Fifty
Nate recused himself from my ATF interview. So after receiving butterfly stitches and a bandage for the shallow three-inch
knife gash on my neck, I confessed everything to Agent Lanagan in a little interrogation room with stacks of file boxes in
one corner, jagged holes picked in the soundproofing, and a recording device bolted into a wall cubby.
Well, I confessed almost everything.
What did I leave out?
Finding Connor’s body in my trunk.
Stashing the corpse—with Layna’s help—in my kids’ playhouse.
The trip to Burgdorf.
My discovery that Miranda had tased Connor.
Gucci’s liver-sorbet extraction was on a need-to-know basis and in my humble opinion, the ATF didn’t need to know.
In fact, it was fine with me if they never discovered why Connor disappeared.
As long as his body never turned up, I was in the clear.
So what did I tell Agent Lanagan? I stuck close to the story I’d given Nate about talking to Connor at Huckleberry’s, where
Connor had drunkenly confessed his plans for Day of the Rope. He must’ve told Ralphie and Errol what I knew and they’d been
after me ever since. Ralphie and Errol said they’d chopped the finger off a woman named Baylee who lived in Valley County.
I said I believed she might need help.
My kidnapping and near murder—ordered by Mrs. Carson, to be carried out by her henchmen—was of great interest to the ATF.
I told Agent Lanagan I’d known Mrs. Carson since I was in high school.
She’d never liked me and—after seeing me at Bar Gernika—had come up with the deluded idea that I’d figured out she was an illegal arms dealer.
Mrs. Carson, Unibrow, and the other bagman had been arrested for trespassing and attempted kidnapping as they came out of the underground capitol tunnels on Jefferson Street.
(Agent Lanagan told me it was suspected Mrs. Carson had lifted capitol key cards from a member of her book club who was also chief of staff to a state senator.)
I tried to imagine talking to Miranda Carson about all this. But I couldn’t. Not today. It was too awful, and surreal, and
sad. But Belinda Carson being so truly terrible really did explain a lot about the historical deficits in Miranda’s personality.
When Agent Lanagan asked if I’d spotted the person who’d shot Errol through the chest with a crossbow, I swore I hadn’t seen
a thing.
He reported that a couple of Ralphie and Errol’s IDIOT brethren had set fire to the Kids’ Tent. They’d been arrested. Ralphie
and Errol were being charged with attempted kidnapping and countless illegal arms-trafficking crimes. Ralphie was being held
in the Ada County Jail, while Errol was in the ICU at St. Luke’s in critical but stable condition and flanked by armed deputies.
Agent Lanagan said he didn’t know for sure, but he’d bet his ski cabin in McCall at least one of the IDIOTs would turn federal
witness and Day of the Rope would be successfully quashed.
Meanwhile, I was free to go. Agent Lanagan thanked me for all my help and turned off the recording device. I kind of expected
him to apologize for how badly he’d botched my security detail. But he didn’t. Maybe for the sake of liability and the ATF’s
reputation, he couldn’t admit to his mistake. And I was so relieved to no longer be on the wrong side of the law that I didn’t
bring it up. But I felt it unspoken in the air between us when he said, “Good luck with your comedy and your titty dancing
and everything.”
“We don’t actually call it ‘titty dancing’ anymore, Agent Lanagan,” I said.
“Then what the hell am I supposed to call it?” But he was smiling at me in a way I interpreted as fondly.
“Just call it ‘pole,’” I said.
“Will do,” he said. I had my hand on the door when he called, “And Ms. Turner?”
“Yes?”
“In the future, try to keep the phones of missing federal informants from pinging at your house, how ’bout it?”
“Copy that,” I said.
With the interview concluded, I fled to the women’s restroom. Knees shaking, I collapsed onto the toilet in the farthest stall.
I’d barely started to pee when the bathroom door swung open and two people entered.
“Did you hear about those meth heads up in Spokane?” a woman said. She had a high, breathy voice. Think Kristin Chenoweth
on the tiniest sip of helium.
“No, ma’am. Spill the tea,” the second replied.
“They killed some random civilian deader than disco—then broke into the crematorium to incinerate his body. Would’ve been
the perfect crime if the dipshits hadn’t triggered the alarm.”
My scalp tingled with a Hercule Poirot–level flash of insight—I still didn’t know how Connor had ended up full of Botox, but
I suddenly knew what’d happened to his body.