Page 43 of The Perfect Betrayal

She moved closer and saw that the top third of the bottle was missing, likely a result of being smashed on one of the boat’s hard surfaces. Her suspicion was reinforced by the sight of pieces of glass just a few feet from his head. On the deck nearby was a cardboard six-pack carrier with four untouched bottles still in it.

“Do you think there’s any chance that Stanton did this?” Riddell asked quietly.

"I'd be stunned," Jessie replied. "This murder doesn't feel like a one-off to me. We should be safe and have CSU check him out to see if he has any blood splatter residue on him. There's no way that whoever did this didn't get covered in blood. And we can double-check his alibis for the previous nights, but that parking lot security footage with Daran Peterson and the blonde was pretty definitive to me. That was a woman carefully trying to hide her identity hours before the man she was with was found dead. But that doesn't mean we have to let Stanton in on that. Shall we go have a word with him?"

“Nothing would make me happier,” Riddell said.

They took the stairs down to the cabin, where they found Oliver Stanton seated on a cushioned bench. His right wrist was cuffed to a leg of a table bolted to the floor.

“Thank god,” he exclaimed when he saw them. “I’ve been trying to get these gentlemen to listen to me, but they’re uninterested.”

“You were found on a boat with a dead body,” Riddell said unsympathetically. “Can you blame them?”

“I told them what happened,” he insisted, “but they didn’t believe me.”

“That a ghost killed Chandler?” Riddell scoffed. “That’s the best you can do?”

It was one thing not to let Stanton know they didn’t view him as a suspect, but it was a far different one to alienate him as a potential witness. And to Jessie, it felt like Riddell was veering in that direction. She was about to try to change the dynamic, but Stanton beat her to the punch.

“Well, Detective,” he said huffily, “with that kind of attitude, I can tell that you’re not interested in the truth either. So for myown protection, I don’t think I’ll be saying anything else at this time.”

Then he dramatically turned his head away from them. Riddell, a grimace on his face, started to step forward when Jessie held up her hand with a “stop” signal. He looked at her, annoyed. She motioned for him to follow her back up the steps. Reluctantly, he did. Once up top again, she spoke to him in a whisper.

“This guy is about half a second from demanding a lawyer,” she said. “Neither of us believes he did this. And I know that scaring the truth out of him feels like a no-brainer. But maybe let me try a different tack first.”

“Okay,” he said. “You take the first go at him and I’ll ease in after that.”

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I think the well is poisoned for you. Let me talk to him alone. I'll record the whole thing so you won't miss out. But we can't afford to wait several hours while we get permission from his lawyer to talk to him. We need info now and—sorry to be harsh—the way that went, you're not getting it from him. Let me try solo and see what happens."

Riddell was clearly torn. This was his case too and the idea of handing over questioning of a potential witness to some chick who wasn’t even a detective obviously wasn’t sitting well with him. But he wasn’t an idiot. He had to know that what she said was true. He’d pushed too hard, too fast. Stanton wasn’t going to open up to him.

“Fine,” he muttered, “but make sure you record every word.”

“I promise,” she said.

Then she headed back down the stairs, hoping they hadn’t already blown their best chance to find a killer.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

“I need you to look at me, Mr. Stanton,” she said.

She was sitting at small end of the “L” shaped cushioned bench that wrapped around the table the man was cuffed to. Her phone, resting on the table between them, was recording.

“Why should I?” he demanded poutily, still pointedly looking away from her.

“Because we’re trying to solve a series of murders, and it sounds like you might have been a witness to one of them,” she said simply.

“How do I know you’re not going to mock me like your partner did? Or worse, accuse me of being involved? Maybe I should invoke my right to counsel.”

"You could do that," she said, hoping the desperation she felt wasn't leaking into her voice. "But you should consider all the consequences of that decision. It might make us view you as something more suspicious than just a witness. And if a witness is all you are, why would you want to create that misimpression with the people investigating this case? Do you want us to view you as a person of interest, Mr. Stanton? I know thatIdon’t want that.”

“That sounds like a threat, Ms. Hunt,” he said, finally turning to look at her.

“It’s not,” she said. “I’m just telling you how this typically works. I don’t like it, but it’s the reality. Plus, you requesting a lawyer has other drawbacks.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m just going to be straight with you, Oliver,” she said, invoking his first name for the first time. “This is three murders in three nights. Nobody is safe right now. And if you get an attorney, we can’t talk to you, at least not until a whole bunch oflegal wrangling takes place. That’s valuable time we lose when we could be hunting for this killer. You could be inadvertently helping them. Now, of course, it's your right to have an attorney. If you want one, I'll call Detective Riddell down here right now. He'll read you your rights, and you can invoke your right to counsel right after. But if you didn't kill Robert Chandler—and I don't think you did—then your best bet is to come clean. Tell me what you saw. It could save lives."

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