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chapter 27
quinn
The tide has turned. Public opinion can change on a dime, and Quinn has a spooky ability to sense the tipping point and stay one step ahead of the curve.
Like everything else these days, public sympathy is a popularity contest, and Alexa Martini is too self-contained and guarded to win any prizes. She could be falling apart on the inside, of course, but people don’t give a shit about that. The generation raised onI’m a Celebrity… andLove Islandis used to a diet of high-octane drama and vicarious emotion. They want Alexa’s grief obvious and in-your-face so they can get a kick out of her suffering. It was only a matter of time before they turned on her for not giving them what they wanted.
Quinn wonders what the woman is thinking as she watches the footage of her daughter’s last known journey play out on screen.
Phil did a masterful job with the camerawork: retracing the little girl’s steps from a kid’s-eye view was inspired, and he shot it just after sunset, the time Lottie disappeared, with shadows already lengthening eerily across the dimpled sand. Alexa’s face is grey, her skin suddenly taut across her cheekbones and jaw, as if she’s been shrink-wrapped.
This isn’t personal. Quinn is simply going after the story.She introduced the Shemika Jackson angle because the idea of this woke, do-gooding human rights lawyer coming face-to-face with her own white privilege appealed to her sense of irony.
There’s a hierarchy even for the parents of a kidnapped child. At the top of the pile: articulate, well-connected, white middle-class parents like Kate and Gerry McCann and Alexa Martini. And at the bottom, people like Shemika Jackson.
Shit, who’s she kidding? Of course it’s personal. There’s something about Alexa Martini that’s really got under her skin.
As the pre-recorded piece comes to an end, Quinn leans forward. This is the moment she lives for, the high that almost makes her forget how much she wants a drink: when her quarry is cornered and she moves in for the kill.
‘INN has received leaked details of the results of the polygraph you took four days ago, Alexa,’ she says. ‘Would you like to know what they say?’
Alexa blanches. ‘How did you get them?’
‘We’ve verified them as genuine,’ Quinn says, ignoring the question. ‘Were you aware, Alexa, that youfailedthat lie-detector test?’
She lets the silence bleed. Alexa grips the arms of her chair with whitened knuckles, glancing around the makeshift studio as if tempted to flee.
‘Your polygraph shows a “probable lie” to one or more answers,’ Quinn presses. ‘Can you explain that for us?’
‘I don’t know—’
‘Didyou lie?’
She waits for the protestations of innocence, the accusations of fake news and media bias.
‘Maybe,’ Alexa says.
Quinn isn’t often surprised, but she is now. ‘I think you need to explain that,’ she says.
Alexa slumps in her seat, a marionette whose strings have been cut. ‘The questions on the polygraph were so confusing,’ she says. ‘They asked if I hurt Lottie, and I didn’t, not on purpose, but I let it happen, didn’t I? So does that make a liar out of me?’
‘You tell me, Alexa.’
‘Which questions did I fail?’
‘Our source didn’t go into details.’
There’s a flash of defiance in the other woman’s eyes. ‘So, for all you know, I could’ve just been fibbing about my age,’ she says.
‘What were you doing when your daughter disappeared, Alexa?’
The woman looks down at her hands.
Quinn waits her out. After twenty seconds of dead air, the intern moves into her (single) eye-line, signalling for her to move things along. She turns her head so he’s presented with her eye patch.
‘I was having sex,’ Alexa says, finally.
Quinn already knowsexactlywhat Alexa Martini was doing when her child was abducted; the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office leaks like a sieve. ‘You were having sex?’ she repeats, prolonging the moment. ‘So, who was looking after Lottie?’
