Блейк Пирс - Before He Lapses

Margaret Lynch was just about the exact opposite of Clark Manners. She was cool and collected, greeting Mackenzie and Ellington with a smile when they met with her in the lobby of the Radisson she was staying in. She led them to a couch near the back of the lobby, though, showing her first sign of weakness.

“If I end up crying, I’d rather not do it in front of everyone,” she remarked, pressing herself into the couch as if she was fairly certain this would indeed happen.

“I’d like to start with asking how well you know Clark Manners,” Mackenzie said.

“Well, I spoke to him for the first time two days ago, after all this had happened. But Christine had mentioned him a few times on the phone. She was quite taken with him, I think.”

“Is there any suspicion on your part?”

“No. Of course, I don’t know the boy but based on what Christine told me about him, I don’t see him being the one who did this.”

Mackenzie noted that Mrs. Lynch was doing everything she could to avoid words like killed or murdered. She figured the woman was able to keep her head because she was doing a good job of distancing herself from it. It was probably made easier by the fact that the two of them had been living on separate ends of the country for a while.

“What can you tell me about Christine’s life here in Baltimore?” Mackenzie asked.

“Well, she started college in San Francisco. She wanted to be a lawyer, but the school and the course load…it wasn’t a good fit. We had a long talk about her applying to Queen Nash University. A long talk. Her father passed away when she was eleven and really, it’s just been Christine and I since then. No uncles, no aunts. It’s always been a small family. She has one surviving grandmother, but she has dementia and is in a home out near Sacramento. I don’t know if you know yet or not, but I’m having her cremated here, in Baltimore. No sense in going through the process of getting her back to California just to have the same thing done. We have no ties to the area, really. And I know she enjoyed it here, so…”

This poor woman is going to be all alone, Mackenzie thought. She was always aware of these sorts of things when interviewing and interrogating people, but this thought seemed to slam into her like a boulder.

“Anyway, she got in and within a single semester, she knew she loved it here. She was always very apologetic, worried that I was this lonely old woman living alone without her. She kept in touch, calling about twice a week. She’d tell me about how classes were going and, like I said, she ended up telling me about Clark.”

“What did she say about him?” Ellington asked.

“Just that he was cute and very funny. She did mention from time to time that he wasn’t very exciting and that he had a tendency to drink too much whenever they were in social situations.”

“But nothing negative?”

“Not that I can remember.”

“Please forgive me for asking,” Mackenzie said, “but do you know if they were exclusive? Was there a chance Christine might have also been seeing anyone else?”

Mrs. Lynch thought about this for a moment. She didn’t seem to take offense to the question; she remained just as calm as she had seemed when they had first come into the lobby and met her. Mackenzie wondered at what point the poor woman was going to eventually snap.

“She never mentioned any competition for her heart,” Mrs. Lynch said. “And I think I know why you’re asking. I was told what the scene looked like—her being topless and all. I had just assumed…”

She stopped here and took a moment to collect herself. The words that were coming next caused something to stir inside, but she managed to get it down before the emotions took over. When she resumed, she was still stone-faced.

“I had just assumed it was a rape gone wrong. That maybe the man got frustrated for some reason and wasn’t able to go through with it. But I suppose there’s a chance there was another man in her life. If there was, I just didn’t know about it.”

Mackenzie nodded. The would-be-rapist theory had gone through her head as well, but the way the shirt had been tossed to the floor and then her head haphazardly lying on it…none of it seemed to add up.

“Well, Mrs. Lynch, we don’t want to bother you any more than we absolutely have to,” Mackenzie said. “How long do you intend to stay in town?”

“I don’t know yet. Maybe a day or two beyond the service.” At the word service , her voice cracked the tiniest bit.

Ellington handed her one of his business cards as he got to his feet. “If you happen to think of anything or hear anything during the funeral or the services, please let us know.”

“Of course. And thank you for looking into this.” Mrs. Lynch looked forlorn as Mackenzie and Ellington left. I suppose so, Mackenzie thought. She’s all alone in a city she doesn’t know, having come to take care of her deceased daughter.

Mrs. Lynch saw them to the door and waved them off as they walked to their car. It was the first moment in which Mackenzie realized that her hormones were officially all over the place as a result of her pregnancy. She felt for Mrs. Margaret Lynch in a way she might not have before she’d found out she was pregnant. To create life, then raise and nurture it only to have it wrenched away from you in such a brutal fashion…it had to be miserable. Mackenzie felt absolutely wretched for Mrs. Lynch as she and Ellington pulled out into traffic.

And just like that, Mackenzie felt a flush of determination. She’d always had a passion for righting wrongs—for bringing killers and other evil men and women to justice. And whether it was hormones or not, she vowed to find Christine Lynch’s killer, if for no other reason than to bring some closure to Margaret Lynch.

The first name on the list of friends Clark Manners had given them was a guy named Marcus Early. When they tried contacting him, the call went straight to voicemail. They then tried the second name on the list, Bethany Diaggo, and were able to set up an interview right then and there.

They met Bethany at her place of employment, a law firm where she was interning as part of her course load at Queen Nash. As the day was winding down to dinnertime, she simply clocked out half an hour early and met with them in one of the small conference rooms in the back of the building.

“We understand that you were at Clark Manners’s apartment on the night that Christine was killed,” Mackenzie said. “What can you tell us about that night?”

“It was just getting together to have some fun. We had a bit to drink—maybe a little too much. We played some card games, watched some reruns of The Office, and that was about it.”

“So there were no arguments of any kind?” Mackenzie asked.

“No. But I did see that Christine was starting to get irritated with Clark. Sometimes when he drinks, he tends to go a little overboard, you know? She never said anything that night, but you could tell she was starting to get irritated.”

“Do you know if it ever caused problems with them in the past?”

“Not that I know of. I think Christine just sort of dealt with it. I feel pretty sure that she knew their relationship wasn’t this forever sort of thing.”

“Bethany, did you know a woman named Jo Haley? About your age, also a Queen Nash student?”

“I did,” she said. “Not quite as well as I knew Christine, but we were on a friendly basis. It was rare that we ever hung out. But if we crossed paths at a bar or something like that, we’d usually end up siting together and chatting.”