“My father’s not a criminal,” Michael snapped at me.
“Yes, he is,” I said. “It wasn’t me who killed the Smiths out on the road, it was your father.”
Michael looked at me, his face ashen. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again.
“What’s going on here?” someone suddenly thundered from behind me.
Startled by the deep, booming voice, I looked around to discoverer Michael’s father standing in the open kitchen doorway.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Sydney was just leaving,” Michael said, taking me by the arm and guiding me towards the door.
“I’m going nowhere,” I said, shrugging off his arm.
“Oh, no?” Grayson said, eyeing me. “So what seems to be the problem, officer? You are here in an official capacity, aren’t you...or is this some kind of social visit?” His large bald head looked ruddy and weather-beaten as he closed the door on the cold air blowing into the kitchen.
Before I’d the chance to answer, Michael cut in and said, “Sydney seems to think I was somehow connected to the death of that girl who fell into the well.”
“Her name was Molly Smith,” I reminded him, shooting Michael a glance. “She did have a name.”
“What in the hell are you dragging that up for?” Grayson huffed. “That was years ago.”
“Sydney seems to think I was having some secret relationship with her and that I pushed her into that well,” Michael said, not taking his eyes from me.
“Is this for real, or some kind of joke?” Grayson snapped. Taking a step closer to me, he added, “Is this because my son went to prison for being in that fight? He’s paid society for his crime. Anyway, who says the girl was pushed? There was an investigation at the time. It was an accident. The girl fell into the well. It would ‘ave never happened if she hadn’t been trespassing on me land.”
How could I tell Grayson and Michael it was Molly who had told me she had been pushed? How could I explain she had told me in a dream I’d had about her being at the bottom of that well? How did I tell them I knew she had been meeting someone on their farm that night? I only knew that fact because of the statement my father had tried to bury, but which Vincent had discovered hidden away in the filing room back at the police station. If I said that, then I implicated my father.
“So c’mon, officer, tell us what makes you think that girl was pushed?” Grayson demanded.
I looked at him, then at Michael. I felt a fool standing in their kitchen with a bunch of half-cocked theories. Theories I couldn’t prove without making myself sound like a crazy bitch and telling them my father was bordering on committing police corruption, if he hadn’t crossed that line already.
“I think you should leave now,” Michael said. He didn’t sound angry, just disappointed and confused. I looked at him and could see the hurt in his eyes.
I looked at Grayson. “So what were you doing last Wednesday afternoon?” I asked.
“Is this some kind of police interview?” he grunted, rolling up the sleeves of his checked shirt to reveal his meaty forearms.
“Please could you answer the question, Mr. Grayson,” I shot back.
“I can’t remember,” he said, pushing out his chest defiantly and rolling back his powerful-looking shoulders. “What has it got to do with you anyway?”
“Sydney believes it was you who killed that family out on the road the other day.”
With his eyes bulging in their sockets like two large rocks, Grayson looked at his son, then back at me. “What!” he gasped. “What do you mean I was involved in killing those people?”
“You disliked them enough,” I said. “You told me that they were witches and nothing but vermin.”
“Just because I didn’t like their kind, it don’t make me no killer,” Grayson said, sounding flabbergasted. “What you say and what you do are two completely different things. You didn’t know them. They were strange – the lot of them. The old guy was the worst. You could barely understand a word he said, mixing all his words up and such. He sounded like that cartoon character Elmer Fudd, for Christ’s sake,” Grayson mocked.
“Just because people are different – strange – as you like to put it,” I said, “doesn’t make them bad people.”
“I didn’t kill them!” Grayson roared.
“So how did you come by those dents and scratches on your four-by-four?” I quizzed.
“So that’s what this is all about?” he sneered. “Can’t live with the fact that it was you who killed those people, so you come snooping around here looking for someone else to blame?”