Page 15 of The House of Cross

“We co-own the house,” he said. “I come over when I’m off duty and not in class to work on some upgrades. We were getting ready to sell it, use the money to start new lives for ourselves.”

CHAPTER 11

WE PRESSED PEARSON ONhis alibi. He insisted he’d been in his room studying. He remembered he’d been online with his laptop several times, submitting assignments for various courses.

“There will be records of that, right?” Pearson said. “I mean, the IP address of my computer and the school’s computer and the time and all that.”

“There should be,” Mahoney agreed. “And your Wi-Fi router history.”

“Okay,” he said. “My laptop’s in my rig.”

“The Durango?”

He nodded. We went outside with him and saw what looked to be the same silver-gray Dodge Durango that had followed Agnes Pearson and Judge Franklin.

Pearson’s laptop was in the front seat. Mahoney took it and bagged it. “We’re going to need this for a day or two,” he said.

Pearson squinted. “I guess I can borrow one from school.”

“And your cell phone.”

“C’mon, man.” He groaned. “I’ve got my life on that thing.”

Mahoney said, “And the keys to the Durango.”

“What the—” Pearson said. “What am I going to do, walk to school? I swear to you, I had nothing to do with Agnes’s death.”

I’d been circling the Durango during the conversation and I noticed something odd at the front end my second time around.

“Mr. Mahoney,” I said, stepping away. “Can I have a word?”

“Don’t touch the vehicle in any way,” Mahoney told Pearson.

Pearson held up his hands and moved back.

“What’s up?” Ned said when we’d walked a good ten yards away.

“Show me the still of the partial plate.” Mahoney called it up. I looked at it. “No registration sticker.”

“Because they put them on the rear plate in Maryland.”

I gestured over at the Durango and the front plate with the registration sticker.

Mahoney walked back to Pearson. “Maryland law says your registration sticker goes on the rear plate.”

“I always put it there,” Pearson said, frowning as he came around the front of the SUV. “That’s not right. That has never been that way.”

We looked at the screws that held the plates on the bracket but could not tell if they’d been tampered with recently.

“Crime lab will tell us,” Mahoney said. “So what’s your relationship with Willa Whelan?”

His left eye crinkled. “Who?”

“She’s a law professor at GW,” I said.

“Never heard of her.”

“We won’t find her on any of your devices?”

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