Chapter 15 #2
I felt the hope rise inside my chest. This didn’t mean that he actually believed me. It meant he was willing to play nice with the crazy girl if it meant I might talk. But still.
“We know it can’t be Gary Hopely,” he continued. I braced myself for more questions about his death, but blessedly Pullman refrained. “So there must be another explanation,” Pullman said quietly. “Maybe there’s something you aren’t considering.”
“And what’s that?”
He straightened in his chair so that he was sitting up in a more professional position.
“Rose, what was the relationship between your father and your sister like?”
His voice was steady, as if he’d practiced this line before. His eyes were locked on my face, searching for any flicker of emotion. He was looking for a tell.
“You think my father had something to do with this?” I was stuck somewhere between disbelief and fury.
I was used to people discrediting me regarding Will’s situation.
I was used to people believing our family was a breeding ground for sin, that my parents were the kind of people who raise monsters.
But this? Pullman was even more incompetent than I had thought.
He seemed unfazed by my reaction. “Were they close?”
I caught the subtle change of tense. Were. Not are.
“He is her father,” I said through my teeth. “Of course they are close.”
“Can you describe the way they interacted?” Pullman continued, ignoring my tone. “Or tell me why Hazel chose to move back with him, rather than staying with her mother?”
I didn’t want to answer his questions. “What reason would my dad have to hurt his own daughter?” I demanded. “He adored Hazel. She was basically his reason for living. These last few days have been killing him.”
“People said the same thing about Will and Alexandria,” Detective Pullman reminded me. “That he adored her. That there was no reason to hurt her. And look what happened.”
“They said that because he didn’t do it.” I sighed, not understanding how this didn’t make any sense to him. Why no one could see this the way I did. “You’re suggesting that my brother killed his girlfriend, and then eleven years later my father randomly killed his daughter?”
Pullman’s face tightened. “It wouldn’t surprise me for one violent person to raise another violent person. Will had to learn it from somewhere.”
“Except my father has never even had a parking ticket, let alone a history of violence.”
There was a pause as the detective let the comment sink in. “He is the only male that lives in the home. That alone gives us a reason to suspect—”
“That’s a little flimsy, don’t you think?”
“We have more,” Pullman said.
I cocked an eyebrow. They had something else? I waited as Pullman looked a little smug.
“Hazel road a bike to school every day,” Pullman said. “Did you know that?”
No. But I didn’t need to reinforce how little I knew about her, so I lied. “Yes.”
“Well, she left school that day on the bike. People saw her.”
“Okay?” How did that have anything to do with my father?
“School got out at two forty-five p.m. Takes about fifteen minutes to bike to your father’s house on the east side of Loxahatchee.”
“Yes, I’m aware of the location of my own home. What’s your point?”
“There’s Ring camera footage of Hazel on the west side of town. At three thirty p.m.”
Which meant, of course, that she hadn’t gone straight home. What was she doing on the west side? Was she looking for something? Or someone? My book felt heavy in my purse.
Pullman continued. “She was out and about for a while, it seems. Yet her bike was at your father’s house when we arrived on the scene.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning she did make it back home. And later than we thought. So it’s more likely something happened to her there. And it really tightens the window of when. The events of the evening are all feeling a lot closer to when your father got off work …”
“He’s her father,” I snapped. “He would never.”
“You wrote an entire book making the case for a father killing his own daughter,” Pullman reminded me.
I was at the end of my patience. I’d spent a decade defending Will to the entire world; I was not going to sit here and do the same for my father. Our family had been through enough already.
I grabbed my bag and slung it over my shoulder, letting the metal chair scrape across the floor as I stood up.
“I’d like to discuss a few more things with you. I am just trying to help—”
I cut him off. “Am I under arrest or am I able to leave freely?” Walter Durham had spent the first month he worked with Will and me on appeals making sure we knew what to say if we ever needed to speak to the cops again. But this was the first time I’d had to actually use one of those phrases.
“Rose …” Pullman said my name gently, as if I were a friend. “Your sister has been missing for over forty-eight hours. No one has found anything. Don’t you think it’s time we take a closer look at those around her?”
I ignored him and reached for the heavy door handle, pleased to find it wasn’t locked.
I wrenched it open and let it slam behind me.
I didn’t wait to see if Pullman followed me.
I was moving so quickly I almost didn’t notice my mother in the lobby.
She was still sitting in one of the chairs, clutching at her Michael Kors bag.
Her eyes were red and wet again, but the rest of her face was blank.
The moment I walked out, she stood and approached me.
“Are you finished?” she asked frantically, her eyes darting back to the hallway where Detective Pullman now hovered, watching us.
“Oh, I’m done,” I said, following her sight. She lowered her voice. “Your father is still in there with Detective Newbury.” I could tell from her tone that she was unnerved.
“Did they ask you about Dad?” I whispered.
The look she was giving me confirmed the answer. It was different from the way she had looked at me these past few days. The usual fierceness was there in her dark blue eyes, but it wasn’t directed toward me anymore.
She shook her head. “Not here.” She looked at the cops lingering around us. “Are you hungry? Maybe we should get some pancakes.”
I wasn’t hungry, plus it was 7 p.m. and a really weird time for pancakes, but I wanted to hear what she had to say.
“Sure,” I agreed. “Let’s do it.”