She looked at the clump of hair for a moment, then dropped it. It drifted to the floor. “Yes …”
“Something about Milicia?”
“Yes.”
“Did you do whatever Milicia told you to?”
“Yes.”
“You were accused of bad things and you took any punishment without telling the truth?”
Very small voice. “Yes.”
“Can you tell me the secret?”
Camille’s body became absolutely still. Her eyes filled with tears. “No.”
Jason was silent for some time. “I need to know the secret, Camille. Two young woman are dead.”
“I couldn’t kill anybody!” she cried. The puppy in her lap stirred.
“Maybe someone wants to make it seem like you did. Why would someone want to do that? Does it have something to do with the secret between you and Milicia?”
“I don’t know! I can’t tell you what I don’t know!”
“The victims were small women, almost like little girls. They were strangled, hung from chandeliers, dressed in party dresses way too big for them with makeup on their faces. What story does that tell, Camille?”
Camille let out a long, shuddering scream. “It’s me. She made me dress up like a woman and gave me lessons to show me what it’s like. Health lessons.” The words came out an anguished wail. “With a Coke bottle and a hairbrush and—”
Camille put her head down on the table and sobbed. Her puppy didn’t try to get away.
Ten minutes later, when it was clear Camille wouldn’t be saying anything else for a long time, Penny Dunham blinked a few times and got up from her chair.
“Nice family,” she remarked sourly. “You said the other sister is here. Where?”
“She’s up in the squad room.” Sergeant Joyce’s forehead was dotted with perspiration. “Every time you think you’ve seen it all …”
Officer Paleo stood at the door to the questioning room. For a moment the A.D.A. made no move to open it. She seemed to be gathering her thoughts. Then she asked Sergeant Joyce, “What’s her story?”
“Her story is she went to the shrink to get help for her sister. On the basis of what she told him, the shrink convinced her to turn her sister in to the police. And now the police are questioning her. She thinks it outrageous. She’s demanding a lawyer.”
“Did she call a lawyer?”
“No. Do you want to see her?”
“Not at this time.” Penelope took off her glasses.
“Well, what do you make of it?” April asked.
“What do you think I’d make of it? You still don’t have either the witnesses or the physical evidence to make a case here.”
She rubbed the bridge of her nose where her glasses pinched. “Even if this wacko here is telling the truth and her sister dressed her up, sexually abused her, repeatedly set her up to take the fall for antisocial acts … Even if all that happened, there’s no way to prove it or link it to these murders.” She put the glasses back on.
“More important, everything that happened in the past is inadmissible anyway. It has no bearing on the case. Right now what we’d have to prove in court is that Milicia Honiger-Stanton, an attractive, successful architect, murdered two young women so she could lay the blame on her mentally ill sister. Why?”
No one answered.
“In addition, you’ll have to show she had access to her sister’s house, took her dog, wore her clothes, and brought back souvenirs of the first homicide to hide in her sister’s basement—give me a break, officers.”
“She has her own dog,” Mike broke in.
“What?”
“I went by her building after our meeting this morning. The doorman told me she has a similar dog,” April explained.
“Maybe it’s the same dog. Maybe she walks her sister’s dog sometimes.” Penelope rubbed the bridge of her nose again.
April shook her head. “Then it would have to be a pretty magical dog. The doorman says it’s up there now.”
“What’s your recommendation?” Sergeant Joyce asked.
The A.D.A. looked impatient. “Get more.”
“So what do you want me to do with the suspects in the meantime?”
“Question them as long as you want. If you don’t get a confession, let them go.”
“Let them go?” Sergeant Joyce glowered.
“On what grounds can you keep them?” Penelope glowered back.
Nice to have someone helpful on their side. Sergeant Joyce turned to Mike and April. What was she going to tell the Captain? He wanted the thing tied up today.
“Why don’t you let them go and see what they do,” Penelope suggested. She lifted her arm and consulted the large black Swatch on her wrist. “I’m due in court in twenty minutes.”
“One of them killed two people,” Joyce pointed out.
“So don’t leave them alone.”
She strode off toward the lobby without another word. Officer Paleo, who was guarding the questioning room, turned away, pretending to be deaf and dumb. Jason Frank came out of the room and announced he was finished for the moment. The calm demeanor that had been so impressive a few minutes before was gone. Now he looked like he’d been torn apart by harpies.
72
Milicia was drenched in sweat. She could feel it all over her skin under her clothes. Her rage was so intense, she had to concentrate hard on keeping her body absolutely still, rigid, to stay in control of herself. She knew she must stay in control to survive. The smell of her sweat disgusted her.
Her mind jumped. She thought of Camille and the filthy lies that came out of her mouth, covering everything with bottom mud like a river that overflowed its banks in every storm. Camille lied to anyone who would listen. Bouck was in the hospital. He had to be crazy, crazier than Camille.
And the cops didn’t have a clue what was going on. Milicia’s foot tapped the floor. She could feel her hands clenching, too. Like claws. She told herself to be Buddhist about this. Let the universe flow over you until you’re above it. It was just like long ago in the other police station. They’d keep her there because they didn’t know what else to do.
They would keep asking her questions about the dogs, about Bouck, changing direction every few minutes to see if they could trip her up. But she knew better than to talk.
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” she told them, keeping her green eyes wide with perplexity and pain. “I don’t know what you want. I don’t know what you mean.” Sometimes she asked to see her sister. Sometimes she insisted on seeing her lawyer. Then they’d go away for a while.
Charles and Brenda told her to cooperate and tell the truth, but they didn’t know about Camille. They didn’t know how slippery Camille was, how her madness went in and out of the clouds whenever it suited her.
Milicia burned in her stomach and shivered on her skin. It was clear the police were deliberately keeping her and Camille apart. But she knew it could be dangerous to speculate why. It might not be for the reason she thought. With Camille, you couldn’t ever be sure of anything. It could be this was all too much for her. Maybe she had retreated into one of her states when you could stick pins into her or light her on fire, and she wouldn’t react at all. Maybe the police were just trying to figure out what to do with her. Milicia got the feeling they suspected Bouck of the murders. But why did they think he did it? How could he have done it?
She had been in this place for hours, first in the Sergeant’s office, then on the bench. People were coming in and out all the time, standing around in clumps talking, before going out again. They didn’t want her knowing what was going on, so they moved her to an empty room with a mirror in it. She knew they were spying on her. She didn’t allow herself any movement except the tapping of her feet and the raising of her arm to check her watch every two minutes.