Dead Wrong

“Friends?”

“Nobody who stuck around once I was arrested.”

Mildly shocked, she asked, “So people who knew you thought you might have done it?”

“I don’t know if they thought that, or just didn’t want anything to do with the cops. They were, like, people I had drinks with. My best buddy, he got knifed in prison. He ran this chop shop, see. Three months inside, and he was dead.” Another shrug, more feigned indifference.

“Let me ask you this, Mr. Mendoza.” Trina leaned forward. “Can you think of anyone who cares enough about you to try to get you out of here?”

He was either a heck of an actor, or he was stunned. “Get me out of here? You mean, like someone’s planning a break?”

“No,” Trina said. “Not a break. Someone murdered another woman and displayed her body in exactly the same way Gillian Pappas’s was displayed. The crime is almost a perfect copycat.”

“You think…” He swallowed. “You think someone did that so it would look like I couldn’t have murdered Gilly. So you’d get a pardon for me because I must not have done it.”

“We think it’s a possibility that’s the motive. Yes.”

“Nobody would do that for me.” He actually shuddered. “You think somebody would do something like that just to help out a friend?”

“We do think it’s a possibility,” she repeated.

“Yeah, well, the only people who care about me are my family, and they’re not murderers!” He flattened his hands on the table and half rose. “You’re not going to be trying to haul them in, are you?”

She didn’t move and kept her voice nonthreatening. “We might look into their whereabouts. That’s all.”

“They live in Union Gap. They wouldn’t be down here. It’s winter. There’s nothing to pick.”

“If we can verify that, they’ll be out of the picture.”

His angry stare clashed with her steady one. Finally he dipped his head abruptly and sank back into the chair. After a moment, he asked, “This girl. The one that was killed. Did she look like Gilly?”

“Yes. Quite a lot like her.”

“What was her name?”

“Amy Owen. She grew up in Elk Springs.” She paused a beat. “Did you know her?”

“Why would I know her? I told you. Girls like Gilly. They didn’t pay attention to someone like me.” His bitterness could have etched metal. “Not unless they wanted to piss someone off.”

She wondered if that was true. Ricky Mendoza had been a handsome young man. Possibly a little wicked looking. But if his story was true, he was essentially decent. He’d made the effort to follow Gillian Pappas to her car, to ensure she was safe. He must have seemed a godsend to her, a nice enough guy she could imagine having sex with him, but also rough enough around the edges to make him different from Will Patton. Someone whose identity she could fling at Will, use to hurt him.

What she had never dreamed was that the one who would end up hurt was Ricky Mendoza.

Because she ended up dead.

“Did it ever occur to you,” Ricky asked now, “that maybe I didn’t kill Gilly? That maybe the guy who did is still out there? That this Amy’s murder wasn’t a copy? It was the real thing?”

“You were convicted of Gillian Pappas’s murder.” She hesitated, debated, then said very carefully, “However, that possibility is also one we have to consider.” She clicked off the recorder and rose to her feet. “Mr. Mendoza, thank you for your cooperation.”

Looking as though she’d elbowed him in the gut, he sat gaping at her.

She nodded and walked out, passing the guard on his way in.

A WEEK AGO, his mother had asked him to Sunday-night dinner. Nice to have her seem disconcerted to have him show up.

“Will!”

“Do I have the wrong night?”

“No! No, of course not. Come in. I’ve just been crazy with this murder….” Her voice trailed off and she let him in. “Sorry.”

“At least you’re having dinner at home tonight.” He knew from experience that she might eat fast food for a week straight when she was pursuing a fresh case.

She laughed. “Scott’s amazed. He’s actually the one cooking tonight.”

“Come to a dead end?”

His mother hesitated. “Maybe. No one close to Amy looks like a viable possibility.”

Following her toward the kitchen, he said, “That’s because Amy is such an unlikely victim. I mean, I know beautiful women who enjoy enraging men. Amy isn’t—wasn’t—like that.”

“So everyone keeps repeating. Why Amy? they ask.” She sounded frustrated. “I have to say, ‘I don’t know.’ If we knew why she was chosen, we’d be halfway to making an arrest.”

“You working with someone in the D.A.’s office?”

“I talked to Louis Fein. Since I don’t even have a suspect, we didn’t have much to say.”

Her husband, Scott McNeil, was stirring something on the stove. A big, athletic man with auburn hair graying a little at the temples, he grinned. “Hey, Will.”

“Scott.” He glanced around. “Are Emily and Evan here?”

“Evan’s playing Nintendo. Emily is on the phone. She’s always on the phone. She’s been on the phone or the computer since the day she turned twelve. She only goes to school because her friends are there.”

“Hey, maybe I’ll go whip Evan’s ass.”

Scott muttered, “I wouldn’t count on it.”

Meg laughed. “Do you hear the note of wounded ego? Dad got badly beaten last night.”

“You know, it’s not skill.” Will shook his head. “You shouldn’t feel bad. It’s age. You can’t help it. Those reflexes start to go…”