Allison Brennan - Cutting Edge

“I need you to check your weapon,” Warden Greene said when they walked through the main entrance.

Nora nodded, showed her credentials and gave the correctional officer her Glock. She was cleared to go through, and the Warden escorted her through a maze of hallways, to a row of doors and windows. Every room was dark except one.

“I’ll be right outside, watching, and there’s video surveillance, but you have audio privacy. No one can listen in. When you want to leave, ring the bell next to the door.”

“Thank you.”

Nora looked through the window to the woman in orange sitting at the metal table, hands clasped in front of her. A plastic cup half full of water was next to her.

Lorraine’s light brown hair had turned nearly white. Her skin, which had always been tan from living outdoors, was thin and leathery. Her hands were covered with age spots, her nails short and unpainted. Lorraine had once been a beautiful woman, and had taken quiet pride in her appearance. She’d taught Nora to give her manicures, and often shoplifted the latest fashion color for Nora to use. To see her hands so worn and unkempt seemed so very strange. Nora stared at her own hands. Her own nails short, clean, unpainted. She’d never had manicures, as they reminded her of Lorraine.

She had never wanted to see her mother again.

But she had to do this for Quin. She looked through the window, and focused on Lorraine’s eyes. Her large, round brown eyes were the one feature she’d passed to all three of her daughters; otherwise, Nora, Quin, and Maggie looked nothing alike. Lorraine couldn’t see her, but she sensed someone was outside the window. She straightened her back almost imperceptibly and loosened her hands.

“Okay. I’m ready.” Nora wasn’t, but she’d never be ready. She didn’t want to talk to Lorraine. Lorraine was going to lie to her, Nora knew that. But pathological liars often told the truth. The hard part was knowing what was true, and what was not. But Nora had thirty-seven years’ experience watching liars. First Lorraine, then raising a teenager, then going through Quantico, then interviewing suspects. If she didn’t let her emotions interfere, her experience and instincts were going to be her advantage.

She removed her badge, which was clipped to her blazer, and pocketed it. No sense antagonizing Lorraine from the start. But still Nora stood tall and confident, knowing that you never show criminals weakness.

The guard at the end of the hall buzzed her in. She stepped over the threshold and the door closed behind her.

“Hello, Lorraine.”

Lorraine smiled. “You finally came to visit.”

Nora strode to the chair opposite Lorraine and sat down. “This isn’t a visit. Quin is in trouble and I think you know why.”

Lorraine pouted. Quin wore the identical expression all the time, but Nora just now realized it came from their mother. The childlike frown was not appealing on a woman of sixty.

“Did you punish her because she came to visit me?” Lorraine asked.

Her tone was innocent, but Nora watched her eyes. When she’d been a child, she’d avoided Lorraine’s eyes because they seemed too sharp, too all-knowing. But now-that’s where the truth would be told.

Lorraine watched Nora under hooded lids. A neat trick, but Nora had learned interview techniques from the best.

“Maggie killed seven people and will kill Quin if you don’t tell me where she’s hiding out.”

Lorraine’s mouth dropped open. Her eyes were confused, glancing down at her hands, then up again. “I don’t believe you.”

“You know Maggie isn’t right in the head. You’ve seen her every month-or more-for twenty years. You’re far from stupid, Lorraine. You had to see that Maggie is wired differently.” Nora leaned forward, keeping her face hard, her eyes cold. “Maggie killed Quin’s boyfriend because he showed up while she was waiting for Quin. I know Maggie has Quin. I want her safe. It’s me Maggie really wants to kill, but she’ll kill Quin if she thinks that’ll be the way to hurt me. So if you care at all about Quin, you’ll tell me where Maggie is.”

Lorraine leaned forward, her eyes as cold as Nora’s. “Go to fucking hell.”

Nora didn’t flinch. Inside, she was petrified. Was this why Lorraine had manipulated her to come down here? To get her away from Maggie and Quin, to give her the personal satisfaction of telling her to go to hell for turning her over to the police? Maybe she didn’t know anything. Maybe she was ignorant of Maggie’s lunacy.

No. No one could spend that amount of time with someone like Maggie and not know the truth.

“You miss your freedom,” she said.

“You stole it from me.”

“You chose to commit those crimes. You had to pay the penalty.”

“I did everything for you.”

“You lied to me, you used me, you left me time and time again. You lied to Quin, told her that Randall Teagan was her father. You intentionally put a wedge between me and Quin because you could not stand it that we were happy.”

“Happy? Quin hasn’t been happy since you sent her mother away to prison.”

Nora couldn’t help but wonder if that was true. Quin had troubles for years. She’d experimented with drugs, she’d cut herself in junior high, she’d slept around. She was constantly searching for something, and Nora didn’t understand what, but maybe now she did. It wasn’t a mother, it wasn’t even Nora. It was herself. Lorraine was imperfect, horrid in many ways, and a criminal. But she was Quin’s only lifeline to her identity, and nothing Nora could say was going to change that.

That’s why Quin had needed to see Randall Teagan. To believe that he was her father. So she could believe, even if deep down she knew it wasn’t true, she wasn’t the by-product of a one-night stand.

Nora had tried to counsel Quin herself, and maybe that’s where she’d gone wrong. She was too emotionally close to her sister, and to stand apart, at a distance, to compartmentalize her feelings in an attempt to help Quin overcome her problems she’d taken away the one thing her sister needed from her. Unconditional love. She couldn’t be everything to Quin, but she could be a sister.

Lorraine was watching Nora closely, and suddenly said, “You killed Maggie’s father and were never punished for it.”

“I didn’t pull the trigger.”

“You might as well have.”

“You told Maggie about that night,” Nora prompted.

“I told her the truth.”

“Your truth,” Nora said, pushing back the waves of anger that threatened to explode. She couldn’t afford to get angry. That’s what Lorraine wanted. Nora saw it in her eyes, in her posture.

Nora did the opposite. She leaned back in the chair, against the instinct of every nerve and muscle in her body, and stared directly into her mother’s eyes. “Let me lay it out for you, Lorraine. Either you help save Quin-your daughter-or you won’t be going outside for the rest of your life.”

“You can’t do that.”

Nora raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” She pulled out her badge. “You were right, Lorraine. Law enforcement are a bunch of fascist pigs, and I’m the biggest oinker you’ll meet. You will never see the sun except through bars in the rec room. And if Quin dies? You’ll be in solitary for a year. I have records that you’ve been meeting with Maggie regularly, and those meetings have increased in the last two years since the arson fires started in Sacramento. She used similar bomb techniques that you and Cameron Lovitz employed. You taught her everything you knew.” Lorraine didn’t have to know the bombs were common and generic. Nora hoped she squirmed.

“She killed three college students-people you would have liked, people who believed in your cause-because they no longer would help her,” Nora continued. “She killed them with jimsonweed. Now, I remember some lessons you gave me about poison. And if you think I won’t testify, you know that’s not true because I testified against you before, and I will do it again.”