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“I need some caffeine.”
Rosie laughed. “You got it. How about one of Barb’s marionberry muffins to go with it?”
“Thanks. Only one, though. Shoot me if I try to order another.”
“Flesh wound or kill yah?”
“Kill me.” Laughing, Ellie turned around, heading back for a booth in the empty nonsmoking section of the diner.
It was a moment before she saw him.
He sat sprawled across the burgundy vinyl booth, an empty coffee cup in front of him. He saw her and nodded.
Ellie walked over to him. “Mr. Azelle,” she said.
“Hello, Chief Barton.” He did not look pleased to see her. His gaze flicked over the heavy manila folder she carried.
“Can I join you? I have some questions to ask you.”
He sighed. “Of course you do.”
She sidled into the booth across from him. She looked at him, trying to really see him, but all she saw were tired eyes and deep frown lines. As she was marshaling her thoughts into a question, he said, “Three years.”
“Three years what?”
Leaning toward her, he looked deeply into her eyes. “I was in prison for a crime I didn’t commit. Hell, I didn’
t even know about it. I thought Zoë had left me for one of her lovers and taken our kid.” The intensity in his eyes was unnerving. “Imagine how it would feel to be convicted of something terrible—horrific—and put in a cage to rot. And why? Because you made bad choices and let passion rule your life. So I had affairs. So I lied to my wife and family about that. So I sent her flowers after a knock-down and drag-out fight. It doesn’t make me a killer.”
“The jury—”
“The jury,” he said with contempt. “They couldn’t see past my life. Every newspaper and TV station called me guilty within five minutes. No one even looked for Zoë and Brit. Two eyewitnesses saw a strange van on my street the day my family went missing—and no one cared. The police didn’t even bother to search for a white guy in a yellow slicker and Batman baseball cap who drove a grayish Chevy van. When I offered money for information, they compared me to O.J. For the last month I’ve been waiting every day for the DNA analysis that would give my daughter back to me. I had to get a court order to compare her DNA to the blood found at the scene. And when I get it, I race up here . . . only to find that your sister is going to fight me for custody.”
Rosie showed up at the table. “Here’s your coffee and muffin, Ellie. I put ’em on your tab.” She grinned. “Along with a healthy tip.”
When Rosie left, Azelle leaned across the table. “Do you believe me?”
She heard a crack in his voice, an uncertainty that bothered her. “You want me to see an innocent man,” she said slowly, watching him.
“I am innocent. It’ll be easier on all of us if you believe that.”
“It would certainly be easier on you.”
“How is she? Can you at least tell me that? Does she still suck her thumb? Does she—”
Ellie stood up quickly, needing distance between them. She didn’t want to hear what he knew about their girl. “Alice needs Julia. Can you understand that?”
“There is no Alice,” he said.
Ellie walked away, not daring to look back. She was almost to the door when she heard him call out to her:
“You tell your sister I’m coming, Chief Barton. I won’t lose my daughter twice.”
THE NEXT FORTY-EIGHT HOURS UNFOLDED IN A KIND OF FADED SLOW motion. The snow stopped falling. In its wake, the world was sparkling and white. Julia spent every hour working. During the day, she was with Alice, teaching her new words, taking her outside to make snow angels in the backyard. Several times during the day Alice asked about her wolf and pointed to the car. Julia gently turned her attention back to whatever they were doing. If Alice wondered why she kept kissing her cheek or holding her hand, she showed no sign of it.
But it was the nighttime hours that mattered most right now. She and Ellie and Peanut and Cal and the private detective worked all night long, poring through police reports and newspaper accounts and archived videotape. After a long shift at the hospital, Max showed up to help. They read or watched everything they could find on George Azelle. By Monday morning, when the meetings were over, they knew every fact of his life.
And none of it would help them.
