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“Ah, God. This is awful.”
—
When they calledfor Melton, she came and said, “Chelsea’s asleep. Everything okay here?” She looked at Cooper’s face, saw tears, and said, “Uh-oh.”
“Talk to these two,” Cooper told her. “I’ll be in the back.”
When she was gone, Melton settled on the couch and asked, “What happened?”
“We asked her about your sexual relationship,” Virgil said. “We pointed out that you might have some animus directed at Alex Sand, if you were in love with Maggie—and because you occasionally deal with criminals, in your work, you might have access to somebody who’d do you a... favor.”
Melton gaped at them. “A favor? A favor? You mean, murdering her family?”
Lucas nodded: “Yes. That’s what we mean.”
“Oh, fuck you,” Melton shrieked. She pushed up to her feet, her face red with rage. She was shouting: “I would never do anything to hurt those people. They were my friends. Alex was my friend. I loved those kids, they were like my kids. You people go throwing accusations around—”
“We’re not doing that,” Lucas snapped. “We’re not on TV—we’re talking to you. Tell us why we’re wrong to ask. Try not to get too deep into bullshit.”
“Oh, this is going to get out,” Melton shouted. “You’re going to let it out, so you can bring some pressure. Mrs. Sand and her lesbo lover—”
Lucas, loud, talking over her: “We don’tcarewhat you and Mrs. Sand do in your love life. We’re not interested in the sex, we’re not interested how often you were in bed, we’re not interested in whether it was having an effect on her marriage. All we’re interested in is how much stress did Maggie’s relationship with Alex place on you, and what you might have done about it.”
“I didn’t do anything about it.” Saliva trickled out of the side of her mouth, and she wiped it away with a finger. “We...”
Virgil: “Who else knows about the relationship?”
“Nobody!” Then she hesitated, and said, “Nobody now.”
“What does that mean?” Virgil asked. “Now?”
Melton looked away from them, then took it down a notch, and said, “We were all in school together, Alex, Maggie and I. A couple of people, a couple of girls, might have known that Maggie and I were... affectionate. Experimenting. Not serious. We’renotin love. Never have been. The sex is fun and recreational. Period.”
Virgil: “You had no particular feeling about Alex?”
She shook her head: “No, I didn’t.” She turned away for a minute, then turned back. “Okay, that’s not true. I liked him. We’d sit around after work and have a martini and tell stories. He was a good guy. I’m almost as screwed up about this as Maggie.” She stopped, thought about that for a second, then amended, “Okay, that’s nottrue, either. I’d have been a lot more screwed up if it’d been Maggie who got shot.”
Lucas: “You never had any kind of physical relationship with Alex?”
“No. No. When I was married, the bottom line was, I really didn’t much care about... accommodating him. My husband was a nice enough guy, a doctor, but I didn’t care about the sex with him.”
Lucas said, “You know—”
Melton interrupted: “I’d just like to say, for the record, that you’re an asshole.” She looked at Virgil: “You, not so much.”
Lucas: “Thank you. I have to say, I tend to believe you. I want to believe you. But, we’re going to have to dig into this enough that we’re satisfied. We need to know where you were the night of the murders. We need to go to your law firm and ask for a list of clients you’ve worked for.”
Virgil: “We’ll tell them that it’s all routine and even grasping at straws. But wewillget the list.”
“You want to see if I might know a killer,” Melton said. “A contract killer... or somebody who owes me and who might become a killer.”
“Yes.”
“You’re wasting your time, but go ahead,” Melton said. “Since I know I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Alex, I’d appreciate it if you could do what you said—give me some cover with the firm.”
“We will,” Virgil said. “Now, give us a timeline for where you were on the night of the murders. And did you hear about them from Maggie?”
They worked through the timeline. As she sat on the couch, eyes closed, casting back to the night of the killings, she came up with a half-dozen checkable people and locations, all in Minneapolis.
