Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
“I want to live your life!” Gina whistled on the phone. “Look at you, Zoe. Making out with a married man.”
“Shut up, G! He’s separated. And I gave in only for a second after he initiated it.” Zoe groaned. She had done a good job of burying that memory somewhere deep inside her. “Please tell me I wasn’t a total asshole.”
“You weren’t a total asshole.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose, an ache pulsing in her stomach. “His wife would hate me. And rightfully, so.”
“She would but she did walk out on him. It’s not cheating. Meanwhile the most exciting thing to happen to me is that I learned from a teacher that your favorite nephew has expanded his vocabulary by learning the word ‘dick.’ Yes, Zoe. Dick. I can feel Mom judging me.”
“She’d be proud of you,” Zoe said. It wasn’t often they spoke of Rachel.
Zoe always thought it was too painful for Gina, who didn’t have that many memories of her.
Though Zoe had promised Rachel to forget about her and move on, it was Gina who had kept that promise.
Gina with her husband and her children and her house in the suburbs.
Gina with her summer evenings spent drinking lemonade on the porch.
Gina with her Sunday mornings busy trying to shepherd the kids for morning hockey practice.
Meanwhile Zoe had autopsy pictures of Jackie laid out in front of her.
“Well, you’re overthinking this.” Gina’s voice disrupted her train of thought. “We’re all allowed to be messy sometimes, sis.”
“I guess you’re right.” She bit her lip. But Zoe didn’t like being messy. She was unfiltered but she wasn’t a trainwreck. She made good decisions.
“I have a question for you…”
“What’s that?”
“If Simon and his wife get a divorce, would you date him again?”
The thought hadn’t crossed her mind. She hadn’t even considered the possibility.
Now she toyed with it. She imagined a world where she was with Simon and didn’t care about what happened to Rachel.
The lightness with which she would float about her day was tempting.
But was Simon just a remnant from her past offering her a false chance at freedom?
“I don’t know. I mean… we did share something special but it was so long ago, Gina. I haven’t thought about him that way in years.”
“Is there anyone you think of?” she teased. “Not that I’m someone to put pressure on anyone to have kids, but I’d like my boys to have cousins! My husband is an only child, remember?”
Zoe caught a glimpse of Aiden outside, heading toward her. The image of him shirtless when he opened the door flashed through her mind. She blinked it away. What was that about?
“I have to go, Gina. I’ll talk to you later.” Her voice came out shrill and she hung up.
“Who was that?” Aiden gripped the edges of the doorway.
“My sister.” She cleared her throat and willed herself not to blush.
“Jim Gray is here.”
“Oh.” She stood up. “Does Lisa know?”
He faltered. “Nope.”
“You didn’t tell her. Why?”
He shrugged. “I want to see her reaction.”
Zoe didn’t fully understand the way Aiden worked. And she was rudely reminded that this was who he was—methodical and shrewd. He was always testing people like he was prodding and disassembling a toy to decipher how it functioned.
Stepping outside, she saw a tall, heavy man with unkempt dark blonde hair, wearing a hoodie, being brought in by Ethan. His eyes were round and puzzled. Lisa was coming out of the break room and frowned.
“Jim? What are you doing here?”
Ethan leaned to whisper something in Lisa’s ears. Her mouth dropped open and her eyebrows pulled together. Her eyes flew to Jim, who shrugged helplessly. Voices overlapped, chairs scraped against the floor, and the steady hum of conversation filled every inch of space.
“I would say she’s genuinely surprised,” Zoe murmured.
“I agree.”
“We’ll take this one,” she said, raising her voice. The laughter in the room stopped, the chatter thinned out. Everyone was acutely aware of the silence as Zoe headed to one of the rooms in the back to interview Jim.
“What do we know about him?” she whispered to Aiden.
“Software engineer. Unemployed for the last seven months after getting laid off. That’s all Ethan told me. And no priors.”
“In here, Mr. Gray.” Zoe ushered him into a room.
A simple metal table, scuffed at the edges, and three chairs sat in the middle of the room. The walls were a dull, muted brown. A single fluorescent light buzzed overhead, casting a cold, flat glow.
There was no window, no clock. Nothing to give a sense of time passing. Just four walls and stale air.
Jim sat down gingerly, across from Zoe and Aiden. His face was crumpled and teeming with worry. “Please, can I talk to Lisa first?”
“I’m afraid this is more important,” Zoe said. “How did you know Jackie Fink?”
His mouth flattened. “Shit. I mean, it was…” He sat back, his hands stuffed inside the pockets of his hoodie, and looked at the closed door. “It was a mistake, okay? It meant nothing. It was barely anything.”
Zoe and Aiden exchanged a look. “So you were having an affair with her?”
“No!” He was appalled. “It was just three dates, okay? It was so stupid.” He hung his head low and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What the hell do you think I’ve done?”
“Walk us through this, Jim,” Zoe instructed. “Jackie Fink was found murdered. You’re the sheriff’s husband. This doesn’t look good for you.”
“I know! I know! Look, Lisa and I are going through a rough patch. She has it in her head that a baby will fix everything but I’m not even working right now. And her fertility treatments have been so…” He caught himself and clasped his hand into a fist. “Just please let me talk to her first.”
“I’m just going to wait until you accept that you’re talking to us first,” Zoe said.
His shoulders sagged in defeat and he wiped his nose. “We met at the café where she worked. I used to get an Americano almost every afternoon and we got talking.”
“What did you talk about?” Aiden asked.
“I don’t know. Regular stuff.”
“And you said you went on three dates?” Zoe asked.
“Yeah, it lasted only two weeks. I realized what an asshole I was being. And she was kind of weird.”
“How?” Aiden narrowed his eyes.
“All she ever talked about was the fire.” He grimaced.
“Don’t get me wrong. We all talk about it.
When I was a kid, we played Survivor. We would role-play being the victims and added a twist that one of us was the killer.
” A wan smile crossed his lips. “Well, it was stupid and we all grew up. I have other things I wanted to talk about but she was only interested in one topic. I sent her flowers and ended things with her over the phone like a gentleman.”
Zoe struggled to hold back a burst of laughter at him referring to himself as a gentleman after cheating on his wife. “Did she mention any other person in her life? Friends or family?”
“Not really. I don’t think she had a life.
Everything was about the fire. I think someone in her family was a victim, which started this obsession.
Though… I think she mentioned someone else.
” He closed his eyes. “I’m trying to remember.
She was doing some freelance work and said someone was pushing her to do something she wasn’t comfortable with.
I thought it was sexual favors or something but she said it wasn’t that but it was illegal. ”
Zoe threw a discreet glance at Aiden. Her mind raced.
It didn’t make sense. Why would Annabelle come up with the idea to steal the product?
Was she truly that disturbed by the ethics of it?
She didn’t need to steal it to leak the story to Adam.
Jackie, on the other hand, had a reason to want to take it.
She intended to use it to escalate her obsession.
“David!” he said suddenly. “She said some guy called David was pressuring her. She didn’t say about what.”
Zoe went blank as his words slowly permeated her brain and traveled through the cells, forming into a realization that Aiden seemed to have reached already.
“David Harrington.”