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Her eyes widened. “A cell? No.”
I said, “Then give us her name.”
“Keep her out of this, okay?” she said. “She’s a good person and this coming out in the media would be—”
“The name,” Sampson growled.
“Suzanne,” Moore said finally. “Suzanne Liu. She lives in—”
“I know where she lives,” I said, my mind spinning a little. “And I have her phone number. She will say that she was with you that night?”
“She will,” the researcher said without hesitation.
“What about the nights the other families were murdered?” Sampson asked.
“I was in New York all those times,” Moore said. “Also with Suzanne.”
I asked, “How do you know that off the top of your head? The dates, I mean.”
The researcher gave me a look. “Uh, I’m working on a book about the murders? I know all sorts of dates. It’s kind of the job.”
Sampson said, “You have access to the Family Man laptop in Tull’s office?”
“I know the password and I have e-mailed things to Thomas, but I haven’t been on it in at least a week.”
“Convenient,” Mahoney said. “Tull believes you’re trying to frame him.”
“Frame him?” she said. She threw back her head and laughed caustically. “I don’t need to frame him. He can do that himself. Play with the truth. You do know he makes stuff up, right?”
“He admitted that he gins things up in his books,” I said. “Well, he admits that he pays you to gin things up, make them more dramatic than they really are. Is that true?”
“If it is, it’s not a crime.”
Sampson said, “How about taking the lives of an innocent mother and daughter in the Middle East? Was that a crime?”
Moore swallowed hard. “That was investigated. I was totally exonerated.”
“You can prove that?”
“It would be a challenge, given certain national secrecy laws, but yes.”
“You do know Thomas Tull is in custody and has been arraigned,” Sampson said.
“I’d heard that.”
“But you didn’t think to reach out and contact us?”
“No,” she said. “I was in shock. I … I didn’t know what to think or believe at first.”
I said, “So what do you think now? Is Thomas Tull the Family Man killer?”
For a long time, she said nothing, just stared at the table.
“Ms. Moore?” Mahoney said.
“Little things in all the cases we worked together, you know?” she said, lifting her eyes to gaze at each of us in turn. “Little things Thomas would say or do. And the times he’d disappear for days. The facts he’d ignore or gloss over. In my heart I don’t want to believe it, but I guess it’s possible, Dr. Cross. Maybe more than possible.”
CHAPTER 87
