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I breathe a little easier when Macy nods.
If the accusation was serious, they wouldn’t interrogate me in a conference room.
“Can I get you anything? Coffee? Soda? Water?”
“I’m good, thanks,” I reply to Macy while following her and Grayson into the trenches I’ve not walked officially for a year and a half. “But if you could give me more details than you did over the phone, I’d appreciate it.”
Again, she nods before gesturing for me to enter the conference room before them. “The murders were mafia hits.” She dumps a folder thicker than my bicep onto the table, its slide exposing a handful of crime scene photos. “Clean headshots with unmarked bullets. Fingers were either removed or mangled to make identification hard.” She spins a photograph of the man who stood at the back, barking orders. “He had most of his teeth removed.”
“He was in charge.”
“We figured as much,” Grayson replies, propping his backside on the conference room table while gesturing for me to take a seat across from him. “Although we had little to go off, people talk when they fear they’re next.” Once I’m seated, he slides a mug shot of a man with blond hair, an angry snarl, and a neck tattoo across the table to me. “He said they were there to get his girl.”
“Who is this?” I keep my tone neutral even with my back molars grinding together. The punk in the mug shot screams gangbanger. He’s a bottom dweller, but even they’re willing to risk charges for sex trafficking since most perps barely get a slap on the wrist these days.
Grayson folds his arms across his chest. “Beau Barichello.”
“Beau?” I check before I can stop myself. I’ve heard that name before. Recently. And his description is a good fit for a low-ranking gangster who’d chip a woman’s tooth for something as minor as letting off a bit of steam.
Grayson’s eyes flick to Macy for the quickest second before he jerks up his chin. “Heard of him before?”
“Not that I can recall,” I lie, but it is too late.
Something has given me away.
“What about her?” This question didn’t come from Macy or Grayson. It came from a man standing outside the conference room. He’s tall, overweight, and holds so much arrogance on his face that he appears older than Grayson and me combined.
When he enters the room, Macy slips behind Grayson before saying, “Marshal Levalley, I thought you wanted us to head this interrogation?”
“And waste valuable time? You’re giving him more intel than he’s giving you.” He nudges his head to the frosted wall behind my chair. “I also struggled to hear anything through the glass pane. It’s not built the same as the windows in interrogation rooms.”
“Making the perp believe you’re on the same team is a proven tactic for disarming them.” Grayson doesn’t like this man any more than Macy, but he does a better job hiding it. “But if you think you can do better, go ahead. I still believe you’re fishing in the wrong pond with fake worms instead of real ones.”
He moves off the desk, giving Marshal Levalley center stage, but when his focus remains on him more than me, it announces who he thinks the real criminal is.
“Marshal Levalley,” the man introduces, flashing his credential too fast for me to see. “United States Marshal Services.”
“USMS?” I query, my eyes bouncing between Grayson and Macy. “I thought this was about a triple homicide?”
“It is,” the marshal answers on their behalf. “And her.”
He sets down a photo in front of me. It isn’t a mug shot, but I’d never forget her snow-colored hair, cornflower-blue eyes, and tiny freckles that adorn her nose.
“Who is this?” I ask like I don’t know the answer.
“Henley”—I sigh in relief until Marshal Levalley finishes—“Elsher.”
Before I can overcome my shock that Henley gave me an alias, Macy hits me with a fact so damn firm, I’m almost knocked from my chair. “Henley is a witness who skipped her watch the day you arrived for your meeting with a supervisory special agent.”
“Skipped? Or coerced to go?” Marshal Levalley snaps out, glaring at me in suspicion.
“You think I took her?” I ask, reading between the lines he’s drawing in the sand.
When he looks at me smugly, I toss down Henley’s photograph before pushing back from the table with a laugh. “Why would I do that?”
I choke on my laughter when Grayson answers on Marshal Levalley’s behalf. “Because she’s the only person capable of identifying your wife’s killer.”
“Allegedly,” Marshal Levalley snaps out before he drops his eyes to me. “You might not have walked these gallows for over a year, but you’ve been here in spirit the entire time. You know everything happening, especially if it involves your wife’s investigation.”
“As I should,” I bite back, pissed as fuck.
He continues as if I didn’t speak. “So when you heard we had a witness, you scheduled a meeting for the same day as her arrival because you don’t want him arrested. You want him dead.”
