“You could have called,” Johnson pointed out.
“I didn’t have my phone. It was in my Jeep. You know that. You must have it. And my purse.” Were they playing games with her?
“We do,” Thomas said. “You can pick it up your belongings as soon as we’re done. You’ll have to sign for everything.”
“I will.”
“Doesn’t your friend have a phone?” Johnson asked. “Couldn’t you have used hers? Or his?”
“I could have,” she agreed, and felt the muscles in her back tightening. She fought to appear calm. “As I said, I just needed some time.”
Johnson seemed about to pursue the subject, but Thomas said, “Why don’t you tell us what happened? Why were you at Merritt Margrove’s place in the mountains?”
“I was looking for him,” she explained. “I’d been shocked to hear that my brother Jonas had been released from prison and I wanted answers, so I tried calling him. When that didn’t work, I started looking for him. He wasn’t at his office, but Celeste—she’s his wife—she said he was up at his mobile home up in the mountains.”
Kara, still inwardly fighting her case of nerves, explained about finding the place, letting herself in and discovering the attorney, already dead, lying in a pool of blood. “I freaked,” she admitted. “I mean, really freaked. Seeing him like that.” She shivered.
“So what did you do?” Thomas asked.
“I took off.” She explained about needing to get away, about driving west toward the city and calling 9-1-1. “And then . . .” she said, taking in a deep breath, “and then Jonas, he pops up from the back seat, just like in those stupid movies. I nearly had a heart attack.”
She told them about how she’d almost hit a deer and then the accident with the semi sliding toward them on the narrow road. “All I remember was the truck’s grill and trying to turn away from the collision, but that’s it. I don’t remember hitting, I don’t remember the accident at all or the ride to the hospital. When I woke up, I was in the bed, I had stitches in my head and I kind of ached all over, especially my shoulder. The nurses told me that Jonas was there and the driver of the truck was in a hospital in Portland.”
“Did you and Jonas talk?” Johnson asked. “On the drive?”
“You mean when he scared the holy crap out of me? Yeah, we talked. Of course we did. He freaked me out.” She explained about the conversation. How tense she was, how Jonas, too, had been upset. He’d sworn he’d been dropped off at the place by a girl named Mia and that he hadn’t killed Margrove, that when he’d arrived the attorney was already dead. He’d stowed away in her Jeep because he was freaked and didn’t have a ride from Merritt’s place. He’d wanted Kara to drive him to Hal’s Get and Go, a truck stop not far from The Dalles.
“Did he tell you why he was at the cabin?”
“He said he had a meeting with Merritt and when he got there, Merritt had already been . . . been killed.” She shivered, remembering the lawyer lying on the old shag carpet. “It was awful.” Her voice had lowered.
Thomas asked, “Did you see anyone else there? When you arrived?”
“No, I didn’t even see Jonas.”
“But you didn’t wait for the police,” Johnson said. Not really a question.
“No,” Kara answered anyway. “I couldn’t stay there.”
“Had you been drinking?” Johnson asked, and Kara flashed back to the airplane-size vodka bottles that they’d no doubt found.
“That morning?” she asked. “No. But the night before? Yeah.”
“And you were driving?”
“While drinking? No.” She shook her head. Her blood was pounding in her eardrums. She needed to get out of here!
Johnson’s eyes narrowed a fraction, but she let it go. “What can you tell us about the night of the massacre?”
Kara had been expecting this. “Nothing more than what I already did. You have my statement and deposition, everything I testified to in court.”
Thomas was nodding, but Johnson said, “You were just a kid. And there were some holes in your memory.”
“That hasn’t changed,” Kara said.
Johnson cocked her head, a friendly gesture intended to say she didn’t quite believe it. “Surely over the years you’ve had time to think about it. And I imagine you did a lot. You’ve read recounts of it, seen the TV movie, even probably trolled chat rooms about it. Something could have jogged your memory.”