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So, they were going to last names—that didn’t bode well.
“It’s fine, Jimmy. I’m sure Detective Rafferty is used to a different way of doing things, but I’m sure he will do everything by the book, won’t you, Detective Rafferty?”
“I certainly will. Now, Ms. Fowler, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“I am respectfully declining to answer anything you ask and would request that you refrain from asking until I have legal representation in the room.”
“Do you have a lawyer, Fiona?”
“One for intellectual property, but between him and my friends, I’m sure we’ll have a good defense counsel here in no time. Jimmy, could I trouble you for a little something to drink and a couple of aspirin? I’m getting a terrible headache.”
“No trouble at all, Fiona. You let me know if I can get you anything else.”
Slade was starting to wonder if the chief of police was going to offer to take him in the back, beat the shit out of him while Fiona watched, and then take the pretty writer home.
“Thank you, Jimmy. I really do appreciate your support.”
Slade shook his head as he left the room. She’d managed to put him in a corner and score points with the local police department while doing so. Fiona had let him know she knew the chief and was grateful for his support. Could she be that calculating and manipulative? Only time would tell.
CHAPTER6
FIONA
Maintaining her calm had been easy when she’d been shrouded in numbness but something about the handcuffs being locked around her wrists had begun to crack and then crumble that pall. How dare he? It wasn’t like she was some dangerous criminal. She didn’t know what this was about, but apparently Thorn’s buddy, the man that had been wandering the aisles of her bookstore, thought she was some kind of killer. How stupid was he?
Sure, she knew a lot about murder. She wrote about it and crafted fictional stories about it to make a living. But that didn’t make her any more of a murderer than he was. She was willing to bet that Detective Slade Rafferty knew a whole hell of a lot more about it than she did. Jessica said he was a SEAL, which meant basically he knew more ways to kill someone than they knew how to die.
Fiona felt sorry for the chief of police. Poor Jimmy seemed out of his depth, but at least he was treating her with some courtesy, which was more than could be said for Detective Rafferty. Her request for an attorney had set him back on his heels, at least, and he’d left her alone in the interrogation room. Fiona wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.
Finally, Rafferty returned after allowing her to just sit and stew for a while. She recalled Christie once telling her that it was an effective interrogation technique. As Rafferty moved into the room, he looked confused, uncomfortable and even a bit angry. She wondered what could have happened to produce that particular combination of emotions in a man as cold and controlled as Rafferty.
“Would you like to tell me what’s going on?” she demanded in as confident a voice as she could muster.
“Are you giving me permission to speak to you without your lawyer present?”
“You can ask anything you like, Detective Rafferty; but I retain the right not to answer until I have had a chance to meet with my attorney.”
“Fair enough,” he said, opening a folder and tossing photographs down on the table in front of her, each one overlapping the other. Even glancing at them, she could see they depicted a brutal murder.
Fiona leaned over to shove the photos away, but stopped as she began to really see them. The man depicted was in the same position as the victim inShifted Silence.She now understood why she was here. Seeing the images of what she had so painstakingly described in her book was unsettling—the implications of Rafferty arresting her, even more so.
She leaned closer, shuddered, and then pushed them away. Slade had yet to sit down.
“What’s the matter Ms. Fowler? Don’t like the lighting we used for your work?”
“You can’t honestly believe I did this…”
“By yourself? Probably not, unless you drugged Daniel first. Even then, I’m not sure you’d have been able to lift him up onto that rock or drive those stakes through his hands and feet. Once bound, the rest would have been fairly easy.”
She shook her head. “I had nothing to do with this.”
“So you say, and yet your book describes in vivid detail how it was done. If you didn’t do it, how do you explain it?”
“I can’t, but as you say, I am physically incapable of doing this.”
“By yourself. I am willing to believe you had help. In fact, if you want to tell me who your minions?—”
“I don’t have minions.”
