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17
“I just don’t get how anyone could do this,” Otto said on Monday around lunchtime.
Liam was sitting with Cora at her desk as she studied something called an i2 Intelligence Analysis Platform. It was a computer program designed to help catalog and view the suspects and evidence during an investigation, and Liam had no idea how to work with it. He watched as she scrolled through what they had on the John Brady case so far. She’d been acting cool and aloof with him ever since the gala.
“I mean, who would commit that kind of crime right under our noses?” Otto muttered, slapping a bag of vending machine chips on his desk.
“Nobody cares about your stolen roast beef sandwich, Otto,” Happy said with his usual pinched look of distaste. “We’re working on a murder investigation. Have some perspective.”
“Easy for you to say, when it’s not your lunch someone stole out of the fridge.” Otto slumped into his chair and tore open the bag of chips. “I wrote my initials on the bag and everything.”
Boyd called Liam and Cora into his office. He was pacing when they walked in, and his desk was messier than usual. Papers, coffee cups and crumbs littered the surface. He opened a bottle of Tums, popped several into his mouth and tossed the bottle back on his desk. “John Brady’s widow has just arrived,” he said. “I want you two to question her. We need to find out what type of person she is. What kind of relationship they had. Get her to talk. Maybe she’ll open up and we’ll learn something new.”
Liam tensed. Interrogating Margaret with Cora in the same room was going to be like tiptoeing through a forest loaded with hunting traps. One false step, and he’d be doomed.
“Do you really think she killed her own husband?” Cora asked.
“That’s what you’re going to find out,” Boyd said gruffly. His phone began to ring and he swore under his breath. “Now go.”
Cora went to her desk and grabbed a notebook and pen. Liam followed her silent, brooding figure to the interrogation room down the hall.
“Are you going to talk to me at all today?” he asked as they stopped outside the door.
She didn’t make eye contact. “We’re talking right now.”
“That’s not what I mean. Look, I told you I was helping out a friend on Saturday night, and that’s why I couldn’t make it to the gala. That’s the whole story, Cora. What else can I say to earn your forgiveness?”
“Tell me about this so-called bar brawl.”
He lifted a hand to his cheekbone, which was still a mottled shade of purple and green. “What about it?”
A stubborn tilt of her chin. “Why were you fighting?”
He shrugged. “The usual reasons.”
“What bar were you at?”
Liam remained silent, because the Goose & Gander was the only name that came to mind, and he knew that wouldn’t appease her. Cora’s cornflower blue eyes narrowed on him with suspicion. This wasn’t going well.
“That’s what I thought.” She turned and reached for the door handle.
Liam placed his hand on the door to keep her from opening it. “Please, Cora.”
“Please what?” She turned to glare at him. “Pretend your explanations are more than just flimsy excuses to hide your secrets? No, thanks.”
“Let me make it up to you,” he implored.
“No need.”
“There has to be something I can do to make you stop talking to me in short sentences.”
She straightened her back. “I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Not.”
He pointed at her. “See?”
