“Like I told you, I picked it up. I hit the boy.”
“Laura was killed with that bat,” Stride said. “The police found it near her body on the beach almost a mile away. How did it get there?”
“Obviously, someone carried it, but not me.”
“Do you have any idea who could have done that?”
“No, but I already told you that someone else was in the woods.”
“Could Laura have taken the bat with her?”
“No, she just ran.”
“You said you followed her,” Stride said. “What happened then?”
Jones steepled his fingers under the folds of his chin. “First, let me ask you something. Do you still consider me a suspect?”
“Yes.”
“At least you’re honest.”
“You were there. Your fingerprints are on the murder weapon. You fled the city.”
“I’ve explained all of those things.”
“Except I have no way of knowing if you’re telling the truth,” Stride said. “Keep going. Tell me about Laura.”
Jones settled into the plastic-and-steel airport chair, which groaned in protest under his weight. “At first, I thought I had lost her. I thought she had made her way out of the park.”
“Did you find her?”
“Yes, the trail wound along the lake to another beach. I saw her there.”
“Did you speak to her?” Stride asked.
“Oh, no, she had no idea I was there.”
“Was this the beach where her body was found?”
“I assume so.”
“But she was alive?”
“Very much so.”
“Did she have the bat with her?”
“I told you, no.”
“Then what happened?”
“I left.”
“Just like that?” Stride asked.
“The girl was safe. There was nothing else I could do. I wasn’t going to help her by announcing myself.”
“We found semen at the edge of the clearing near the beach. Was it yours?”
His eyebrows arched. “Semen? No.”
“Did you go back to the softball field?”
“No, I took a different trail and left the park.”
“Did you meet anyone else? Did you see the other person you thought was in the woods?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Is that it?” Stride asked. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”
“There’s nothing else.”
Stride leaned across the small table and stared at Jones until the big man blinked uncomfortably. “You’re lying,” he said. “Why bring me all the way out here if you’re not going to tell me the whole story?”
“Everything I’ve said is the truth,” Jones insisted.
“The question is what you’re leaving out.”
“What makes you think I’m leaving anything out?”
“The girl had secrets,” Stride said. “That’s what you keep saying. I think you know something else about Laura. Something specific. I want to know what it is and why you’re covering it up. Until you tell me, you’re not getting on that plane.”
Jones ran his tongue across his white teeth and smiled.
“You saw something, didn’t you?” Stride asked.
“Yes, I did.”
“What was it? What did you see when you found Laura on the beach?”
“I’m not sure it will help anyone if I tell you. Least of all the girl who was killed.”
“Let me decide that,” Stride said.
“What I saw was innocent and beautiful. There was no violence.”
“Tell me.”
Jones sighed. “Laura wasn’t alone.”
“Who was she with?”
“I don’t know. It was no one who would have killed her. They were kissing. They were in love. You can understand why I didn’t bother intervening at that point. They didn’t want me around.”
“What did he look like?” Stride asked. “Laura’s lover.”
Jones shook his head. “Laura had the kind of lover you didn’t talk about back then. It wasn’t a boy, Lieutenant. It was another girl. Laura was on the beach with a blond girl about the same age. They were holding each other as if they never wanted to let go.”
36
Tish studied the framed photographs on the credenza in Jonathan Stride’s office in City Hall. She saw a photo of Stride with his arm around Serena, taken somewhere with a view across the Strip in Las Vegas. Beside it, she saw a picture of Cindy, with the Vancouver harbor behind her. Her hair was dark and straight. Her eyes teased the camera. Over time, Tish’s memories of Cindy had dimmed to the point where she couldn’t hear her voice in her head and couldn’t call up a picture of her face. Then a photo like this brought it all back.
She felt her eyes misting. Behind her, she heard the noise of someone approaching, and she quickly put the photograph down, wiped her face, and pasted a smile on her lips. Stride came into the office, and she didn’t think she had fooled him. His eyes strayed to the line of photographs, and she thought they lingered on Cindy.
He pointed at the chair in front of his desk and then took his own chair and leaned back, his jaw tight and hard. His hair was unruly, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept. Tish sat down uncomfortably. She heard the office door close and turned around to see the tiny Chinese cop, Maggie Bei, leaning against the door. She wasn’t smiling.
“Is something wrong?” Tish asked.
“What did you want to see me about?” Stride said.
Tish took a deep breath. “He confessed.”
“Who?”
“Finn,” Tish said. “I went to see him yesterday.”
“I thought I told you not to play cop,” Stride snapped.
“I felt responsible for his suicide attempt. I wanted to find out why he did it. We wound up talking about Laura’s murder, and that’s when he blurted it out.”
“Exactly what did he say?”
“He talked about dreams he has. About seeing the blood all over her and about the bat going up and down. And then he just said it. He said it flat out. I killed her.”