Her swollen red eyes rounded slightly. “Who stabbed you?”
He coughed a laugh. “Last time I’ll piss her off.”
“A woman?”
“Girlfriend. Former girlfriend. She got me with a broken, rusty outboard propeller.”
“Mercy.”
He laughed again. “I said a little stronger word than mercy.”
When she smiled, Shaw shot her one back. “Good to see you smiling. I heard you crying earlier. From in there.” He indicated the interrogation room. “Sounded rough.”
Her lower lip began to tremble and misery settled over her whole being again.
“Look, kid,” he said, speaking softly, “don’t let these assholes get to you. The deputy said your folks’ll be here soon. They’ll get you out. Whatever it was you did—”
“I didn’t do anything!”
Shaw just looked at her, knowing she desperately wanted to tell what had happened, explain it, clarify it, justify it, whatever. So he gave her the opportunity by saying nothing.
“I mean…” She licked her lips. “I went to this place where I shouldn’t have gone. A bar? My friend and me had fake IDs.” Then, speaking in a confidential undertone, in stops and starts, she told basically the same story her friend had told Morrow.
By the time she got to the part about leaving the bar, she was crying again in great sobs that made her choke, because she was trying to be quiet about it.
“Hey, shh,” Shaw said. “Shh. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Whatever happened, I don’t think it was your fault.”
“But it was. My friend told me I shouldn’t leave with a stranger.”
“She figured him for a loser, and sounds to me like she was right.”
“But I…I…I didn’t listen. I’d had so much to drink. And he told me I was hot, and that he’d never got that…that…aroused just by kissing.” She ducked her head, asking softly, “You know what I mean?”
He frowned guiltily. “Yeah, us guys say shit like that when we want to get on a girl. Sometimes we mean it, though. Maybe he did.”
“I don’t think so. Because as soon as he pulled off the road and parked the truck…”
The words came tumbling out of her along with quarts of tears. It took every ounce of self-discipline Shaw had to remain sitting there, pretending to be nothing more than a sounding board with no vested interest whatsoever in who’d killed Royce Sherman.
The longer she talked, the more emotional she became. When she got to the nitty-gritty and described the fatal shooting, Shaw thought his heart was going to beat itself out of his chest.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she said around a watery gulp. “But I knew he was dead.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I was so scared. Petrified, you know?”
Shaw nodded.
“I just sat there, frozen. I don’t even know for how long. When I came to my senses, I panicked. I guess I should’ve called the cops, but I knew they’d tell my daddy, and he’d skin me and hang me out to dry.
“So I called my friend and told her to come get me. I ran to the main road and hid in the bushes to wait for her. And all the time, I was so scared he’d come back and kill me, too. The wages of sin is death. That’s what I was thinking.”
She was crying so hard Shaw feared her breastbone would crack.
“I’m still scared he’ll track me down. That’s why I didn’t want to tell anybody. They’ll put it on the news. He’ll find out my name. Then he’ll find me.”
Shaw was like a racehorse waiting for the bell, but he kept himself slouched in the chair and shrugged with unconcern. “You said you didn’t see him.”
“I didn’t. But he might think I did. And I’m afraid he’ll—”
At that moment, the double doors at the end of the corridor burst open and a middle-aged couple came barreling through.