Part 10 (1/2)

Not a lie, she insisted silently.

”Miss DeGraff.”

”I don't know for sure what happened,” she said.

Rusty pounced, his eyes gleaming. ”You were wrong. You admit it.”

Tess stuck out her chin. ”All I admit is that it doesn't make sense.”

”That's not good enough,” said the chief.

Tess summoned all her nerve. ”That's all I can tell you. That's all I know. And that's all I'm going to say to you without an attorney present. I want to leave now. I'm not under arrest. I a.s.sume I can leave.”

Rusty scowled at the mention of a lawyer and raised a hand, as if to detain her, but then seemed to think better of it. ”All right. You can go. For now,” said Rusty Bosworth. ”But I warn you, Miss DeGraff. If I find out that you committed perjury, you will face criminal charges. Take my advice. If my hunch is correct, you'll be sacrificing yourself to protect a man who doesn't deserve your loyalty. Not if he killed your sister...”

Tess stood up, even though her legs trembled beneath her. ”My father would have died to protect my sister,” she said in a raspy voice. ”To protect any one of us.”

Rusty Bosworth peered at her. ”But he didn't, did he?” he said.

Tess wanted to shout at him or slap his face. She wanted to shriek at him that no one had suffered more than Rob DeGraff over what happened to Phoebe. She wanted to, but she didn't. Bosworth was an enemy who had made up his mind.

Erny was already in bed by the time Tess got back to the inn. Julie had sent a helping of chicken pot pie home with Dawn for Tess. Dawn heated it up for Tess and set it down in front of her, but Tess had little appet.i.te. She picked at it and ate a few forkfuls.

”What did he want, honey?” Dawn asked.

Tess shook her head and avoided her mother's gaze. She was not about to tell Dawn about Rusty Bosworth's speculation that Dawn's husband was responsible for the murder of their daughter. Tess could not imagine even uttering the words, much less forcing her mother to hear them. ”He was asking me about that night. What I remembered,” she said blandly. ”Just hoping I might be able to provide some new information for the case.”

Dawn nodded. Tess excused herself after barely eating anything. ”I'm exhausted,” she said. ”I'm going to turn in.”

”Try and sleep,” Dawn said, although, judging by the dark circles beneath her eyes, Dawn was unable to take her own advice.

Tess shook her head. ”I'll try. Good night, Mom.”

Dawn hugged her for a long time and Tess could feel her mother's frame shaking. ”Are you okay, Mom?” Tess asked.

”Oh sure,” said Dawn. ”It's just...this never ends, does it?”

Tess left her mother in the kitchen and went down the hall to her room. The room was dark except for the moonlight that spilled in through the window. Tess got changed in the bathroom and slipped under the covers of her bed. Across the room, she could hear Erny's steady breathing. Tess lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling. She felt as if she were pinned there by a dead weight. In the last forty-eight hours, she had done nothing, it seemed, but react to the disorientation caused by unfolding events. The unexpected results of the DNA tests had upended the one certainty she had clung to about the death of her sister. The ident.i.ty of the killer. She did not know why he had done it, or where, or why he had picked on them out of all the people in the world. But at least she had always known who was guilty. Lazarus Abbott. The man she described to the police. The killer.

Now even that was gone.

Who is wrong and who is right? And who is truly to blame? The room was quiet and Tess longed to sleep, but she couldn't turn her thoughts off, couldn't stop thinking about what she knew and didn't know. The DNA results were a fact. They exonerated Lazarus Abbott. That meant that he could not have raped Phoebe.

But no matter what preposterous theory Chief Bosworth floated about her father, she knew for a fact that it was not him. As for her mistaking Lazarus for someone else, Tess remembered the face of Lazarus Abbott. And even if, over time, she thought she might have altered the face she saw that night to fit the face of the man they arrested, Chief Fuller's words this morning came back to her. When she had described the man with the knife that long-ago night, Chief Fuller had recognized her description instantly. When Lazarus Abbott had been brought into the police station, she had screamed at the sight of him.

That reaction was not an accident. So where did that leave her? What if, she asked herself, your identification is right, and also the DNA is right? How, she wondered, can I reconcile two facts that seem to be mutually exclusive? It was Lazarus Abbott who took her. It was not Lazarus Abbott who killed her.

”Mom?”

Tess jumped and let out a soft cry.

”It's just me,” said Erny, delighted with her alarmed response.

”You scared me. I thought you were asleep,” she said.

”Nah. I was waiting until you got back.”

”Well, I'm back,” she said firmly. ”Now you can sleep. Did you have a good time at your aunt and uncle's?”

”Pretty good. Ma, I'm sorry I said those things to you. I shouldn't have said you were lying. I didn't mean it.”

”I know, honey. Don't worry about it. We're all a little stressed.”

”What did the police chief say?”

Tess was not about to utter the accusation against Rob DeGraff, the grandfather Erny had never known. ”We just went over the same stuff. He thinks I must have...remembered the wrong man.

”Did you?” he asked. ”Did you remember the wrong guy?”

Tess sighed. ”I don't think I did. I saw the man who took her. But it's a problem because the test results say someone else did the...crime.”

Erny was silent for a minute. ”Maybe it was his friend. Maybe his friend dared him to take her.”

It seemed like an utter non sequitur. ”His friend? What friend?”

”I don't know. Any friend. Your friends can get you into trouble sometimes,” he said in a knowing tone.

Tess turned over in her bed and propped herself up on one elbow. She could see the other bed, the jumble of Erny's covers, and his shock of dark hair against the pillow in the moonlight.

”What do you mean?” said Tess.

”Oh, you know, Ma. Sometimes they say, 'Let's do something bad,' and you might not even want to do it. But you do it anyway.”

Tess's heart skipped a beat. She knew he was speaking from experience. And any other night, she would have pursued his explanation, but tonight all she could think about was the possibility he raised. ”That's true,” said Tess slowly. Julie said that Lazarus had had no friends, but that wasn't necessarily true. Maybe if she knew more about his life.... Erny yawned while Tess turned the idea over and over in her mind. Then she said aloud, ”But no. Wait. It couldn't be.”

”What couldn't?” Erny murmured. Sleep was beginning to overtake him.

”If someone else did the...crime,” said Tess, thinking aloud, ”Lazarus would have told the police. Why would he take the blame?”

”He didn't want to be a snitch,” said Erny, as if that were the most reasonable explanation in the world.

No, of course not. Tess was silent. A partner in crime. The thought opened up a realm of evil possibilities, like a deadly nightshade blooming in the dark. It would explain how she could have seen Lazarus and yet the rape, and possibly the murder, was committed by someone else. Maybe someone else had planned the whole thing. Goaded him into it. Lazarus never could have been the brains behind it. It had to be someone older or smarter. Someone he would be afraid to betray.

Tess looked over at her son in the dark, amazed by his simple suggestion. ”You know, honey, you might be right.”

But Erny had not heard her. He had flopped over on his side and was making a murmuring, sighing sound. Soughing like the wind. Dreaming.