Chapter 31
Detective Hope walked them back to their cell. It wasn’t a casual thing, not some effort to be polite. The man simmered with frustration and seemingly genuine anger.
“I understand your reaction,” Malcolm said.
“Oh, do you?” The detective’s sarcasm was so thick it could’ve painted the walls.
“Stop, Malcolm,” Jennie said. “What did you expect?”
The officer who’d locked them up in the first place opened the cell and stood back.
Malcolm thought about making a break for it, but sudden violence was likely to end up with him and Jennie brutalized or dead instead of free, so he followed his sister into the cell and waited while the cop locked them in.
He gripped the bars and stared at Detective Hope. “You don’t have to believe us—”
Hope sniffed. “That’s big of you, to give me permission.”
“The more information you get about what happened overnight, the more you’re going to find yourself unable to explain any of it,” Malcolm went on.
“You’re going to hate the fact that the story we just told you fits.
It’s crazy, it can’t be true, we’re a couple of lunatics.
Tell yourself whatever you want to tell yourself, but you’re not going to find another explanation. ”
“Except that the two of you are responsible.”
Jennie threw up her hands. “For God’s sake! You don’t believe that, Detective. You’re not so dense as to think you can put together a timeline or evidence that will convince anyone—yourself included—that my brother and I are capable of coordinating a train derailment and a mass murder spree.”
Malcolm smashed his palm on the bars, rattling the cell door. “You have no reason to hold us! We haven’t done anything except survive. That’s not a crime.”
Detective Hope shook his head. “You were illegally transporting a corpse, in a stolen car, and you’re suspects in a lot of horrifying crimes. I’m waiting for reports to arrive, for evidence to be gathered—”
“You can’t hold us,” Jennie insisted.
“Fortunately, you don’t get to decide that,” Hope replied.
“Goddamn it!” Malcolm shouted. “You still haven’t told us what you’ve done with our mother’s remains!”
“I still don’t have any evidence that the body you were transporting belonged to your mother. But if it’ll calm you down, I’ll tell you that in circumstances like these, victims’ bodies are taken to a local funeral home.”
Detective Hope gestured to their jailer, and the two police officers walked back down the hall, went into the office, and closed the door.
“This is good,” Jennie said.
Malcolm had to laugh. “Just what about this do you think is good?”
“Alfie and the boy are outside, watching this building, waiting for us. If they knew where Maggie’s body was, they wouldn’t give a damn about us.”
“So your pixie dust trick worked. It’s hiding her from them.”
“Which means they have to wait until we’re out of here,” Jennie said.
“The trouble is that ‘out of here’ is where we want to be.”