“But he did hurt someone.” Gennet slid a glossy sheet of paper in Gertie’s direction. It was a photo of a skinny old man with a broken nose. Black hair and tall and reedy. Holes in a dingy white T-shirt. “He broke this man’s nose.”
“That’s his dad. His dad doesn’t count,” Gertie answered. Her face felt hot.
“But you said he never hurt anyone. Is there anyone else he hurt, that you don’t think counts?”
Gertie understood then that there wasn’t any winning over that was going to happen here. She’d been right to tell him about Rhea, but that didn’t make him sympathetic to her cause. They weren’t now best friends. This wasn’t a pageant, she wasn’t sixteen, and no wide, dimpled smile was going to charm him. This realization, or maybe just the baby due in thirteen weeks, and all its hormones, caused her to break down.
“Do you need a tissue?”
Gertie opened her purse. “I have my own.” She blew her nose. “People cry under stress. Stop writing. It’s normal to cry.”
“Mrs. Schroeder was very thorough. She gave an exhaustive statement. She claimed that Shelly slept over your house at least a dozen times.”
Gertie sniffled.
“But your daughter, Julia, never slept over at the Schroeders’。”
“Rhea’s very particular. You know—only one slice of French toast, then everybody’s got to clean their plates and read Shakespeare. Julia had a hard time with that. Shelly, too. They liked to goof around… Why am I getting interrogated? After what I just told you about Rhea, you’re not even calling somebody to look for that evidence?”
“What about Julia? The detectives on the scene told me your daughter cut her hair short like Shelly Schroeder’s. Why is that?”
Gertie held her belly. Guppy kicked, stimulated by the cold water. “I’m tired of this. I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“We’re told your son behaves inappropriately. Self-fondling. You understand that’s a symptom. If we find proof of something untoward, you’ll be charged as an accessory. They’ll both be removed from your home right now. Today.”
“But I’m not lying,” she said.
Gennet wrote something else down in his book. “Let’s go over it all again,” he said.
“No,” she answered.
Gennet got up, walked out, returned with three slices of pizza and a Coke, plus a beige cotton cardigan he must have borrowed from a coworker.
“Can we go over it one more time?” he asked.
Gertie bit into the pizza. She was starved. “I bet you go to Croxley’s for wings. You do, don’t you? I’ll bet when this all gets cleared up I’ll see you there, and you’ll feel bad. You’ll say sorry, and you’ll buy my husband a beer.”
A blush warmed his freckled cheeks. “I really hope so.”
* * *
Hudson, clearly the tougher detective, joined Arlo in his room. She smiled warmly when she sat down beside him, and she was a good actress, because that smile reached her eyes.
“I have to do this,” she said. “I’m inclined to believe you. But this has to be thorough, for your sake.”
“Okay.”
“Mrs. Schroeder seems over-the-top. We all thought so.”
“I guess. Her kid died. Maybe she’s not in her right mind.”
“Exactly. I mean, come on. What, like you kissed Shelly on the cheek one time, right?”
“Nope.”
“Want a Coke?”
“Nope.”
“You look pretty rough. You grab a little hair of the dog that bit you this morning?”
“Nope.”
“But you were drinking the morning Shelly fell, is that right? Witnesses said they could smell it.”
“Don’t recall.”
“Can we test your blood?”
“Nope.”
“Your daughter, Julia, cut all her hair off this morning. Why do you think a twelve-year-old girl would do something like that?”
Arlo flinched. He didn’t like this woman using his daughter’s name.
“They said when Shelly fell, you were chasing her. Both of them. You weren’t dressed except for a pair of…” She looked through her notes. “Tiger-striped briefs. One witness saw an erection. Can you tell me what had you so aroused?”
A terrible red blush rose from his neck all the way to his scalp. An erection? Who could imagine such a thing, let alone say it out loud? “Nope.”