Part 9 (2/2)
”Deliberately lying?” Tess cried. ”I was nine years old. Why would I lie about such a thing?”
Rusty waited impa.s.sively. ”I don't know. I'm asking you that.”
Tess shook her head. ”Lying? That's ridiculous.”
The chief stared at her with steely eyes.
Tess looked at him impatiently. ”Is that your theory? That I was lying?” Tess shook her head. ”That makes no sense.”
”Let me just give you a 'what if,'” said the chief, glancing down at the sheaf of notes that he had placed on the table. ”What if, say, someone you knew entered the tent that night.”
”Someone I knew!” Tess exclaimed. ”The tent was slit down the side by an intruder with a knife.”
”Well, if someone wanted to make it appear that it was an intruder...”
Tess looked at him and shook her head. ”What?”
”You were just a child at the time. What if someone you loved...someone you were accustomed to obey, told you to say that the tent had been slit by an intruder...”
”What are you talking about?” Tess demanded.
Chief Bosworth cleared his throat. ”I'm trying to consider every possibility.”
”You've lost me,” said Tess.
Chief Bosworth raised his voice and hardened his tone. ”We need to clear this matter up, Miss DeGraff. And if you have been...protecting someone all these years, it's time to admit it.”
”I have no idea what you're talking about,” said Tess.
”The truth can't hurt him anymore, Miss DeGraff. He's beyond all that now.”
”Hurt who?” said Tess.
Rusty Bosworth cleared his throat. ”You may think that we are just small-town cops. But let me tell you, I've seen more than my share of the unsavory. The downright repellent...I know perfectly well that sometimes parents...fathers, in particular...have unnatural appet.i.tes...”
Tess's eyes widened and she jerked back in her chair as if his words had slapped her face. ”My father? You are accusing my father?”
”I'm not accusing anyone,” he said. ”I'm asking you to tell the truth.”
Tess shook her head. ”No. I don't have to listen to this. That is the most disgusting-”
Rusty Bosworth leaned toward her. ”More disgusting than putting an innocent man to death?”
”You keep your filthy accusations to yourself!” she said.
Rusty Bosworth stood up and slammed his hands, palms down, on the table. ”Listen, Miss DeGraff, this police force is under attack. We are taking the blame for your mistake and I've had enough of it. Now, I intend to explore all the options this time around. Including the possibility that you lied to cover up your father's crime.”
For a moment Tess was too outraged to even form a sentence. Finally she took a deep breath and said, ”My father was a wonderful man whose life was destroyed by what your cousin, Lazarus Abbott, did...”
Rusty's eyes narrowed. ”No need for you to remind me of my relations.h.i.+p to the victim,” he said.
”The victim?” she cried.
”As you have pointed out, the victim of this miscarriage of justice was my cousin. But I think I can still be objective. You, on the other hand, were an impressionable child when all this happened. Now, I want to make this clear. You were a little girl. A good little girl. If someone told you not to tell...someone you cared for...like your father...”
Tess put her hands up. ”All right, that's it. That's enough. You can say that until you're blue in the face. It won't make it true. It was not my father.”
”Your brother, Jake, perhaps?”
”My brother Jake was at a dance in town that night,” Tess snapped. ”You know that. Every kid in Stone Hill was there.”
”I'm aware of your brother's alibi,” said Bosworth.
”Alibi!” Tess yelped.
”But your father had no such alibi. Perhaps he was lying awake while his exhausted wife slept. Lying there wondering if he could coerce one daughter into cooperation. And the other into silence.”
Outraged, Tess glared at the chief. ”Not in a million years. The only person who coerced me into being silent was Lazarus Abbott.”
”That is not possible, Miss DeGraff,” Rusty Bosworth said coolly. ”Everybody knows that now. You have to stop saying that.”
Tess felt her outrage ebbing, being replaced by confusion.
”Now, either you mistook someone else for Lazarus or you were lying,” he said. ”Which was it?”
Tess stared back at him. ”I didn't lie. But...I...don't know...I can't explain it.”
”Can't or won't?” he persisted.
Tess shook her head.
”If you lied about it, that's perjury, Miss DeGraff. That's a felony. It's called a delinquent act and you can still be arrested for it.”
Tess stared at him in disbelief.
”It's time to tell the truth, Miss DeGraff.”
”I told the truth,” she said.
”I'll remind you again,” he said in a menacing tone. ”That is not possible. Let me give you the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps it was an honest mistake. Perhaps you were saying that you saw someone who looked a certain way...and the adults around you jumped to an incorrect conclusion.”
Tess immediately remembered her conversation with Aldous Fuller. The former chief was afraid that blame would fall on him and now it seemed that Rusty Bosworth was suggesting exactly that. It was Lazarus, she wanted to say. Lazarus. But the words stuck in her throat. The chief was not going to listen to that. He was not going to listen until she at least acknowledged the possiblity that she had been mistaken. Tess thought again of her college boyfriend. The one she thought she saw leaving the dorm, when he was actually several states away. What was the point of insisting on the impossible? She thought of Erny, and shame swept over her as she remembered his words: You told the cops that guy was guilty, and that was a lie.
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