
Mat said,On my father’s grave.
Mat said, Whatever I do, I do for us.
“If I’ve seen this once, Mrs. Snyder, I’ve seen this a hundred times. Pretty wife who’s unhappy with her husband until a handsome boyfriend comes along. They think they’re slick, they can’t possibly get caught. And then, somewhere along the line, something goes sideways, and the boyfriend looks at the wife and thinks,I can’t carry her. Not where I’m going.And he leaves. They always leave. You’re not special.”
He pauses to let that sink in.
“This all might sound harsh, but I’m being straight with you, because honesty beats lies every time, in my opinion. The D.A.’s going to look at this file and they’re going to file Murder Two. And then they’re going to be on a plane to Aruba by next Friday, because the case’ll basically prosecute itself while they’re sipping piña coladas. You’re looking at twenty-five to life, ma’am. Maybe a plea down to fifteen if you’ve got something to offer us about Mr. Satyrin’s people. Otherwise, you go away for a long, long time. And it doesn’t sound like Mr. Satyrin is gonna be paying you any visits.”
My heart hurts in a way it’s never, ever hurt before. “I want a lawyer,” I demand.
Kramer nods. “That’s your right.”
“And you can shove it with the questions. I don’t have anything else to say.”
“That’s your right, too.” He gathers up his folder and rises. “But while you’re sitting in here, I want you to think about what I’ve told you. He’s not coming. You oughta make your peace with that, because whatever moves you make next, you’ll be making them alone.”
Then he’s gone, whisking out through the door and leaving me all alone in this cold, metal-walled interrogation room. It’s sterile and still in here, but within my head, my thoughts are no longer so fuzzy and hard to make out.
Now, they’re jagged and sharp and cutting open everything they touch.
That asshole cop is lying,snarls the defiant voice in me.This is classic police manipulation. Page one of the textbook, day one at the academy type shit. People who feel alone and afraid will start talking much, much sooner.
Matvei wouldn’t leave me. He swore he’d protect me. Matvei said he’s got me, and I believed him.
Matvei wouldn’t leave me.
He wouldn’t. He didn’t. He can’t.
And then, underneath all of that, in a place I cannot quite reach to stamp out, in the small, dark, primitive place at the base of my skull where doubt lives and breeds and waits, another thought keeps thumping like the beat of a black and twisted heart:
But what if he did?
41
MAT
The hood comes off in a holding cell at the 19th Precinct sometime around dawn.
I know it’s a holding cell because, well, they’re hard places to misinterpret. It’s bleak concrete and steel bars everywhere I look.
I know it’s the 19th Precinct because who threw me into the cell in the first place told me as much when I asked.
