It took Eve one beat. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
“I don’t know whether or not I shit you as I didn’t say it was—”
“Oliver Straffo? What kind of sick irony is this?”
Peabody’s face moved to sulk at having her scoop dumped. “Well, he walked in, big as life, and is advising his client to make no further statements, answer no more questions until they consult. Then he wants to talk to us.”
“Hmmm.” Eve glanced at her board where she had Allika Straffo’s picture lined up in Williams’s shooting gallery. “This should be interesting.”
Who knew what about who? Eve wondered, and thought of Allika, the kid. How was she going to find out who knew what about who without blowing the situation up in the faces of the innocent?
Maybe Straffo had a right to know his wife had tossed up her skirts for a slime like Williams. But it wasn’t her job to rat out a foolish wife unless it closed her case.
“Eggshells,” Peabody murmured as they stepped toward the interview room.
“What? You want eggs?”
“No, I meant we’re going to have to walk on eggshells here. Be really careful,” she explained.
“I thought it was something like ‘You can’t make scrambled eggs without breaking some.’”
“No, it’s ‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.’ But this is more like the opposite in the food-saying spectrum. Eggs have been broken, but we don’t want to crush the shells.”
“It’s a stupid saying because if the eggs are already broken, who gives a damn about the stupid shells?” Eve wanted to know. “But I get it. Let’s go.”
She saw immediately that Williams had his confidence back. A high-powered defense attorney could do that for a suspect, guilty or innocent. Straffo sat in his conservatively and perfectly cut suit, hands folded on the table.
He said nothing until Eve started the record.
“One of my associates is already drafting a motion to have the warrant you secured invalidated, and the search deemed illegal.”
“You won’t get it.”
He smiled a little, gray
eyes hard as steel. “We’ll see. In the meantime your attempts to involve my client in the murder of Craig Foster are ludicrous. Sexual indulgence isn’t a crime, nor is it a route to murder.”
“Sex and murder walk hand in hand like lovebirds, Straffo. We both know it. The victim was aware of your client’s indulgence on school property, during school hours. Which is, as you also know, illegal.”
“It’s a misdemeanor.”
“And grounds for dismissal from the educational facility. Even, as I’ve done my research, grounds for the revocation of the license to teach in this state. Self-protection also walks along with murder.”
“You don’t have even a blurry circumstantial case, Dallas. You have suspicion of what may be inappropriate and unwise behavior. You have no evidence that my client and the victim ever argued. In fact, I can and will provide statements from their coworkers that they did not and were, in fact, on friendly terms. You have no link to the murder weapon and my client, no witnesses that saw him enter the victim’s classroom on the day in question, because, in fact, he did not so enter.”
“He was unaccounted for during a period of time when the victim was absent from the classroom, and as classes were in session, his entering same would not have been witnessed.”
“He was not alone during that period, and should it become necessary, we will provide you with the name of the individual he was with. As I have not reached this individual and discussed this, I prefer, as does my client, not to divulge the name at this time. We are confident, however, that she’ll corroborate Mr. Williams’s statement.”
“You had plenty of time and plenty of opportunity to get in and out of that classroom,” Eve said to Williams. “And you had plenty of motive.”
“I—”
“Reed.” All Straffo did was say the name, and Williams stopped speaking. “All you have, Lieutenant, is a questionable search and seizure, which has netted you nothing that connects my client to this murder.”
“There’s nothing questionable about the search and seizure. And your client’s abhorrent habits caused the victim to nudge your client into a corner. He has stated, on record, that the victim learned of his habits and called him on it.”
“The situation was discussed between them, after which they continued their friendly working relationship.” Straffo closed his own file, one he hadn’t so much as glanced at during the interview. “If that’s all you’ve got, I’ve requested that my motion to overturn the warrant be fast-tracked. I’d like my client moved to an appropriate holding area until his release.”