Craig Smith - Cold Rain

At that moment, entering an interrogation room, quite alone and defenceless, I realized I was that old lady, in way over my head and foolishly hoping for a happy ending. I was even treated to a friendly smile and a warm welcome. For the occasion they had ditched Detective Jacobs. In his place was a good-looking woman in uniform. For some reason, Lt. Gibbons seemed less intimidating because of the uniform. At the farm I had been treated to the good cop/bad cop routine. Now it was good cop/sexy cop. I should have been worried, but I managed to assure myself they had found out about Buddy Elder. The hard ass Jacobs wasn’t necessary today.

I guessed Lt. Gibbons to be a couple of years past thirty, though I later learned she was in her forties.

She was attractive, perhaps a bit heavy but in an extremely appealing fashion. Like Molly, she didn’t appear to be someone who would back away from a physical confrontation. She could work with her hands, and she could hold her own in a room full of men.

My kind of woman.

Naturally, she was serious about Johnna Masterson’s disappearance. Unlike Detective Jacobs, who had kept his arms crossed over his bony chest, Lt. Gibbons did not appear to have any preconceived notions about my guilt. Dalton, too, treated me as a witness. I kept trying to assure myself that everything was fine. I was not the old woman naively seated before Tubs Albo.

I was a witness. I was going to help put an end to Buddy Elder’s game. Whatever it was.

‘Lt. Gibbons works Sex Crimes,’ Dalton explained casually. ‘The sheriff thought it might be a good idea to get her into the case at this point.’ Dalton was, he said, still convinced Johnna Masterson was going to turn up alive and well, but they had to work the case as if something had happened. A running start, he said, just in case. Gibbons reviewed my previous interview without a hint of suspicion. I answered as before with perfect honesty. ‘You didn’t call Masterson when she didn’t show up?’ she asked me.

‘I called her house, but there wasn’t any answer.

There wasn’t anything else I could do, so I went home.’

She asked about the times, and I had to explain that I had driven around some before I went back to the farm. Sometime after three-fifteen, in bed by three-thirty, I said.

‘You didn’t talk to her again after her call at ten o’clock? You’re sure about that?’

‘No, and it was ten-fifteen,’ I told her, wanting to have everything correct and to the minute. ‘We didn’t talk. I’m quite sure about that.’

Detective Dalton sighed. ‘That’s where we have something of a problem, Dr Albo. You see, they tell us at Denny’s a woman called you. She said, according to them, it was some kind of emergency. The waitress got you and you took the call.’

‘Right,’ I said, feeling some gratification in the fact that they had done their homework. ‘But it wasn’t a woman. The person who called me was Buddy Elder.’

Lt. Gibbons developed a slight frown, the only indication on her otherwise placid face that she was having trouble with my story as well. ‘The call came from Johnna Masterson’s cell phone, Dr Albo. It’s the same phone she used to call your house at ten-fifteen.’

‘Then you’ve got a suspect,’ I told her without blinking or even considering the matter from their perspective. I knew Buddy was behind Johnna Masterson’s disappearance, and it was about time they started looking in that direction.

‘That’s where we have another minor problem,’

Dalton answered. ‘We’ve only got your word that you talked to Buddy Elder on the phone that evening and not to Johnna Masterson.’

‘The cashier heard the conversation,’ I answered, and then I froze. The cashier had listened to me tell Buddy I was going to kill him. Only she had talked to a woman – and would naturally assume I had threatened to kill… Johnna. I had used Buddy’s name, but I was betting in the all excitement of a death threat the cashier had forgotten that.

Lt. Gibbons tried to be sympathetic. They weren’t suggesting I was lying. They were trying to understand what had happened, and, unfortunately, there were some discrepancies. That was all it was. It happened in every investigation.

How did I explain a woman calling Denny’s?

Gibbons asked.

It was a fair question, assuming the person who answered the phone had not made a mistake. Dalton gave me this point with an expressive tip of his head.

‘But assume it was a woman who called,’ I said, already imagining Denise Conway in the role. ‘The most likely explanation was Buddy either had one of his girlfriends call or he forced Johnna to do it.’

Lt. Gibbons gave me an incredulous look. Whether it was acting or not, I couldn’t tell. ‘You think Mr Elder abducted Johnna Masterson?’

‘Johnna was agitated when she called me at the house. She told me she wanted to talk about Buddy.

I got the feeling at the time Buddy had threatened her, but it’s possible, given the way she talked, he had her even then. The woman was practically in tears.’

I expected curiosity at this point. This was the road I wanted them to take, but instead of responding, they changed the subject. Lt. Gibbons asked about my affair with Denise Conway. Didn’t happen, I told her. Gibbons expressed mild surprise. I tossed my hands out, palms up. Bring her in. Ask her. Give her a lie detector test.

New subject. What happened between Buddy and me at The Glass Slipper? Bad judgement. And the altercation at the funeral home? I wanted to talk to Denise, and her husband objected. Husband? I told them about Denise and Roger getting married. Kip Dalton asked me how I knew that. I got the feeling he thought he was the only one in the know. I gave a casual shrug of my shoulders. Denise had told some of her dancer friends about it. Kip was curious about this, I could tell, but he didn’t press me on the details. ‘You were telling Denise your lawyer was going to sue her for bringing charges against you?’ Gibbons asked.

‘I was talking about perjury in a deposition. I didn’t mention filing a civil suit against her. Now that she’s worth over five million I guess it’s an option.’

Dalton asked, ‘Some people tell us that when you tried to talk to Johnna Masterson that evening she was afraid of you.’

‘She wasn’t afraid of me. She just didn’t want to talk.’

‘Why do you think that is?’

Kip Dalton knew the reason. What he wanted was to know if I would try to conceal things. I also knew that his information came second-hand. Without a warrant the university would not hand over the evidence Blackwell had collected. That left me in the awkward position of explaining the charges. As these appeared to be frivolous without the diary, I had to bring that up too. I could see by their expressions they knew nothing about it.

‘Is it possible for us to have a copy of the diary?’

Gibbons asked.

What was the point? The whole thing was a lie.

‘Why would she write about an affair that didn’t exist?’

I explained my history with Buddy Elder. At the time I would have described my demeanour as animated. In retrospect, I’m sure both Gibbons and Dalton imagined that I was coming unhinged. Like all madmen, I was intent upon proving myself sane and reasonable. The effect vacillates between paranoia and psychosis.

Lt. Gibbons listened patiently to my explanation, then asked about the material in the diary. I tried to make light of it. It was a complete fabrication after all. ‘Nothing too serious, just graphic sexual encounters between the two of us in my office. Some abusiveness thrown in.’

‘What kind of abusiveness?’

‘It doesn’t matter. It was all a lie. There was no affair!’ She wanted to know anyway, and I told her.