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“Don’t you see, Doctor?” Janine holds her mug in one hand and reaches out with the other to cup Minka’s elbow. “Anna was not a secret lover, snuck into this home behind my back.”
“Janine…”
“She was a young woman, needing a family and somewhere to call home in an otherwise hectic world.”
“Janine!” Justin booms. “Stop.”
“She was twenty-seven years old, and completely alone in this life.” The woman is braver than perhaps ninety-nine percent of this city’s population. If Justin told anyone else to stop talking, most stop talking. But not this woman. “She was a child of trauma, but despite that—or perhaps, because of it—she had such beautiful music.”
“So you were a fan?” Minka demands. “An investor?”
“A family,” Janine concludes.
Beside her, Justin mashes the heel of his palm against his face and turns away in frustration.
“We’re busy people,” she explains. “God knows, Justin’s career in Copeland is only just beginning. Our daughters are grown, and our granddaughters are the light of our lives. But life seems just a little empty when it’s just us.”
“Forfuck’s sake,” Lawrence grumbles. For the first time since I’ve met him, he loses composure and swears. “Why won’t women just shut up when they’re told to?”
“Probably because you choose to love the outspoken kind,” Janine retorts. “You raise them that way. You married me that way. And you collect them that way.”
“Collect?” The word snags Minka’s attention. “Sounds kinda murder-y to me.”
Exasperated, resigned, Justin drops his head and laughs, but it turns to a groan. “Anna has been on tour since she was a young teen. The public wanted a chunk of her, and, at first, she didn’t seem to mind. She had so much to give, what was the harm if the greedy reached in and took a bit, ya know?” He shakes his head. “After being in the public eye for so long, she was placed in front of a grand jury, because a grown man took advantage of a child and stole whatever innocence she might’ve possessed after what was already an unfair life.”
“You were the DA on her case,” I realize. My stomach drops, settling somewhere deep in my body until it makes me feel sick. “You ran her sexual assault case?”
“I tried. One of them, anyway.” He lifts his head and glances across to me. “I tried so hard to have that asshole convicted and put away. I worked myself to the bone and made my daughters wonder why I wasn’t around much anymore. But Anna was just a kid, too. Younger than mine, but not by much. Every time I sat down to work that file, I saw my Tabby’s face in those pictures. Every time I studied the bruises the perp left behind, I saw Jen. I couldn’t escape the damage he’d inflicted on a young woman’s body, and the burden of proof lay with me. We had his fingerprints literally embedded in her skin. This bastard, Norman Trudy, held her so tight,” he lifts his hands and squeezes them, “he held her so violently, his prints were fused in her flesh.”
“He got off on a technicality?” I guess. “Couldn’t convince the jury to convict.”
“They wanted to,” he admits softly. “They were sympathetic to her case. But she was already famous, and the media was putting too much pressure on them. They could feel confident he manhandled her, but they weren’t so sure he raped her. So he got off. Just like that.”
Emotion settles in the mayor’s eyes, making them shimmer. A startling effect, in his face. “All that time I spent on her case… wasted, when I could have spent it with my daughters. All the other cases I might’ve dropped the ball on, because I focused on Anna’s.”
“It wasn’t time wasted.” Minka takes a step forward. But she’s not practiced in comforting the living, so she stops where she is and laces her fingers together. “You believed in her. You fought for her. That will have meant something to the girl who was alone in this world.”
He chuckles, but it’s bitter and mean. “That’s what she said—that it mattered to her. That she knew we wouldn’t get a conviction in the end, because sexual assault cases rarely go in favor of the victim. She was just a child,” he grits out, “but she handled the outcome of that case like a full-grown woman used to disappointment. She walked away with grace. She became a friend to my daughters. She sent Tabby a gift when she had a baby.”
His voice grows thick and raspy with the dregs of grief. “Even amid worldwide fame that demanded her time and attention, she was thoughtful enough to honor the birth of my grandchild. Because beneath the riches, and beneath the fame, was just a young woman who cared about the few others in this world who cared about her.”
“You collect women,” I murmur, drawing three sets of eyes my way. The most important of them all, Minka’s. “You didn’t want anything from Anna. You didn’t want to take a chunk, and you wouldn’t have been mad if she never took your calls for the rest of her life.”
He drags his bottom lip between his teeth and shakes his head. “I called her once a week. Sometimes she answered, sometimes she didn’t. But always, she called me back within a couple of days.”
“But not this time,” I finish. “Not that day she died. We got her phone records today, Mayor. We see the weekly calls from you to her. Sometimes she answered. And those she didn’t, she returned soon after. But it’s been weeks since you last had a conversation with her.”
He swallows so his throat bobs and his Adam’s apple moves. “I knew she was in trouble again.”
“You tried to call, like usual,” I press on. “But she didn’t answer, and she didn’t call back within a day or so. So you tried again three days later. Then again on the fourth day. Then the fifth day.”
“I should’ve knocked on her door sooner. I should’ve gone to her.”
“You tried calling daily in the last week of her life, and twice daily in the final forty-eight hours.”
“I was just so busy at the office,” he moans. “So damn busy, I could never seem to find a minute to head to her house and make her speak to me.”
“That’s why you were banging on her door the day she died,” I conclude. “That’s why you were angry and shouting.”
