Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Motion in her peripheral vision dragged Natalie’s attention away from the two scary officers and their various holsters, belts, bulletproof vests, equipment and weapons.
It was Liam. He’d caught her eye as he closed in on Carson the moment the deputy had cleared the doorway after following the two officers into the meeting room.
The same Deputy Carson Bekker who’d already questioned Natalie just a couple of hours ago.
“What the hell, Bekker? She answered all your questions.” Liam’s voice sounded deeper than usual. More ominous.
It would be sexy if she weren’t staring down the Po-po, the Fuzz, the 5-0, as Alice called them.
Hat in hand, his eyes downcast, Carson nodded. “I know. But it’s New Haven’s case, not mine. Graves died in their jurisdiction. My hands are tied.”
Liam threw his hands in the air. “What case? There is no case.”
Carson shrugged. Meanwhile, Lionel said, “My murder. That’s what case.”
Natalie was grateful she was the only living person in the room who could hear him.
“I knew getting a new cadaver was going to cause trouble. I warned you,” Gabe grumbled.
An I told you so was not what Natalie needed from her friends, ghost or living, at this moment in time.
Thank goodness Gabe had at least let go of Millie’s hand before talking so the livings couldn’t hear him too.
She’d explain her gift to the New Haven police department only if absolutely necessary. The fear of being tossed into a psych hold still haunted her. Even after her brush with fame on the reality show that exposed her.
The panic gripped her by the throat making it hard to swallow, as if her fear had actual hands that were strangling her. By some miracle, she forced her focus off the doom of possibilities and back to the two officers staring at her through narrowed eyes.
Carson stepped farther into the room. “Natalie, this is officers Garland and Pataki.” He gestured to the female and the male cops in turn. “They’d just like to ask you a few questions.”
Natalie rallied confidence she didn’t quite feel and said, “I’m happy to answer any questions. Of course.”
She didn’t murder Lionel, if indeed he had been murdered at all.
The truth was on her side. She had to remember that.
She had nothing to hide…
The male officer, Pataki, nodded. “Good. Tell us about this publishing contract in your name for a dead man’s book.”
…except perhaps that. The web of lies she and Lionel had concocted to get his book published.
There might not be publishing jail, as Harper had joked, but there sure as hell was real jail. And she hadn’t thought to research if stealing someone’s intellectual property could put her there.
Natalie felt the blood drain from her face.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Just a little white lie. Telling the publisher they’d partnered before his death rather than after it.
Just a stretching of the truth, really, that would get Lionel’s work out in the world as well as the new information about Mudville’s history.
There was good reason. The truth, that she and his ghost were working on the book together, would have branded her as a loon in the eyes of his editor. Forget about giving her a publishing contract. More likely they would have issued a restraining order.
“Uh, um.” Natalie stumbled to find the words.
Where was Harper, the queen of words, when she needed her?
“Don’t try to deny it.” The female officer, Garland, rested her hand on her gun holster and looked very proud of herself.
“A simple internet search revealed the deal announcement. A very nice deal, specifically, according to the wording in Publishers Marketplace. We called the publisher. You got a fifty-thousand-dollar advance. That’s a tidy sum you’ll be getting for someone else’s book.
Lionel Graves’s book. How’d that come about, exactly? ”
This was where she really needed Harper and her publishing industry knowledge.
They announced deals? Publicly? Natalie hadn’t known that. But she did know it looked very bad for her.
Offense or defense. Those were the two options here.
As her anger grew over this ridiculous situation, the choice became more clear. She refused to go down for something she didn’t do. For a murder that likely wasn’t even a murder but rather some wild imagining born of Lionel’s hubris.
Chin up, spine ramrod straight, she took a single step forward. “Did any of your sources also tell you the money is to be donated directly to Yale University? It’s a bequest in Professor Lionel Graves’s name to be used as the History Department sees fit. I’m not getting a single penny.”
Now it was the two officers who were taken by surprise.
Ha! Take that.
But thank goodness she, Harper, Lionel and the publisher had come up with that solution to deal with Lionel’s posthumous earnings. And, more importantly, that they had put it in the contract Natalie had signed.
Liam moved to stand next to her, his arm around her shoulders protecting her like a knight’s shield. Unfortunately, the move served to put Liam on the officers’ radar.
“Are you William Walsh?” Pataki asked in a tone that made it sound like an accusation.
“I am,” Liam answered.
“We find it very interesting that the corpse of the victim—”
“Alleged victim,” Carson corrected.
“—ended up in your possession,” Pataki spat.
“Very interesting. Quite the coincidence,” Garland added, in a tag team effort likely designed to unnerve Liam.
Too bad for them, Liam had an uncanny ability to remain unflustered. The worse the situation was, the calmer he became. Like when Gabe’s killer had them tied up, Liam rose to the challenge to save the day and all their lives. These two buffoons didn’t stand a chance.
Liam said nothing in response. Which, when she thought about it in the silence that stretched between them, he didn’t have to. In all of that overly dramatic performance, there hadn’t been even one question for Liam to answer.
“Care to tell us how that happened?” Pataki finally said as a follow-up.
Liam delivered a tight-lipped smile. “My pleasure. Approximately three months ago I put in a routine request with the Anatomical Gift Program run by Albany Medical College.”
“Why?” Garland asked, looking torn between being horrified and suspicious.
“Research,” Liam answered with lowered brows and a tone that said the answer should have been obvious.
Natalie probably would have tacked a, duh, onto the end of that sentence but Liam was more professional than that.
“You do that a lot? Order dead bodies for research?” Pataki asked.
“Define a lot,” Liam asked.
As Pataki’s face turned red, a single drop of sweat trailed down the officer’s rounded cheek. He should probably move away from the fireplace. Or drop a hundred pounds.
“Mr. Walsh—”
“Doctor Walsh,” Liam corrected.
“Why did you put in a request for Lionel Graves’s body?” Pataki demanded, looking like anger, or hypertension, were getting the better of him.
“I didn’t.” Liam shook his head.
“You have it in your possession,” Pataki accused.
“I do.” Liam nodded.
This was starting to get comical. Or at least it would be if Natalie wasn’t worried that, unlike Carson, these New Haven police might actually haul her in and not let her out just as Alice feared.
“Doctor Walsh, did you or did you not specifically acquire Lionel Graves’s body to hide the evidence that Natalie Chase killed him with a blow to the head?” Garland asked in a voice worthy of the final speech in one of those police procedural dramas on television.
Liam frowned.
“Nothing to say?” Garland asked with an attitude that said she thought she’d won.
“Too much, actually.” Liam drew in a breath. “One, I requested a specimen, any specimen, for my grant research months before Graves died. In fact, months before Natalie and Professor Graves even met.
“Two, Albany chooses what cadavers they ship and when. I couldn’t acquire any one specifically even if I had wanted to. In addition, researchers are never given the donors’ identities. It’s an anonymous program. Call Albany. They’ll verify everything I’ve told you.
“Three, Miss Chase didn’t kill anyone, especially not a six-foot two-inch man with a single blow to the head in New Haven, Connecticut on a day she was publicly seen here in Mudville, New York.
“And four, I called in the head injury I discovered, which the New Haven medical examiner missed. Why would I do that if I were trying to hide it?”
Liam didn’t often go off, verbally, but when he did, it was a thing of beauty.
Pataki looked a bit defeated, but Garland obviously wasn’t done yet. “Perhaps you reported the head injury to throw us off the scent.”
“So we’re ignoring points one through three then?” Liam asked.
“When exactly did you notice the head injury?” Pataki asked, getting back in the game.
“When I shaved the head.”
“You shaved the head?” Garland asked.
“You shaved my head?” Lionel echoed, looking offended.
Gabe snorted. “Just wait. It gets worse.”
“Why did you shave the head?” Pataki asked.
“To remove the skull cap.”
Garland pressed a hand over her mouth.
Pataki managed to ask, “For what purpose?”
“To access the cranial cavity.”
“Good god…” Lionel turned away, overcome by the details that Liam delivered as flatly as if he were reading off a menu.
Even Pataki was starting to look uncomfortable by the discussion now.
“Are you some sort of sicko?” Pataki accused, dropping all semblance of professionalism.
Carson finally stepped forward. “Doctor Walsh is a well-respected doctor and researcher. There have been ground-breaking discoveries that connect low-level brain injury to depression and suicide in our military men and women and Liam’s research is part of continuing those studies.
As a veteran myself, which Liam is as well, I appreciate the research he’s doing, as should you. ”
Natalie couldn’t have loved Liam more as pride had her insides warming. And after that speech, Carson was right up there in her esteem too.