Page 43 of Hard Heart

Sykes smiled a slow, slightly dirty smile, and I didn’t like the way my heart sped up.

“We do,” he said, then leaned in closer to read my scrawl. “Item one, lawyer. Are you referring to yourself?”

“No, the previous guy.”

“You mean Matthew Greaves.”

“That’s him.” Call me Matt, he’d said, even as he insisted on calling me Ms. Hennessy. “I managed to speak to him on the phone this week, and I have to say he’s as optimistic about your chances as you are.”

“I hate to say ‘I told you so,’ but…”

“Yes, yes, I know. When I read through the transcript, I noticed the police were light on forensics.”

“Matthew said that at the time, I recall. They got enough to hang me, and screw the rest.”

“That’s about the size of it. The last time we spoke, you said Ruby would have fought back, but there were no fingernail scrapings. Did she typically wear her nails long? She didn’t bite them or anything?”

“Always long, always painted.” Sykes blew out a breath, and his gaze flicked to the grimy ceiling. “They were dark red on the day she died.”

I thought back to my conversation with Greaves. What he’d told me.

“I put the medical examiner on the stand,” he’d said. “And he looked me in the eye and told me there was nothing under her fingernails.”

“Did you believe him?” I’d asked.

“I did not. Met a lot of liars in my time, and he was one of them. We tried for an exhumation order, but it was denied.”

“So that was it? He just got away with perjury?”

“The more pertinent question is, why did he lie? Did he forget to perform the test? Was he drinking on the job? Or was there something more nefarious at play?”

“Was he known to drink on the job?”

“There were rumours.”

“You think he’d talk to me?”

“You could try a seance.”

Not another one… “He’s dead as well?”

“Buried in Eastlawn Cemetery, not too far from Ms. Costello. It was a moving service.”

“How did he die?”

“Liver disease caught up with him at last.”

Another dead end. “I do have a couple more questions.”

“Shoot. I got five minutes before my next meeting.”

“Why didn’t you put Sykes on the stand?”

“Because I saw the way the jury looked at him, and they weren’t impressed. If he’d opened his mouth, they’d have been even less impressed.”

“Really? When I spoke with him, he came across as polite and articulate.”

“He was having some kind of manic episode, and the docs had him tranqued up to the eyeballs. You must have gotten him on a good day.”