“It never is,” Javi agreed. “But trust me, being in the wrong doesn’t help much either. Are you taking Professor Belford to the hospital or the police station first?”
There was a pause as Frome clicked noisily at a keyboard. “Here,” he said. “Deputy Collins is still en route, but he’ll be here in about twenty minutes. I’ll send someone for you when he arrives.”
Frome hung up unceremoniously.
Javi sat the phone down and reached for the unopened envelope on the table. He might as well get started. At least if the case did go to hell, he wouldn’t have to see out the aftermath.
THE RUTHBelford Javi vaguely expected—a woman who took long romantic breaks and red-eyes to the rescue on the same weekend—was not the woman Collins escorted into the station. She was shorter and less stern, with a grown-out bob and bitten-down fingernails. The sort of woman who one day woke up having gone from being “cute” to “kind” with no segue. For a teacher at a fashion school, her clothes were aggressively nondescript, from her rose-patterned T-shirt to her white trainers.
“Professor Belford.” Javi extended his hand as he stepped forward. “I’m SSA Javier Merlo from the FBI.”
“Ruth,” she corrected him. Her hand was soft and clammy as she gripped his. She gave him a quick once-over from head to boots with her bloodshot eyes, and she blurted out a nervous laugh. “The real FBI? Not some comedy acronym that we’ll laugh about later?”
“No, the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Javi told her. He showed her his badge to prove it. It didn’t seem like Ruth thought he was lying, just that the whole situation seemed bizarre to her. “Thank you for taking the time to speak to me. I’m sure Janet will appreciate you flying down.”
“No, she won’t,” Ruth corrected him with a wry fold of her chapped lips. She finally realized she still had his hand and let it go with a muttered apology. “How is Janet? Can she have visitors yet?”
Javi touched his fingers to her elbow and gestured down the hall. “It’s probably best if we talk in the waiting room,” he said. “There’s a bit more privacy.”
She hesitated for a second but did as she was told. The room was a few doors down from Mel’s switchboard, and her voice was just audible—“Deputy Graves, we have a silver alert at the Green Isle.” “Deputy Jane, we have a 10-33 in progress on Able Road. What’s your 10-20?”—until Javi closed the door behind them.
“What happened?” Ruth asked as she gingerly sat down on the edge of a low, square seat. She picked nervously at a burr in the fabric of her jeans. “The lieutenant I spoke to said that Janet was in the hospital, that she’d been attacked. What happened?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Javi said as he sat down next to her and took out his phone. He tapped the Record app and set it down on the table between them. “We haven’t been able to find out much about Ms. Morrow. We can’t find her records anywhere. She barely has any social media presence, and the university says that she isn’t a student?”
Ruth rubbed her hands together. “She’s not.”
“When she named you as emergency contact, we assumed that she was your student.”
“We’re friends, that’s all.”
Javi considered her. “Yet you came all this way?”
She flicked her travel-red eyes away from his to take in the posters on the walls, as though the domestic violence helpline suddenly mattered. Color appeared on Ruth’s cheeks as she swallowed nervously.
“I don’t think she has anyone else,” Ruth said. She shifted her attention back to Javi’s face and then darted it away again, this time to the drunk driving poster. She worked her jaw. “I know she hasn’t got anyone else, and I felt… guilty.”
The careful tone of Ruth’s voice cracked into something painfully honest with the last word.
“Why?”
Ruth rubbed her eyes. Tears squeezed between her fingers. Maybe it wasn’t just the dry air on the plane that had reddened the whites. “Sorry. Because I’m lying. Because I’m a shit. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. It’s just habit.”
Javi waited. He didn’t have Cloister’s way with people—the easy, down-home earnestness that invited confidences. His cool reserve could work too. It made people want to fill the silence.
“We had an…. It wasn’t an affair.” Ruth rubbed her hand through her hair, and dark tufts stuck between her fingers. There was nothing amused about the strangled laugh that squeezed out of her throat. “I’m still lying. I don’t know why. I guess lies die hard.”
They did.
Javi ignored the backwash of sympathy in his throat and pulled the conversation back on track. “You had an affair.”
Ruth took a deep breath and nodded. She dropped her hands into her lap and twisted them together like a student about to get in trouble.
“Yes. We did.” She grimaced and corrected herself sharply. “I did. I’m the one who’s married, so… I did. It was only for a couple of months, though, and it’s over now. It’s been over for nearly six months.”
“Yet she still put your name down as her emergency contact.”
Ruth smiled ruefully. “She loved me,” she said. “And like I said, who else has she got?”
