Page 44 of The Perfect Betrayal

His body, which had been stiff as a board when she started, had gradually softened as she spoke. By the end, his shoulders had slumped in resignation.

"I want to, but I'm afraid," he said.

“Why?”

“Because I’m ashamed,” he muttered.

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“What I have to tell you will paint me in a terrible light,” he said quietly. “I’m worried that it might actually put me in legal jeopardy. Can you assure me that isn’t a concern?”

“Oliver, I’m so anxious to solve this case that I’d love to make that assurance,” she said, “but that wouldn’t be true. If you committed a crime, you might be at legal risk, depending on the nature of it.”

“Then how can you possibly expect me to be forthcoming?” he pleaded.

“Because there are two things Icanassure you of,” she said gravely. “The first is that if you provide information that leads to the capture of whoever’s doing this, it could go a long way to mitigating any punishment you might face for potential crimes. You might even get immunity if your help was significant enough.”

“You think that’s likely?” he asked hopefully.

“I think it’s possible,” she clarified. “But there’s another side to that coin. If you clam up and there’s another murder, onethat your information could have prevented, then you could be viewed as an accessory to that murder. My bosses want this case solved, and if they can’t catch the person responsible, you better believe some of the blame is going to land at the feet of the person who let it happen when they could have stopped it. My recommendation is to just tell the truth and trust that the system will take note of that.”

“But Idon’ttrust the system,” he said flatly.

Jessie sighed. It might be time to bring in Riddell. She doubted that his heavy-handed tactics would work any better than hers, but she was out of options.

“But,” Stanton added, “I do trustyou, Ms. Hunt. And I believe that if you know I acted in good faith, you wouldn’t let them throw me to the wolves. So I’ll put my trust in you and tell you what I know.”

“Thank you,” she said.

He began by explaining what he’d seen tonight, how he’d gone below deck to go to the bathroom, only to hear strange noises and go back up top, where he found Chandler near death, with the bottle jammed in his throat.

“And then you saw what you say was a—ghost commit the murder?” she said carefully.

“I didn’t actually see the stabbing,” he corrected. “Only the aftermath. The ghost was a woman. She was wearing a wetsuit. When she saw me, she looked straight at me, put her finger to her lips to shush me, and smiled at me. Then she dived into the water.”

“Did you recognize her?” she asked, not commenting on the oddity of a ghost in a wetsuit.

His face scrunched up in anguish.

“I will answer that, but you have to let me get there in my own time.”

She fought down the urge to tell him they didn’t have time.

“Okay, Oliver, I understand” she replied, forcing a sympathetic smile to her face, before adding, “while we’re at it, I’d also love to know why you were on Chandler’s yacht in the first place.”

“I can explain that too,” he assured her. “It’s all part of the same story.”

“Please go ahead,” she said, doing her best not to look at her phone to check the time.

He closed his eyes as if the memory of what he was about to say was too painful to share while being watched. Then he launched in.

"Three years ago, these members, casually referred to as the yacht club bros by others, were partying at the club bar. It was a Monday night, and there was almost no one else there. Our normal bartender had the night off, so I was working the bar. The bros had a young woman with them, a very attractive brunette, probably in her early twenties if I had to guess. I didn't get her name. She was a little tipsy when the evening started. But by the time the bar closed a few hours later, she was decidedly drunk. Everyone else, save for me, was long gone. The group decided to take the party onto one of their boats. So the whole bunch of them—all six—left with this young woman.”

“Whose boat did they take?” Jessie asked.

“Mr. Cisco’s,” he answered, “Joel Cisco.”

“Okay, sorry, go on,” she said.

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