Page 61 of With a Vengeance

Lapsford knows that this, too, makes him sound guilty. A simple no would have sufficed. But, fearing he’s already said too much, he reverts to saying nothing at all. Agent Davis and Anna Matheson continue to pepper him with questions, none of which he answers. He’s gone mute, which is how he should have been all along.

After five more minutes and a few last, desperate attempts at getting him to talk, Agent Davis and Anna leave his room.

A temporary victory, Lapsford knows.

This battle is far from over.

Twenty-Six

“Well, that waspointless,” Reggie says as they stand in the corridor outside Lapsford’s room.

Anna turns to face the door to Room B. “You should go back in there and arrest him.”

Even though Lapsford said next to nothing, a far cry from Herb Pulaski’s torrent of words, she remains convinced he’s the killer. He was in the galley shortly after the train departed, meaning he could have found the rat poison and gathered enough to kill Judd Dodge. When he found out Edith saw him, Lapsford decided to kill her, too.

Still unknown is how he knew Judd would implicate himself after seeing his blueprint in the lounge. Or how Lapsford managed to slip the poison into Judd’s drink. Or how he found out Edith had told Anna about seeing him in the galley.

“On what grounds?” Reggie says.

“Murder. Conspiracy. Sabotage. Treason. He’s guilty of it all.”

Reggie shakes his head, dashing her hopes. “To arrest him, I’d need some evidence of that. And, thanks to you, that’s in Chicago. Until this train stops at Union Station, Jack Lapsford is a free man.”

“Even if he kills again?” Anna says.

“Without proof, one of the few ways I can arrest someone for murder is if I catch them in the act.”

“And what’s another way?”

“Get them to confess.” Prepared for another round of questioning, Reggie drifts down the corridor, stopping in front of Room A. Before knocking on the door, he turns to Anna and says, “You coming?”

Anna doesn’t budge. She knows whose room it is, and just like with Edith earlier, she has no idea what to say to Sal Lawrence.

“No,” she tells Reggie. “You do this one on your own.”

As he knocks on Sal’s door, Anna moves into Car 11 and stops at the window. The view outside hasn’t changed. A full whiteout. Anna can barely glimpse the night sky through the skein of snow.

She continues to the center of the car and raps once on the door to Seamus’s room. After a pause, she does it three more times, putting extra strength on the final knock. The secret code so he knows it’s her. Thirty seconds pass between the last knock and Seamus opening the door—a stretch of time that Anna would have found worrisome if not for the slather of shaving cream on his cheeks and the straight razor in his hand.

“You’re shaving?” she says as she steps into the room and closes the door behind her.

“Have to pass the time somehow, don’t I?” Seamus ducks into the bathroom. “Has anyone confessed yet?”

“No such luck.”

Anna stands in the bathroom doorway and watches Seamus slowly scrape the razor down his cheek. A strangely intimate act between a man and woman who aren’t married, aren’t lovers, aren’t even related. But they are bonded, Anna knows, in a way that few people will ever experience or understand.

That’s why Seamus, catching her eyes in the mirror, says, “Are you okay?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Seamus flings a bit of foam from the razor and starts on the other cheek. “Because Edith is dead. And, unlike Judd Dodge, you knew her well.”

Anna thought she did. A long time ago. The end result is that she both loved and hated Edith, the emotions feeding off each other until she couldn’t tell them apart. It’s made the night far more difficult than she ever expected. The hate, she was prepared for. It was the slivers of love that were a surprise. Now Edith is dead, and Anna still can’t seem to separate the love from the hate. She doubts she ever will.

“I’m sorry she’s dead,” Anna says, leaving the rest unspoken.

Done shaving, Seamus rinses the razor and closes it with a sharp snap. “It’s almost two. Want me to take the next watch?”

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