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His brow puckered.
Lizbeth’s lack of appearance seemed unusual even to me, but I hoped Kipp had better luck.
Zach cleared his throat breaking the silence. “After you pulled Lizbeth out of the water, what happened?”
Anna wiped her damp cheeks. “My mother and father came down and chaos erupted. They yelled, wanting to know what happened to her. When I told them, it was no surprise they didn’t believe me.”
She brought up a good point. “Where are you parents now?”
“Both, long dead.”
Insert foot into mouth! “I’m sorry.”
Anna sighed. “It’s for the best. Lizbeth’s death hit both of them very hard. My mother was never the same and my father became an alcoholic.”
Saddest thing I’d ever heard.
“I can’t find her outside.”
I glanced over my shoulder and Kipp approached, lips pressed into a thin line. Seeing that I couldn’t answer him with Anna here, I simply gave a short nod to show I understood his defeat.
“At what point did you see Hector?” Zach asked.
I gasped, unable to hide my shock. “Someone else saw her in the water?”
Zach nodded. “He’d been the main suspect in her death but—”
“My statement ruled him out,” Anna interjected. “He probably would’ve been found guilty of her murder since he’d been the only other person present at the time of her death. But I said it then, and I’ll say it now, he didn’t kill her. I saw Lizbeth walk into the water and drown herself. I couldn’t make up what I saw.”
“Ask her how she can be so sure,” Kipp said to me.
I shook my head, which I tried to hide by shifting my stance. There was no way I would argue with Anna. Kipp hadn’t heard the rest of the conversation and I believed every word she said.
Instead, I pressed on. “Did you know he was there when you first came out of the house?”
“No,” Anna replied. “He showed up out of nowhere. I hadn’t seen him near the house at all and his arrival startled me. But I’ll tell you one thing, his eyes were exactly like Lizbeth’s.”
My heart did that full skip-a-beat thing, indicating whatever she meant by that, scared me shitless. “They were?”
“When Lizbeth smiled at me, Hector did the exact same thing when he approached. To say it was creepy is really putting it mildly, but it was as if I stared at Lizbeth again—or what Lizbeth had turned into.”
The side of my temple hurt. I zeroed in on Zach. “So after they questioned Hector, they released him?”
“That’s right. But he’s now serving time for an unrelated crime he committed a month after Lizbeth’s death.”
I gave Zach and Kipp a knowing look, and they returned it. As much as Anna was sure of what she saw, I suspected she was wrong. A person in a state of shock might not be able to think straight. I surmised that’s exactly what happened.
“I know what
y’all are thinking, but I know what I saw,” Anna said, adamantly. “Lizbeth walked into the water and killed herself. Trust me, I’ll never be able to forget it.” Sadness gone. Determination risen. “No matter how much everyone wanted me to retract my statement and pin it on Hector, I wouldn’t send an innocent man to jail for something he didn’t do.”
Innocent, my ass!
Zach inclined his head, as if he agreed with her, but I knew better. “Is there anything else you can tell us, Anna, that could help us?”
“I’m sorry. That’s all I know.”
“Thank you for talking to us.” I smiled, reached out for her hand and squeezed it. “We’ll do what we can to find out what happened to her.”
