Page 63 of Sinful Sorrow

Interesting.

“So the detectives are speaking to Kallie Redmon right now? Or Mrs. Wallace?”

“Both. Separately.” He stops outside a door and grabs the handle, then swinging it wide, he gestures me ahead so the first thing I hear is Archer’s voice. Commanding. Intense. And not halting simply because I’ve arrived.

That’s when I realize I’ve been led into a listening room. Not the same room he’s in.

“You bought a Buck hunting knife on September twenty-ninth, Mrs. Wallace.” He sets a printout, suspiciously like the reports I emailed him just a couple of hours ago, down on the table between him and an almost comatose Patricia Wallace. Then he presses his fists down on either side of the paper, leaning onto the table and attempting to look into the woman’s swollen eyes. “I cannot look past the coincidence, no matter how much you want me to.”

“She didn’t kill my sister, Detective Malone!”

“The knife was bought just two weeks before Naomi was killed inside a haunted house. One week after finding out she was expecting her first child. We have the receipts right here, Mrs. Wallace. At two-fourteen p.m. one hunting knife was purchased with your credit card. We’ve subpoenaed the CCTV footage from the store. We’re just hours from proving with video evidence that you were inside that establishment on September twenty-ninth, at two-fourteen p.m. Why’d you buy it?”

“I didn’t.” She fists her tissues and dabs at her face. Though it’s a lost cause. Tears continue to flow, and her face is already puffy. Splotchy. “I would never hurt my baby! I swear, I would never.”

“Were you saving her from a ruined future?” Fletch shuffles in the corner of the room, drawing my eyes to the blind spot and commanding both Wallaces’ focus. “She was young and had a promising life on the other side of college. You’ve been in the worst house on a pretentious street for twenty years. Busting your backside and providing for your three daughters. There was a light at the end of the tunnel, and that light was Naomi’s academic gifts. She earned that scholarship, and dammit, she’d get that degree and live a better life than you did.”

“Your accusation doesn’t even make sense!” Growling, Sandy pushes to her feet and mirrors Archer’s posture, her fists pressed to the table, and her knuckles white from the pressure. “She wanted Naomi to live and thrive so much, she had her killed? That’s dumb!”

“She was desperate. Desperate people snap. Patricia,” he settles his voice and pulls out a chair to sit across from the broken woman. “You were there. You bought the knife. Explain it to me so I can help you.”

“I didn’t hurt my baby.” She sniffles and wipes her nose with spent tissues. “I would never, ever hurt any of my children.”

“Maybe you were mad that she got pregnant? Enraged, she would throw away what could have been, only to repeat the cycle you’ve known since you conceived her?”

“I didn’t hurt my child!”

“Maybe someone stole her card,” Sandy volunteers. “You haven’t got the camera footage yet, right? So you can’t be completely sure it was my mom who bought the knife.”

“Was the card stolen?” Fletch holds Patricia’s stare. His expression, disappointed. Resigned. “Did you report it stolen, Mrs. Wallace?”

“No, I?—”

“So the card wasn’t used by anyone else,” Archer pounces. “But it was used to purchase the exact hunting knife that just so happened to be the weapon that killed Naomi.”

“Kallie Redmon is in the next room,” Clay murmurs, hooking a thumb in the direction he means and dragging my attention from the back of Archer’s strong shoulders. “They’ve talked to her once already. But they switched to Mrs. Wallace the second I had her in house. Sounds like they’ve solved their case.”

“But she’s denying it.” I leave the officer behind and move silently toward the glass wall. My feet don’t make a sound against the tile, and though I place my palm on the cold glass, that, too, is done in silence.

Yet Archer still turns from his interview, emerald eyes burning into mine until I swear he knows I’m here, and he’s pissed about it.

“They can’t hear us, can they, Officer?”

Clay clears his throat and wanders closer to stand on my right. “No, Doctor. There’s a button over there,” he points. “You have to press that to initiate contact with the next room.”

“And they can’t see us?”

He shakes his head. “No, Doctor.”

On the other side of the glass, Archer’s eyes narrow into slits and his jaw clicks with the kind of annoyance I’ve grown accustomed to. But he turns back to his suspect and continues his interview.

“No lawyers?” I question quietly. “She’s being accused of murder, but she didn’t want representation?”

“Waived her rights,” he shrugs. “The detectives offered, but they claimed innocence and an inability to afford one. Which is a far cry from the other room.”

Piqued, I drag my focus from Archer and study Clay instead. “Kallie Redmon’s room?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Morgan insisted Kallie speak to no one without a lawyer present. They sent Ms. Hanes.”

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