Second Chance (Hudson Valley Murder Mysteries #2)

Chapter Sixteen #2

Sean enters the room through the curtain, sneering at him. His eyes are bloodshot red. He looks exhausted, strung out and high. “I’m not looking for you, dude.”

“Let’s talk about this,” Colette says, using what Tony’s distantly aware of as her phone call voice. She walks around the table slowly, edging closer to where Tony’s standing, his body between Sean’s rifle and the rest of the room.

“There’s nothing to talk about. You all took my girlfriend and hid her somewhere, and I need her back before she gets me all wrapped up in this.”

“No one took Lily,” Daniel says as he edges around Sean’s side, the one opposite from Colette, effectively blocking Sean’s exit from, the room. “She needed medical care.”

“She doesn’t need shit.” Sean spits the words out, saliva catching in his mustache. “She needed to fucking confess it’s all her fault, and then this would all go away.”

“Sean,” Daniel says, softly and calmly, as if he’s talking to a four-year-old who has misbehaved and not a grown man holding a gun pointed at him. “The police already know she—”

“She’s lying!” Sean waves the rifle emphatically, and Tony jerks out of the way, narrowly avoiding getting hit in the head with it. “She’s the one who did it. I swear she did!”

He keeps going, and the longer he does, the more doubt starts to seed in Tony’s mind about the version of events they’ve come to believe. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots the side door to the kitchen opening fractionally.

“So it was Lily who killed Professor Lawrence?” Tony asks, injecting as much sincerity as he knows how. He angles himself carefully, trying to block Sean’s line of sight to the kitchen.

“Yes!” Sean says. “Man, she wanted Prof Lawrence gone . Kept telling me how she didn’t deserve to teach. It was fucking annoying!”

“That sounds rough for you,” Tony says.

Blake makes it through the kitchen door with Lia held closely to his chest. Tony can’t spot who’s next, not with his back to most of the table. He hopes the others are following close behind.

“Oh my god, you have no idea.” Sean groans. The barrel of the rifle dips dramatically toward the floor.

Catching on to what Tony’s doing, Daniel chimes in. “She’s been really out of it, huh?”

“She’s fucking crazy, man.” Sean laughs, high and tight and out of control. “Don’t know why she thinks anyone would buy that I did it.”

“Why don’t you tell us what happened?” It’s too innocent, the way Colette says it.

Sean isn’t thinking straight enough to be suspicious. He launches into a tirade about Lily, how she begged him to accompany her to Amelia Lawrence’s office to help convince the professor to give her a chance to make up the missing final, how she wouldn’t stop crying. It doesn’t exactly inspire sympathy in Tony. Not for Sean, at least.

He keeps his eye on the gun instead. Sean’s grip is loosening. He keeps shifting the gun, letting it slip lower and lower as though it’s too heavy for him to hold up.

Daniel catches Tony’s eye and shakes his head.

Tony looks back helplessly. What else are they supposed to do?

He inches forward.

Sean resettles his grip again.

Seeing his chance, Tony darts out to take the rifle from him or at least knock it out of his hands.

He’s too slow.

Sean catches on, and suddenly, Tony’s pressed up to the wall with one of Sean’s hands crushing against his collarbone. The other holds the gun pressed to Tony’s belly.

“Sean,” Colette says, her voice shaking. “Sean, you don’t want to do this. You don’t—”

“Don’t tell me what the fuck I want to do,” Sean snarls. “You’re trying to confuse me. Where is she? Where’s Lily?”

Neither of them answers.

Sean pulls the safety.

Desperately, Tony looks to Daniel. “Daniel, I—”

“Don’t,” Daniel says. “Not like—”

“Put down your weapon,” Detective Taylor calls. “Sean McAllister, we have you surrounded. Put down your weapon before someone gets hurt.”

Sean’s rifle clatters to the floor.

It’s snapshots in Tony’s memory, afterward, Sean being pulled away by the police, Daniel gathering Tony up in his arms, holding him close and kissing every square inch of his face. Giving the police his statement with his hands still shaking, allowing an EMT to check him for nonexistent injuries.

Letting his ma yell at him for being an idiot and playing hero.

Letting Gianna kiss his cheek for the same thing.

Catching Emilio before he leaves to thank him for being the one to call the police. Again.

“No one even had to tell me to do it this time.” Emilio says with a half-smile. “You were right though.”

“Huh?”

“Seeing him didn’t help. He’s just a messed-up kid. So’s she, probably. It was never about Amy or our family.”

Tony claps him on the shoulder before he gets into his car and drives home to his empty house.

They offer to help clean up the restaurant, but in the end, besides the bullet hole in the drywall behind a decorative tapestry, it’s only one or two spilled dishes. Too little mess for how shaken Tony feels. They leave the biggest tip they can scrounge together between all twelve of them. Colette contributes a hundred dollar bill, poorly hiding how badly she’s shaking with her arms crossed tightly over her stomach.

Detective Taylor waits for them as they leave the restaurant.

A sinking feeling spreads through Tony’s stomach. He wishes it were from too much Indian food.

“I took Lily Peterson’s statement this morning. She confessed. We’re supposed to charge her with the murder tomorrow morning.” Taylor is, as always, clear and to the point.

Tony wishes he didn’t feel like it was his business. He wants to lie down, preferably somewhere no one can see or talk to him except Daniel and Worf.

“I’d rather not do that with loose ends,” Taylor continues. “To be honest, besides her confession, we don’t have much evidence. Her prints aren’t on the murder weapon, and Mr. Lawrence was kind enough to tell me about a website you were researching, but the threatening posts about Professor Lawrence couldn’t be traced to a single IP address.”

Tony looks over to Daniel, at his mouth set in a firm line. Though still exhausted and shaken, Daniel won’t back down on this. He committed to being responsible for Lily at the start, and if there is any chance he can do something to help her, he will.

“What do you need?” Tony asks.

“Ideally, I want to find out what actually happened.”

“This was my fault,” Colette says immediately, absolutely sure and absolutely wrong.

“No, it wasn’t,” Tony snaps.

“It was. Sean is my advisee. I tried to get in touch with him to let him know about Lily and that he ought to come forward and—and tell you about his involvement. I thought it would help.”

Daniel makes a move as if he’s about to interrupt, but Colette holds up her hand to stop him.

“I thought he was more reasonable and adult. Once again, I severely misjudged.”

“What exactly did you tell him?” Taylor asks.

“To get in touch with me or with you directly, in order to help himself now Lily has been caught.”

“Well.” Detective Taylor sighs. “As usual, I’d have preferred it if you had let me know. But in this case, Professor, it sounds like you offered a student reasonable advice. It’s not your fault. You didn’t know he would do this.”

“That’s the problem,” Colette mutters. “I never seem to know.”

“So what now?” Daniel asks.

“I need to talk to Lily. Preferably with someone she trusts. Someone like you, Professor Rosenbaum. Or your partner’s sister and Mr. Walia.”

“Gianna’s gone home,” Tony says.

Last time Tony saw her, she was in the back seat of Blake’s tiny car, one hand curled protectively around Lia’s car seat. They already asked so much of her that he can’t stomach the thought of calling her away from her daughter again. Not after tonight.

Detective Taylor nods decisively. “Then it’s you two.”

Meredith, who’s been waiting and watching the whole scene quietly, offers to drive Tony’s poor little car to Rhinebeck so he doesn’t have to get behind the wheel quite yet. He suspects it isn’t only to do him and Daniel a favor. Colette’s still shaking, though she’s turned down every offer of a hot drink and a warm blanket so far. Maybe the comfort of a near stranger in the privacy of her own apartment will be easier to accept.

Daniel and Tony follow the police cruiser to Kingston and the hospital in Daniel’s car.

They don’t talk much on the way. Tony gives directions, and Daniel follows them.

In the parking lot, Daniel asks, “Are you sure you’re okay to do this?”

“Me?” Tony wants to ask Daniel the same thing. “I’m fine.”

“Tony. You can wait in the car. I know you’re still angry.”

He is, of course he is. But sitting alone in the car in the dark, waiting for Daniel to finish up inside—letting Daniel out of his sight again —

“No, I want to come in.”

“Okay.”

The fluorescent lighting in the hospital is jarring, too bright and somehow loud in Tony’s skull. It’s loud the normal way, too, even at night on a… Christ, he doesn’t know what day it is. People in scrubs keep pushing past them, a phone rings, everyone’s talking. There are too many things to process all at once.

“Right, so, Lily’s in the psych ward?” Daniel doesn’t know, how would he? But he walks toward the elevator with confidence, and Tony and Detective Taylor follow.

The nurse at the reception desk tells them it’s past visiting hours six times before Detective Taylor gets impatient and flashes her badge. Then, the nurse insists on calling the attending doctor before letting them through, and there’s some talk of informing Lily’s next of kin. The whole thing takes so long, and Tony is so useless during it he starts to feel like he’s floating somewhere over his own body, barely a part of this experience.

When they finally get there, accompanied by a doctor who seems to be running on the same level of exhaustion as the rest of them, Lily is asleep.

It isn’t restful.

Against the white hospital sheets her skin appears pale, the dye in her hair washed-out and bland. She must be dreaming because she twitches, making soft little sounds.

The doctor wakes Lily gently. It doesn’t help. She still shakes under the thin sheets, pulse speeding on the monitor.

When she sees Daniel, standing awkwardly behind the doctor, all the blood drains from her already pallid face, leaving her ashen and gray and seeming younger than she is.

“Oh no.” She looks away, swallowing convulsively. Tony wonders abstractly if she’s going to throw up. “Professor Rosenbaum, I—I’m so sorry. I—”

“It’s okay, Lily.”

Abruptly, Tony wants to scream. It’s not okay. She kidnapped Daniel. She kept him in a freezing abandoned building, she threatened him with a gun, and then her terrible boyfriend nearly shot Tony.

Nothing about that is okay.

He curls his hands into fists, nails biting tight into his palms. He clenches his jaw tight as the doctor calms her down and helps her get settled.

“Miss Peterson,” Detective Taylor says firmly but quietly when Lily is as ready as she’s going to be. “I’m very sorry to come here so late, but this may be your last chance to revise your previous statement.”

Lily looks out the window. Her lower lip juts out. “I don’t… Why would I change anything?”

Daniel pulls the chair by her bedside up and sits directly next to her. His keeps his voice soft. “Lily, your boyfriend came to find us tonight. He was…uh…”

Trust Daniel to try finding the sensitive way to put it, even now.

“He had his rifle,” Tony says, and on the bed, Lily stiffens. Tony keeps going anyway. “He wanted to know what you had told us, and he nearly—he tried to—”

“Is there anything, anything at all, you want to tell us about him?” Detective Taylor has her notebook out as she says it, eyes sharp and unwavering on Lily.

“Uh.” Lily looks between them. She can’t focus on any one of them, eyes skittering like the deer she never hit the day she lost control of the car. “He. I. Um.”

Daniel leans forward. “Lily, why don’t you tell us what happened that day when you found Professor Lawrence?”

She looks down at the sheets, picking at a fold. Her fingernails are bitten bloody. “I was having a bad day. Sean was mad at me ’cause I didn’t want to get high and fool around, and he kept telling me I was a head case. I made an appointment with Professor Lawrence to talk about a makeup exam or something, and Sean helped me practice what to say. But he didn’t think I’d actually do it, so he said he’d come with me.”

“And did he?” Detective Taylor pauses in her notetaking, looking at Lily expectantly.

“Yeah.”

“The knife was his, wasn’t it?”

“Um, yeah, Sean…he carries that kind of stuff around sometimes when he’s been dealing. He says it can get dangerous, meeting people at night to hook them up with coke or whatever.”

Tony barely restrains himself from scoffing. There’s a simple way to avoid dangers associated with dealing: Not dealing.

“Did he ever use it in front of you?” Taylor asks.

Lily stays silent.

From her jacket, Taylor pulls out the knife in an evidence bag, the blade pointed at the top, flat on the sides. Lily flinches at the sight of it.

“It would take a lot of force to stab someone with this,” Taylor says conversationally. “Especially four times in a row, going through her clothing as well as layers and layers of tissue and muscle to hit organs.”

She’s talking about force someone Lily’s size might be able to work up in a life-threatening situation, but over a grade? Tony studies the knife again. It’s a weird shape for a blade, one he recognizes.

“He’s in custody,” Daniel reminds Lily. “He can’t hurt you here.”

Lily looks up from her lap, hesitant.

“Did he ever use it in front of you?” Taylor repeats.

Lily opens her mouth and then closes it again.

“How did you get the flat tire?”

Everyone in the room turns to Tony.

“When you came into the shop after your accident, Sean said he swerved to avoid a deer and banged up his fender. But that wouldn’t cause a flat tire. It was—”

Taylor elbows him hard. “How did the flat happen?” she asks before he can continue.

“Sean got mad,” Lily says quietly. “After the accident, he was so angry he stabbed the tire. It scared me, but I thought people did stuff like that when they’re high, so I tried to forget about it.”

“By ‘it,’ you mean…” Taylor pushes.

“That he carried it around with him. And used it when he was angry. I swear I didn’t know he had it on him when he went to Professor Lawrence’s office with me. I didn’t know he would hurt—kill Professor Lawrence. I kind of…I lost it. I didn’t know what to do, and I was scared. I didn’t know who would listen to me, and I was scared he would hurt anyone who I talked to, so I left that letter for Professor Rosenbaum.”