She knew that voice. She was sure. But her brain was scrambled, her entire body disconnected. She tried to rise from the ground but couldn’t control the violent spasms running through her limbs.
What was happening?
Who was doing this?
Why, oh, God, why?
Her assailant, huge and shadowed, grabbed her with strong, meaty hands and dragged her twitching body along the hard earth.
No, oh, please no! Scraped and battered, pain shrieking through her limbs, agony ripping through her brain, she was hauled into the darkness. Her thoughts were scattered, the world spinning, and suddenly everything went black.
CHAPTER 32
“I need a cigarette,” Preston Tufts said when Alvarez slipped into the second interrogation room.
“Sorry.” She wasn’t going to play nicey-nice. Not tonight. So he was having a few cravings, a need for a hit of nicotine. Fine. Let him itch for a smoke. “No can do. Not in here. But you can have one later, when we’re done.”
“And when will that be?”
“Depends on you, I guess. When you want to tell me the truth.”
“Hey, I haven’t lied. And I could really use a smoke.”
She acted as if she were considering the request. “What’s your brand again?”
“Excuse me?”
“Camels, right?”
He stared at her warily, as if wondering where she was going. “Maybe.”
“I’d say, ‘for sure,’” she countered. “And you know, that’s funny.”
“How?”
“Because we found the butt of a Camel cigarette not far from where we found your stepmother’s car. The pink classic T-Bird with the vanity plates.”
He swallowed hard, his gaze fixed on hers.
“It will be interesting to find out whose DNA is on that butt, a filter-tip by the way, like the kind you smoke. It’s with the lab now.”
His jaw clenched, but he didn’t respond and she noticed a trickle of sweat running from his brow. The room was a couple of degrees too warm by design. She’d wanted him uncomfortable.
She continued, her voice even, “Also, pretty soon we’ll find out whose fingerprints are on the steering wheel of her car and if there’s any DNA, you know from sweat on the ape suit we found in the trunk.”
He froze.
She smiled.
“God, it’s got to be hot running in that thing in the middle of summer—and we’ll figure out who was wearing the ape suit . . . oh, excuse me, Big Foot costume. Got to be DNA in it.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed for a second.
“Did you wear it?”
“I didn’t even know it was there!”
Another lie. She saw it in his eyes.