Eve sat down, stretched out her legs, sipped at the coffee. Maybe hospital coffee was, actually, worse than cop coffee. “I’ve come across some tricky ones, but I have to say, you’re the trickiest. Even if your mother comes out of it, she’s not going to point the finger at you. Still, it must’ve pissed you off when Cora came back and found her before it was finished.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.” The tears spilled out now. “You’re so mean.”
“Oh, come on. I don’t scare you. You know I’ve got zip. I’ll give you better.” Eve shrugged, chanced another sip. “My commander and the house shrink think I’m full of it. Maybe tipping over the edge myself because I tried to sell them on you. I value my career, kid. I’m not going to toss it away on this. I’m done. The investigation will remain open for a while, then we’ll move it to inactive. Then to cold.”
She leaned forward. “I’m not having the brass and the shrinks looking over my shoulder because of you, screwing up my very excellent chances for promotion over you. I’m riding a wave right now. Icove, the black-market baby bust. Big, juicy cases I closed. I can afford to let this one slide.”
Rayleen tilted her head. “You can lie in an interview with a suspect.”
“Yeah. But I can’t even hold an interview with a minor suspect without parental permission. So, officially, I’m not even here.”
Rayleen went back to drawing. “Why are you here? I can go to my daddy right now, and you’ll be in trouble.”
“Shit. I just came in to see how you were doing, no reason for him to think otherwise. If you make a stink about it, he’s going to wonder why I’d hassle you. Yeah.” Eve smiled, set the hideous coffee aside. “Why don’t you do that, Ray? He might start thinking how your mother wouldn’t have done herself with you alone with her in the apartment. Go ahead and get him. Last I saw him he was sitting beside your mother’s bed.”
“He shouldn’t have left me alone. He should be with me. When she dies—”
“If. It’s still if.” Playfully, Eve wagged a finger. “Don’t count your chickens, kid. I could hang the two murders on her, and maybe make it stick. But I’m not quite as practical as you are. I like to close cases, but doing that would stick in my craw. So…it goes cold.”
“You’re just giving up?”
“It’s what we call ‘knowing when to fold.’ A couple of teachers aren’t going to get much more screen play anyway.” Casually, Eve crossed her ankles. “I can figure out how you did your mother. Can’t prove it, but I can get how you played it. You made the tea, you put in the pills. Did she know?”
Rayleen shrugged. “My mother tried to kill herself, and it’s terrible. I could be scarred for life. Daddy and I are going to need to go on a long trip, just the two of us, so I can adjust.”
“Then why’d she call you home first? Why did your mother call you back instead of just taking the pills while she was alone?”
“I guess she wanted to say good-bye.” Rayleen lifted her gaze, fluttered her lashes. And was smiling just a little as she worked
up a tear. “She loved me more than anything.”
Already using past tense, Eve noted. Allika was gone in Rayleen’s mind. “That could work,” Eve agreed. “Come on, Ray, it must be infuriating for a smart girl like you not to be able to share what you can do with anyone else. I know about taking a life from both sides of it. You’ve got me cold, tied my hands. You win; I lose. But goddamn it, I’m curious.”
“You use very bad language. In my house, we don’t approve of bad language.”
“Screw that,” Eve said, and made Rayleen giggle. “Why’d you do Foster? I can, again, work out the how. You got the ricin from somewhere. Can’t track that, either, but you got it, dumped it in his thermos.”
“It’s called a go-cup,” Rayleen said primly.
“Right. You walked in when he had the outside class upstairs, doctored the drink. Then you got your friend to go down to class a few minutes early, so you could find him. Slick.”
“If you were right, you still wouldn’t be all right. You don’t know everything.”
“No, you got me. Why would you kill him? Did he try to hurt you? Did he try some sort of abuse? Touch you?”
“Please. That’s disgusting.”
“I’m not going to buy it was just a whim. You went to too much trouble, planned it out too well.”
Rayleen’s lips twitched. “If you were really smart, you’d know everything.”
“Got me there.”
“Maybe—and this is just like pretending I’m talking to you about it—maybe he was stupid and mean and made a really dumb mistake and wouldn’t listen even when I gave him a chance to fix it.”
“What kind of mistake? Since we’re pretending.”
“He gave me an A minus on my oral report. A minus. I always get an A or an A plus. He had no business giving me a minus, just because he thought my presentation needed more work. I practiced and practiced. I was the best in the whole class, and getting less than a solid A means I could drop to second instead of first.”