Page 48 of Girl, Accused

‘You never used to. I’ve already had breakfast and read today’s paper. Want me to wait downstairs?’

‘You go. I'll meet you at the precinct in half an hour.’

‘No precinct this morning. We're going to see Frank Torres.’

The name took a moment to register. ‘Rebecca's husband?’

‘Yeah.’

Ella's stomach dropped. Notification duties. She hated them more than anything else about the job. Death notifications were bad enough when the victim was just a case number. They become something else entirely when you'd seen the body, studied the wounds and theorized about why someone wanted this specific person dead. Telling someone their loved one was murdered twisted something inside her that never quite straightened out again.

‘Uh. That’s not going to be fun.’

‘Don't worry about that part.’ Ripley pulled a folded newspaper from under her arm and thrust it at Ella. ‘He already knows. Everyone knows.’

In thick text, the front page declared:COUNCIL PRESIDENT MURDERED. Rebecca Torres Found Dead Outside City Hall.

Below the headline, Torres smiled from her official portrait. Perfect hair, perfect teeth, perfect mask. The photo they always used of murder victims, showing them in better times, before someone decided they deserved to die.

‘Nice of them to get the word out.’

‘Yeah, but he doesn’t know about the branding or the message. That’s still under wraps.’

‘Good. Have you spoken to Westfall?’ Ella asked, calculating how much time she could afford to spend in the shower.

‘Yeah. The security guard is cleared. Cameras from the lobby showed Torres walking through just before midnight, then show theguard peering out the door into the alleyway and calling the cops. Guard was in view the whole time.’

‘Great.’

‘Yeah. Anyway, I’ll meet you downstairs. Hurry your ass up.’

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Frank Torres insisted they speak on the back porch, which struck Ella as a peculiar choice, but grief made people do peculiar things. The widower of less than ten hours stood at his glass railing overlooking waters so pristine they belonged on a postcard. Too beautiful a backdrop for such an ugly conversation.

‘You don't mind if I smoke, do you?’ he asked.

‘Go ahead,’ Ripley said.

'Sure.' The man's wife had been murdered last night. He could've lit up a Cuban cigar rolled on the thighs of virgins, and Ella wouldn't have objected.

Frank pulled out a pack of Marlboros. The wind blew out the first flame on his lighter, but he caught it with the second. He took a drag and exhaled through his nose. 'You probably think it's weird talking out here. But this was Becca's favorite spot. Seems only fitting.'

The Torres house was exactly where Ella expected a small-town politician to live. One rung below magnificent; around four-thousand square feet of architectural digest perfection perched on prime lakefront acreage. Floor-to-ceiling windows that erased the boundary between inside and out. The kind of house that made you wonder where exactly you'd gone wrong in life.

Frank Torres, however, looked like a man recently dragged through hell. His skin had a grayish tint beneath his tan. Dark half-moons cupped his bloodshot eyes. His silver-flecked hair, which had been carefully styled in all the campaign photos alongside his wife, stuck up in uneven tufts. He wore a bathrobe over jeans and a wrinkled dress shirt, as if he'd started to get dressed for the day and forgotten halfway through.

‘I quit three years ago,’ Frank said, staring at the cigarette between his fingers as if it had materialized there without his knowledge. ‘Rebecca hated the smell.’

Ella began, ‘Mr. Torres-,’

‘Frank.’

‘Frank. I knowyou've been through the wringer since last night, but we need to ask you some difficult questions.’

He nodded and took another drag. ‘You want to know if I killed my wife.’

The bluntness startled her. Most spouses bristled at the implicit suspicion. Frank Torres blurted it out.

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