The conferring stopped. The Ainsleys’ heads separated, and all three glared at Foster and Lonergan. A united front. Keith flicked a look at his parents and got dual nods back. Foster’s heart raced.
“I can’t tell you anything else about Sunday,” Keith said. “But for the other time you’re talking about, I was playing Mortal Kombat.”
Lonergan laughed. “You what? By yourself? All night?”
“Online with a friend. Jean-Pierre. He’s in Paris. Maybe we played a few hours, not all night. But I never left my house.”
Foster let a beat go. Mortal Kombat. Reggie used to play it. “Did you record your game?” she asked. He nodded. “Show us?”
Keith checked with his parents, then got up and left the room, and the temperature, already frigid, dropped another thousand degrees, the contemptuous looks from the Ainsleys as corrosive as acid tossed on a marshmallow. Foster was sure they got Lonergan. He wasn’t a deep well. Foster was the one they looked at as though she’d ratted them out to slave catchers. But she didn’t wither under their stares. She hadn’t a single ax to grind. On the contrary, she was making sure Keith got the same benefit of the doubt everybody else got.
“You know, we didn’t come lookin’ for your son just for kicks,” Lonergan said. “He was there. We’re just supposed to ignore that?”
George Ainsley sat as cold as death itself. “This is probably the first place you came when you found the second woman, isn’t it? Keith’s name was the one and only that popped into your head, despite the fact you’ve got nothing on him.”
“We’re pursuin’ all avenues,” Lonergan said. “You explain the blood.”
“You know what’s at stake,” Carole said, and she said it directly to Foster.
Foster didn’t answer because she didn’t have to. Carole Ainsley hadn’t asked a question; she’d made a statement. And she knew full well Foster knew exactly what the stakes were.
Keith returned moments later carrying a laptop with a caduceus on the lid. Seated between his parents again, he cued up the recording, let it play, and then swiveled the laptop around so Foster and Lonergan could see it. Foster leaned closer. The game was a noisy clash of chains and crossbows, swords, and weirdly dressed alien-like characters hurling fireballs and jumping all over the place, the action fast and loud and incomprehensible to the average adult. She asked Keith to run it through to the end so that she could see how long he’d played, then pause it there so she could note the elapsed time. She didn’t know how the whole thing worked, but she could clearly see that Keith had been playing the game with someone.
“And your opponent in this is Jean-Pierre?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Keith said.
She underlined the time the game ended. Twelve thirty-nine a.m. Local. It didn’t matter what that translated to in Paris. Jean-Pierre wasn’t her concern, but to be thorough, she asked, “Last name?”
“Bernard. We started about nine thirty last night and played for about three hours. JP’s got insomnia. I haven’t been sleeping that much either lately.”
“Would you mind running it again?” Foster asked.
As the game replayed, Foster focused on the time in the right-hand corner, watching as the digital numbers advanced seconds at a time. The game had lasted two hours and forty-seven minutes precisely, followed by a two-minute sign-off, taking place at the very time Mallory Rea was thought to have been killed.
“Nothing says that laptop was in this house,” Lonergan said.
George Ainsley stood. “Keith never left the house; neither did that laptop. You have his statement. You have your proof. You need anything more, we’ll do it officially and by the numbers. You come back again, you’d better have a warrant for his arrest and a lot more than you have now.”
The door slamming behind them was as definitive as a rough toss-out could be, but there was no time to feel any way about it. “It’s not him,” Foster said, sliding into the passenger seat of their unmarked car. She braced for the argument.
Lonergan started the car. “I agree. That nerd video thing . . . hard to play that and kill a person at the same time.”
He pulled away from the curb. Foster clicked her seat belt and settled back. “And finally, there is light.”
CHAPTER 30
Rimmer was on the run, and every cop in the city was on the lookout for him. Foster didn’t think he was smart enough to evade them for long, though. It was only a matter of time. She wasn’t sure he was a killer, but he was definitely a liar. That was what they needed to talk about.
Meanwhile, they finally had the footage of the Riverwalk from Sunday night. The camera dump from Lower Wacker where Rea had been thrown away would take a bit more time, though less than it would have normally, given that they now had two deaths to solve. Nothing got city wheels turning faster than the threat of bad press and the possibility that someone would sue the city for allowing a murderer to run free. The boss’s office was busier than usual with brass racing in and out looking for assurances that CPD was making progress. The visits, the jumpiness, no doubt prompted by threatening calls from the fifth floor of city hall. What she and the team didn’t need was for the trickle-down heat, the hot potato, to get passed off to them, though she knew full well it would.
Lonergan had disappeared again.
“He left you to do the hard work again, I see?”
Foster looked up to find Li standing there. “At this point, I’m thankful for the alone time.”
Li glanced at the screen. “That’s from the Riverwalk?” She slid over the empty chair from the next desk over.
“Yes, I’m running through it looking for . . . anything,” Foster said. “These murders. They’re out of the norm and obviously linked. Ainsley’s accounted for. He’s clear. Rimmer’s still a question mark, but if the breakup with Birch was his motive, how’s that explain Mallory Rea? Did he break up with her too? The color of both women’s hair might be something. Rimmer was hung up on Peggy’s, according to Cooke. But Rea’s hair was fake.”
Li scooted her chair closer to the desk and Foster’s screen. “So we’re looking for someone else. Roll it. Let’s see. Or would you rather wait for Lonergan?”
She slid Li a look. “Like that would ever be a thing.”
Foster started the playback. Two hours went by. Slowly, they advanced through the frames, freezing the image when a person strolled into camera view. Though the footage was black and white and bathed in shadows, they could clearly see that none matched Birch. There was also no sign of Rimmer or Ainsley. Foster kept tabs on the elapsed time in the lower right corner as Sunday night crept closer to Monday morning. At 11:00 p.m. she found herself leaning in closer to the screen. Li did the same. “Here we go,” Foster said.
Frame by frame, one fuzzy image after another. Until there it was, at three minutes after 11:00 p.m., a weaving figure entered from the left. Male. Dark. Unsteady on his feet, as if drunk. “From the direction of the marina,” Foster muttered. “Where he said he was. Same clothes. The jacket.”
“That’s Ainsley, all right,” Li said.