Страница 9 из 18
Wade dropped down beside Alex, out of arm’s reach, but close enough to quietly reason with him. “There aren’t that many options. Seriously, use your head. Maybe we call in the Coast Guard, maybe we don’t.”
“If I were you, I’d say the same thing just so people wouldn’t suspect me.”
“That probably makes sense, but honest to God, I didn’t do it.”
Alex crawled over to the bed and pulled himself up. Moving away, stepping back once, twice, putting some distance between them. “Prove it.”
“I barely slept a wink. I hate boats, man. I hate them—”
“Then why’d you come?”
“Je
“Doesn’t prove anything.”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you. I’m terrified of boats, like full-blown phobia, so I’ve barely been holding it together this whole time. I couldn’t sleep at all last night and—”
“And what?”
“Okay, Jesus. Just don’t tell Je
“Linda?”
“This woman I’ve been…seeing. I—damn, just don’t tell anybody, please? I don’t want it to get around. We talked until about four in the morning, that’s all I can tell you. The cops, the Coast Guard, whoever, they can check my phone records. They’ll talk to Linda and confirm it. And from the looks of it, it’ll match up against whatever her time of death was. Looks like she’s been dead a lot longer than that.”
“How can you tell?”
Wade, hands on his hips, looked up to the ceiling, and exhaled heavily. “Because I used to be a cop, ages ago. And I’m only telling you this so you’ll believe me. That’s something I wanted to walk away from, indefinitely. Mental health stuff, but not a word of it to anybody else, understood?”
Alex nodded, but hesitantly.
Pointing at Erica’s body, Wade said, “I got tired of seeing shit like that all the time. Worse things. Unimaginably worse things. This is a cupcake compared to some of the things I saw, and I just couldn’t handle it anymore. It was getting into my dreams—so depressing. I was clinically depressed. We had a shrink on staff who tried to talk me through it, you know, to give me some help, but nothing worked. Not drugs, not therapy. I put a gun to the side of my head and pulled the trigger, but it misfired. I’m telling you, that empty click sounded like a ca
“So just because you used to be a cop, I’m supposed to believe your story.”
“The evidence—evidence, Alex—it’ll prove it. And right now, I’m about the only friend you’ve got on this boat, and you need somebody on your side, because you’ve got a dead body on your yacht.”
“You’re blaming me?”
“Blame, no. Acknowledging responsibility, yeah.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“Maybe not, but you better believe that they’ll come looking at you, being your yacht and all.”
“Why? Tell me why. Would I be stupid enough to kill her on my yacht, in my own bedroom?”
“That’s what they’ll look at first. You were in here with her for a while last night, after you brought her down.”
“I was fixing her damn head, Wade.”
“We all went to bed. Remember? Did anybody see you leave?”
Alex clasped his hands, wringing them together. “No.” Je
“Exactly. Your yacht, your bedroom, and nobody saw you leave. I have an alibi. You don’t. Where’d you sleep, huh? Where were you all night?”
“I went up to the cockpit to think, and about twenty minutes later I passed out. That’s where I woke up. So, no, nobody knew where I was, and nobody saw me go up there.”
“Which means you need a friend.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“There’s no guessing about it, man, and honestly, I have no reason whatsoever to believe a word you’re saying, but I will. I’ll trust you. For now. That leaves…one, two, three…Sharon, Laura. Seven. Seven people. Process of elimination. We start narrowing it down, and once we figure out who did it, we’ll keep an eye on them until we can get the authorities here to make sure they don’t hurt anyone else. Sound like a plan?”
“And how’re we supposed to figure that out?”
“We start with motive.” Wade crossed his arms, tilted his head to the side, avoiding eye contact on purpose. “I hate to say it, but you know where my mind’s going first.”
Alex understood immediately. “Don’t. No. She wouldn’t.”
“We have to. It’s the most logical place to start.”
“I don’t care. There’s no way. She couldn’t do something like that.”
“You saw her up on the table, saw what she did. We all saw it. What was that about, huh? I mean, damn, she practically growled before she threw Erica off there.”
“I don’t—no, just no. They’ve been friends for almost thirty years.”
“One second everything was fine, and then she got all crazy-eyed. I hate to say it, but Terri’s probably right—there was a lot of territorial anger there. It was brutal. You saw it.”
Alex looked at Erica’s dead body, the slit across her throat, and tried to see it happening in his mind—Je
Maybe—yeah, was that it? Maybe Je
Still, no matter how much it made sense, he couldn’t see Je
And then Erica happened. It was passionate, dirty, lustful sex, but that was it, and only because he couldn’t get it from Je
He’d never seen anything from Je
No, it’d been a different person up there on the table, different, but the same.
But not different enough to murder her best friend.
And yet…
“Je
“What happened last night? Those two are closer than sisters. Why would she do that?”
“The reason’s dead.”
“What?”
“Erica.”
The realization spread across Wade’s face with wide eyes and an O-shaped mouth. “Ooooh. You and Erica? But I thought—how long?”
“Six months.”
“Six months? And Je
Alex shrugged and nodded toward Erica’s body. “You tell me.”
“Holy shit. If that’s not motive, then I don’t know what is. Are you sure? You think she found out?”
“Maybe.”
“Oh my God.” Wade walked over to the wet bar and poured whiskey into a tumbler, considered the amount, and then added some more. “You want one?”
“No, I’m good. I need my head clear.”
Wade stepped away, halted, and then went back. He used the hem of his shirt to wipe at the molded glass.
Alex caught him doing it. “Worried about fingerprints?”
“Not worried,” Wade said, “but we don’t want to give the guys who catch this case any false leads.” He sipped his liquor near the edge of the bed. “Let’s think about this for a second…before we run up there and blame Je