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Paul wrested herself from whatever she was thinking. Clearing her throat, she said, “You need to understand that my brother didn’t kill those people. He was framed.”
“Why? By whom?”
“If I knew that I wouldn’t need you. But I would say that whoever did it is particularly powerful and well connected.”
“Why would people like that be targeting your brother?”
“Well, that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, now isn’t it?”
“And you’re saying you don’t even have an idea?”
“I’m not really saying anything. You’re the investigators.”
“So you knew Bergin had hired us?”
“I suggested it. He told me he knew you, Sean. I’d read about some of the work you’d done. I said we needed a pair like you on the job because it wouldn’t be simple.”
“When was the last time you saw or spoke to your brother?” asked Sean.
“You mean before he stopped talking at all?”
“How did you know that? That your brother had stopped talking?”
“Teddy told me. And the last time I spoke with my brother was by phone a week before he was arrested.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing of great importance. Certainly not that he suspected six bodies were buried at the family farm.”
“How long had the place been in your family?”
“My mother and stepfather bought it when they got married. After our mother died, she left it to both of us. I was living abroad and so I told Eddie to take it.”
“Even after he started working for the government he lived with his mother?”
“Yes. He was at the local IRS office in Charlottesville, although I know he had responsibilities that would take him to Washington fairly regularly. Edgar really had no ambition to move into his own place. He liked the farm. It was quiet, isolated.”
“And he obviously lived there alone after your mother died.”
“He had no alternative. I was out of the country.”
“Where were you living abroad?” asked Sean. “And what were you doing?”
Paul, who had been staring at a spot on the wall about a foot above Sean’s head, now swung her gaze directly in his direction. “I wasn’t aware that I was the subject of your investigation. And yet the truly personal inquiries seemed all aimed in my general vicinity.”
“I like to be thorough.”
“A grand attribute. Just point it in the direction of my brother’s case.”
Sean took this snub in stride. And he did note that her vocabulary and tone had subtly changed. “We’ve read the police file on the bodies discovered at the farm.”
“Six of them. All men. All white. All under the age of forty. And all as yet unidentified.”
“As I understand it nothing has come back on fingerprints or DNA.”
“Quite remarkable. On the TV police shows everyone’s in the database and it only takes a few seconds to find them.” Paul smiled and took a long sip of coffee.
“I could see one or two or maybe even three not being in the system. But all six?”
