There had been nicer interview rooms Foster could have used to have this conversation, but she wanted Stella to sit in this one. She wanted her to smell the funk left behind by unwashed bangers and pushers in handcuffs. She wanted her to settle into the grime, sit where they sat. Stella had tried to squeeze an alibi out of Ashley Tighe, and now Foster was going to squeeze her so she’d know how it felt.
Suddenly there it was. The shift. Foster had waited patiently for Stella to move from confident to frightened. The cycle, like a second hand sweeping a clock face, had taken a little over an hour. Scared was where she wanted her. Now she could start.
Foster set an enlarged copy of Peggy’s driver’s license photo on the table, followed by a crime scene photo of the dead woman, her body covered by a bloodstained sheet, her empty, lifeless face and that red hair the only things showing. Foster put them down one after the other like a Vegas blackjack dealer.
“Let’s talk about Sunday,” Foster said. “You didn’t go to Zippy’s. You called Peggy all day, half the night, but she never returned your calls. Why were you harassing her?”
Stella sat mesmerized by the photos, then pushed them away, back across the table toward her. Foster waited for the grandiose emotional show she was sure was coming. Stella’s eyes began to water. There it was.
“I wasn’t harassing her,” the girl responded. “Since when do you need a reason to talk to a friend?”
“More than fifteen times in just a few hours?” Foster asked. “Where’d you go?”
Stella tilted her head back and tried squeezing tears out of her eyes. The performance was coming. “I was in my room. Alone.”
Foster had come prepared; she always did. She pulled out another photo, set it down. It was an image of Stella leaving her dorm at 3:14 p.m. After she and Lonergan had talked to Tighe, they’d hit the college’s security office and caught a break—a retired cop working part time there. “You went out,” Foster said. She laid down another photo. “Here’s you coming back. Monday morning. Eight minutes after seven. So let’s try again. Where were you?”
Stella stopped working the tears and gaped at the photographs as if they were of her robbing a bank. She was cooked and seemed to forget all about the crocodile tears. “Where’d you get that?”
Foster didn’t answer. This wasn’t a conversation. “Stella?”
“I stayed with a friend, all right? No big deal. I only said Zippy’s because who or where had nothing to do with whatever happened to Peg.”
Foster picked up her pen. “What’s your friend’s name?”
Stella hesitated. “I don’t know if I want to get people involved in all this.”
“Not people,” Foster said. “One person. Because I suspect that you were calling Peggy because you needed to know where she was. So that she wouldn’t catch you stepping out behind her back.” The look on Stella’s face told her she was right. Stella wasn’t only possessive, controlling, and obnoxious, she was also unfaithful. Foster’s fingers pressed tightly around the pen. “Name. Address. Phone number.” Their eyes locked. “Now.”
“I should call my parents,” Stella said. “They should be here, right?”
“How old are you, Stella?” Foster asked, but she already knew the answer. Stella was twenty-one, a senior graduating in June. Legally an adult. Foster didn’t need her parents’ consent to talk to her. Stella looked like she might be sick. Twenty-one had its benefits, but it had its curses too. “Welcome to the real world.”
“A lawyer, then,” Stella said, her eyes darting around the room. For a moment, they landed on Li, maybe for a little assistance, but Li wasn’t giving any. “This doesn’t seem fair.”
Foster sat back. “You’re not under arrest, Stella, but you can call your parents if you’d like. We’ll sit them downstairs. They can wait for you while we talk. Maybe they’ll be able to convince you to level with us. Or you can cooperate with us now and then go home. Up to you.”
“If I don’t answer, then what?”
“Then Detective Li and I will wonder why, and then you become our new pet project. You’re not well liked at school, Stella. You won’t get a lot of support there, I don’t think. People will talk. We won’t be discreet when we go back.”
Their eyes held. Stella was the first to break the stalemate. “All right. Fine. It doesn’t matter now anyway. Gina. Gina Carr. I was with her.” Foster wrote down Carr’s address and number as Stella recited them to her, then listened as Li got up and slipped out of the room, knowing she was on it.
“Now can I go?” Stella folded her arms across her chest, her lower lip protruding in a petulant pout. “I shouldn’t even be here. I didn’t do anything.”
Foster gathered up the photos and closed her notebook. “Sit tight.” Stella began to work up another cry, her face scrunching up. Foster got up and stared down at her, unmoved. “The act’s not working. Not on me, anyway.” Stella looked up, and her mouth opened to answer back. Foster held up a hand to stop the flow. “The problem for bullies, Stella, is that eventually they get back everything they’ve been giving out. It’s called karma.” She thought of Ashley Tighe and how Stella had twisted her arm to give her an alibi, how fear had her jumping at the sight of an opening door. Foster had Stella’s full attention. “Eventually, there comes a time when weak little bullies come up against someone tougher.” Foster strolled over to the door, opened it, but didn’t leave right away. She took another long look at Stella. “For you, that’s today.”
CHAPTER 26
Li was sitting at her desk swiveling when Foster returned. Everyone hovering around her, including Lonergan, looked fit to be tied. “Okay, gang’s all here. I just spoke to Gina Carr,” Li announced. “She’s twenty-nine. Fitness trainer. She confirms Stella was with her Sunday night, all night. She even went so far as to show me her Ring video that clearly catches Ms. Two-Timer getting to her place around five and tiptoeing out first thing the following morning. Skeezy but not illegal. Stella’s not our killer.”
“How’d she show you?” Foster asked.
Li grinned. “Over FaceTime. Fastest way.”
“That’s two possibles we’ve had to cut loose, by the by,” Kelley groused. “Guess Lonergan beating the campus bushes was a waste of shoe leather.”
Lonergan glanced over at Griffin’s door and snarled, “Wild-goose chase was what it was.”
“Twenty-nine?” Kelley said. “What the hell’s she doing with a twenty-one-year-old?”
“Stella’s legal,” Li said, “but if she were my kid, Carr and me would have a serious talk.”
Kelley chuckled. “Oh, is that what they’re calling beatdowns these days?”
“I have a call into Rimmer’s bar pickup, Samuels-Key,” Foster said. “I left a detailed message. No callback yet.”
“If she’s married and stepping out,” Symansky said, “she’s not going to be all het up about getting in touch.”