Dying to Please Read online

  “I worked out. Bought groceries.”

  “Is that all?”

  “I had a manicure.”

  “Where did you work out?”

  “The basement.”

  “The basement, where?”

  “Cahill's house.”

  On and on, establishing when and where she got the manicure, where she bought groceries, what time she was there. What did she do then? Cooked supper. Spaghetti. Had it ready when Cahill got home. Then he got a call and had to leave. He said he'd be gone for several hours.

  Rusty looked down at his notes. He had the exact time of the call to Cahill, as well as what time he'd arrived back home. He had the checkout time of the receipt for the ice cream. If she tried to screw with the timing, he'd know. “What did you do then?”

  “I cleaned up the kitchen, and watched television.”

  “Is that all you did?”

  “I went for ice cream.”

  “What time was this?”

  “I don't know. After eight.”

  “Where did you go?”

  She told him the name of the supermarket.

  “What time did you leave the supermarket?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Can you estimate how long you were there?”

  She lifted one shoulder. “Fifteen minutes.”

  “Where did you go when you left the supermarket?”

  “Back to Cahill's house.”

  “Was he there?”

  “Yes. He got back sooner than he'd expected.”

  “What time was this?”

  “I don't know. I didn't look at the time.”

  “Did you stop anywhere else between the supermarket and Detective Cahill's house?”

  “No.”

  “You said you bought groceries earlier in the day. Why didn't you buy the ice cream then?”

  “I wasn't craving it then.”

  “You had a sudden craving for ice cream?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you crave ice cream very often?”

  “Once a month.”

  Rusty looked a little puzzled. “Why just once a month?”

  “Right before my menstrual period. I want ice cream then.”

  “Whoa,” Nolan said in Cahill's ear. “TMI.” Too much information. He didn't want to hear about menstrual cycles.

  Rusty looked a little nonplussed, too, as if he didn't know where to go with that information. Cahill kept his expression impassive as he watched. This was tough enough as it was, having his private life brought into an investigation. What was she thinking? What was going on behind those dark eyes?

  Hell, what did he know? When it came to women, he was evidently both blind and stupid; he was a detective, and it had still taken him over a year to realize Shannon was cheating on him. But it was one thing to be duped by a cheating wife, and another to so totally miss the boat with a killer. He'd had sex with this woman. Slept beside her. Laughed with her. He'd have bet his life that she was one of the straightest arrows he'd ever met, and he was having a tough time reconciling what he knew of her as a woman with the circumstances that said she might be a stone-cold killer.

  That was the bitch. Everything was circumstantial. The coincidences stretched beyond credulity, yet they didn't have a shred of physical evidence to tie her to the murders.

  “My wife craves chocolate,” Lieutenant Wester said. “I always know when she's going to start her period, because she's shoving Hershey's Kisses in her mouth like a squirrel stocking up for the winter.”

  “God, can't we talk about something else?” Nolan groaned.

  Rusty had her up to the time she arrived at the Lankford house. “What did you do then?”

  “I went to the main house to start the coffee.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual?”

  “The alarm wasn't set. It didn't beep when I unlocked the kitchen door and went in.”

  “Was that unusual?”

  “When I'm there, I always set the alarm. Mrs. Lankford sometimes forgets, though.”

  “So it wasn't unusual.”

  “Not really.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I started the coffeemaker, then took the newspaper . . . I was taking the newspaper to the den. Mr. Lankford liked to read it there, while he watched the news. The lights were on,” she said, and her voice trailed away to nothing.

  “The lights?”

  “The hallway lights. They were on. And the lamps. They shouldn't have been on that early.”

  “Why not?”

  “I'm the only one up that early, and I had just gotten there.”

  “What did you think?”

  “I thought . . . I thought someone must be sick.”

  “Why did you think that?”

  “The smell. I noticed the smell.” She gripped her arms tightly, holding herself, and she began to rock a little, back and forth. The rocking was a sign of distress, the automatic attempt of the body to find comfort. Someone should be holding her, Cahill thought, his stomach knotting even tighter than it already was.

  “What smell was that?”

  She stared blankly at him, then abruptly stopped rocking and clapped a hand over her mouth. Rusty sprang for the trash can and got it to her just in time. She leaned over the can, retching violently, though nothing but fluid came up. Cahill clenched his teeth. She must not have eaten anything since breakfast, and that was hours ago. She kept retching, straining, even after her stomach was empty, and the sounds she made were painful to hear.

  “I'll get you a paper towel,” Rusty said, stepping to the door.

  Sarah remained bent over the trash can, her body occasionally heaving in spasm. The monitoring room was silent as they watched. Cahill fought the need to go to her, take care of her. He had to stay out of this. He had to let Rusty do his job.

  Rusty came back with a wet paper towel. Sarah took it with violently trembling hands, and washed her face. “I'm sorry,” she said in a muffled voice, then buried her face in her hands and began to weep in long, shuddering sobs that reminded Cahill of how she had wept after Judge Roberts was killed.

  God. He couldn't watch this. He got up and paced around the room, rubbing the back of his neck to ease the kinks.

  If she had done those killings, then she was the world's best actress, bar none. What he saw on the screen was a woman in shock and grieving. People sometimes reacted that way if they had killed in the heat of the moment, then realized with horror what they had done. Killers who coldly executed their victims with well-placed shots to the head didn't grieve for them afterward. The circumstances were so suspicious they stank to high heaven, but the details didn't fit. She didn't fit.

  She didn't fit. No matter what the circumstances were, she didn't fit. “She didn't do it,” he said softly, suddenly, completely certain. Okay, so he could be blind when it came to romantic shit, and he'd taken a hard kick in the chops because of it; as a cop, he saw very clearly, and she wasn't guilty.

  Lieutenant Wester gave him a sympathetic look. “Doc, you're sleeping with her. Don't let your little head do the thinking for your big head.”

  “You can mark it down,” Cahill said. “I know her. She couldn't have done it.”

  “You're too involved,” Nolan said. “Just let us do our jobs. If she didn't do it, we'll find out. And if she did do it, we'll find that out, too.”

  They all looked back at the monitor. Rusty had waited silently as the storm of weeping subsided, and now he asked softly, “Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Water? A Coke?”

  “Water,” she managed to say, her voice thick. “Thank you.”

  He got a cup of water for her, and Cahill turned to watch the screen again as she took a couple of sips, cautiously, as if she wasn't certain the water would stay down.

  “What happened after you noticed the smell?”

  The rocking started again, subtle and heartbreaking. “I . . . I almost ran. I remembered the smell. When the Judge was murdered, t