Page 61 of Lies He Told Me

“Honestly?” Kyle takes a step back. “At this point, I don’t know.”

I steel myself, look him square in the eye. “Then maybe you should read me my rights, Sergeant.”

But then it hits me, the years as a criminal defense attorney returning. I’m not in custody. I’m just standing in a hospital room, free to leave. So he doesn’t have to Mirandize me.

Sneaky.

“I’m done here,” I say.

Kyle shakes his head. “I don’t think so, Marcie.”

“No? You’re telling me I’m not free to leave? Then arrest me —”

“Oh, you’re free to leave,” he says. “But you won’t.”

“No? Just watch me.” But something keeps my feet planted. “Why won’t I leave?”

He nods to me, plays with his phone. “Because that video of the shooting? You want to see the rest of it, Marcie.”

SIXTY-TWO

KYLE REPLAYS THE VIDEO clip, starting it with David collapsing and the masked assailant running out of the camera’s range. David, lying helpless by the rear door, desperate, initially clutches his thigh. But then he reaches into his jeans pocket and removes a phone, looks at it, and tosses it.

“That’s his phone,” says Kyle. “The one registered to his name, I mean.”

David then reaches into his jeans pocket again and wrangles out a second phone.

A second phone. David had a second phone. I’d been wondering about that. That late night call he made downstairs in the kitchen, which I overheard, while his cell phone was charging in the bedroom. The words I heard him whisper in a hiss:It’s not that simple, okay?

“That’s his burner phone,” Kyle tells me, stating the obvious.

The video rolls on. David pushes a button on the burnerand raises the phone to his ear. A single button, meaning he had the person on speed dial. He talks into the phone for around ten seconds. Then he all but collapses, his head dropping lifelessly against the concrete as he goes into shock, the phone still clutched in his hand.

“Any idea who he called?” Kyle asks.

I let out a breath, look at the floor as the heat rises to my face.

“Not you,” he says, again stating the obvious. Goading me. “He knows he might be dying, and his last call isn’t to you —”

“Do you have a point?” I snap. “Or do you enjoy being an asshole?”

Kyle puts his phone in his pocket, trying to control his emotions. “Marcie, I promise you, I’m not enjoying one minute of this. Who was he calling?”

Keep it under control, Marcie. Stay on mission.

“I have no idea,” I say, though I do.

“Camille Striker.” Kyle looks at me for a reaction. “I told you her name earlier today when I pulled you over. You said you didn’t know the name.”

I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly cold, even though it’s quite warm in this room. “And Istilldon’t know her name. Is that … is that who …”

“Is that who he called? I don’t know yet. Neither phone is registered — not David’s or the one he called. Both are burners. Which is interesting right there.” He again looks at me for a reaction. “I just sent some detectives to her apartment. She isn’t there. We tried to do a real-time trace on that phone, but now it’s turned off, conveniently. In caseyou’re wondering — in case you don’t already know — Camille lives in the Hampton Apartments, by 1st Street. On a lease. A lease paid for by your husband.”

Stay focused. He’s trying to get a rise out of you.

I sit on the couch and bury my face in my hands.

“Marcie, the man in the operating room right now is not David Bowers. It’s Silas Renfrow. I can’t prove it yet, but I will. And Camille Striker is his longtime girlfriend. She was a computer technician in the US Marshals Service back in the day. She found out where Silas’s secret location was in Rockford and helped engineer his breakout. She’s his girl. She’s always been his girl. And now she’s pregnant, by the way.”

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