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Palicki started to sweat. “This isn’t happening. I’ve got to be in some kind of nightmare. I never killed anyone. I don’t know anyone named Fiona. I don’t know anyone named Corrine. I told them. Hook me up to a lie detector. I’m telling the truth.”
Palicki surprised me. I couldn’t read minds. A lot of the body language cues people say indicates lying are just myths. But as I sat there, watching Daniel Palicki sweat and squirm, I started to believe him.
Lock, on the other hand, became enraged. “I would have done anything for you, Daniel. I took you into my home. You have no idea how hard I tried. Eli and I both. It was you who turned on us.”
Palicki’s eyes flashed. Something seemed to snap inside of him too.
“Now who’s lying?” he said. “You care more about a dead person than you did us. Your brother is gone. I was right here. I loved you, man. I believed every promise you made me, then broke. You turned your back on me. You and Eli. All the two of you know how to do is throw money at things. Eli? You don’t even know who your friends are.”
“No more lies!” Lock shouted. “My home! You violated my trust. They know it was you. Mina told me your DNA was in one of your victims’ cars. Her blood was in your house. Don’t you dare bring up Bennett’s name to me. You’re perverted. You took something that means something to me. You hung it on the wall in your bedroom. A place where you committed your horrors.”
“My wall? You mean that stupid painting? That’s what you think? I loved that painting because you did. When you told me what it meant, I wanted to think we could be like that too. Connected. Because you promised we would be. That I could always count on you. Call on you. I thought you were finally going to honor that promise today. You’re a fraud.”
As Lock and Palicki shouted at each other, something Palicki said rang in my ears on repeat.
You don’t know who your friends are. Corrine had said almost the exact same thing. He always trusts the wrong people. He’s never known who his real friends are. He can’t see who’s truly on his side.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. I should have been able to detect something in Palicki. Some small crack in his story. But he was relieved when we walked in, if only for a moment.
He always trusts the wrong people. You don’t know who your friends are.
My heart felt ready to burst. I vaulted out of my seat and practically ran into the observation room.
“What are you doing?” Dennison asked. “This is going nowhere. Get Lock out of there.”
“Roy, something’s wrong. He isn’t… there’s not…” I was spinning again. I could tell from the look on Roy’s face he thought I was losing it. Except I wasn’t. I knew exactly what I was doing.
“Come here,” I said to Roy, grabbing him by the arm. I dragged him out into the hallway.
“What’s going on?”
“You said you found Lock’s contact in Palicki’s phone. Show me.”
“What?”
“The phone forensics report. Can you pull it up? Show me the contacts they found.”
It was a little crazy, maybe. But if Palicki was truly innocent, he’d never think to delete anything.
Roy walked into the observation room and grabbed his backpack. His face reddened with anger or frustration. I didn’t care. We sat on the hallway bench as Roy took out his tablet and fired it up. I nearly crawled out of my skin from impatience. Finally, Roy found what I asked for and handed me the tablet.
My eyes blurred as I scanned the lines of data. Palicki had over a hundred contacts in his phone. I almost passed right over it. It was as if the wind knocked out of me as I saw the name I knew I would find.
“Eli Shepherd,” I said.
“Okay? And?”
“And,” I said. “Eli has been Lock’s best friend since college. He knows everything about him. He knows about the red ribbons. He’s seen mine! He knows what it means. He has access to my house. He even lived there for a while when he was younger. He’s been checking up on me. Asking how things are going for me at work. He knew Fiona McBride. They went on a double date. Lock has a picture of them together in a photo album in his study. Corrine said someone tried to hurt Lock. She said he doesn’t know who his real friends are. Just like Palicki just did. You have to ask him.”
“Ask him what?”
“Ask Palicki what he meant by that. Find out what his relationship with Eli is.”
“Mina, I don’t know…”
“Trust me! Are you serious, Roy? You know I was telling you the truth the whole time. You really want to tell me I’m nuts right now?”
Ten minutes later, Daniel Palicki did end up destroying something Lock loved.
