Page 80 of Guilty as Sin
“Some.”
“This would be a good time to point out that you’re not a police officer, and this is a police investigation. We don’t take kindly to vigilantism around here.”
Jace hadn’t raised his voice, and he didn’t now. Instead, he sat back, folded his arms, and said, “I’ll leave the investigating to you, then, and handle the protective part of the deal.”
Worthington apparently decided not to pursue that, which was probably wise. “So,” Paige said, trying to make her expression Lily-like and admiring, which wasn’t easy with a swollen lip, “you said the power was probably turned off at the box?”
“Yes,” Worthington said. “Which is between the locker rooms, in a recess. Again, not hidden, and not impossible to know about.”
“Who turned it back on, do you know?” Paige asked, still going for “innocent.”
Worthington shifted. Just a little. And Paige thought,The butt can’t lie.Deceptive people shifted position. They couldn’t help it. They controlled their faces, mostly, and their hands. Their lower bodies picked up the tension. “That was the owner,” he said.
“Oh. Your sister Jennifer,” Paige said, keeping it neutral.
“Neither she nor anybody else we asked told us they saw who flipped the switch off,” Worthington said, “but all it would take was a clear couple seconds and some nerve.”
“And premeditation,” Jace said, and Paige looked at him and tried to convey,Shut up.He seemed to get it, because he did.
“And then what did they do?” she asked Worthington.
“We found an item that could have struck you,” Worthington said. “A hand weight, the kind women use. Five pounds. It was under a bench, fairly near your cubicle. Could have rolled there. Could’ve been left by anybody, of course. Or not.”
An item that could have struck you.Notthe item we think the perpetrator struck you with,which would have been how Paige would have put it. Distancing. Lessening.The missing money,notthe embezzled funds.Orthe bad thing that happened,notthe rape.“Oh, my goodness,” she said. “That sure makes sense.” She wondered if she’d taken the Lily-act too far. Apparently not, because she saw Worthington relax. “Were you able to find any fingerprints or anything?”
No shifting now. This part, he could be straightforward about. “Rubberized surface. Doesn’t hold a print. And nothing on the breaker panel, either. Jennifer’s fingerprints on top, which they would have been, since she turned it back on. Everything else smudged. We’ve been able to get a list of everybody people remember being in the locker room when the lights went out. Ladies from the yoga class, a few women changing to leave. We’ll check them out.”
“But I guess,” Paige said, “that doesn’t help too much. Not if the person switched the lights off and then came in. It was probably twenty seconds later that I saw the light, which was right before the person hit me.”
Worthington cleared his throat. “The memory can be unreliable, ma’am. Very difficult to estimate accurately in that situation.”
“Ninety seconds,” Jace said. “From the time the lights went off to when… Lily came out of the locker room. And in the first few seconds, therewasa flash of light. Could have been somebody moving in the distance. Circuit breaker box to the women’s locker room? How many meters?”
Worthington stared at Jace for a long few seconds, then said, “How do you know it was ninety seconds, sir?”
“Because,” Jace said, “I counted them off. I’d say that flash I saw was the person who’d flipped the breaker finding the locker room entrance, or why wouldn’t they have used that light to help out in some way? Instead, the light went off. Or it went into a room with the person, and the door shut behind it. Which would mean somebody whowasn’tin the women’s locker room at the beginning.”
“Maybe you have an opinion, sir,” Worthington said, “on what they did next.”
“Well, no,” Jace said. “I don’t. Or I should say that I have two. If they were somebody who had a reason to be in the locker room, I think they dropped that weight after they hit Lily, moved away from it, banged around some in the dark like everybody else, and took off their clothes.”
“Took off their clothes,” Worthington repeated.
“Easiest thing in the world,” Jace said. “The lights come on, and she’s half-naked, just like everybody else, stumbling around looking for her phone and her bra.”
“And what would your second idea be, sir?” Worthington asked.
“Well, the other one, obviously. That they left the locker room again and were standing around outside it. Or even turning the lights back on. Oh, wait. That was Ms. Turner.”
“Yes,” Worthington said. “It was.”
“Do you know who was in the locker room just before the lights went out?” Jace asked Paige.
“No,” she admitted. “I had the curtain closed. I was getting undressed for at least thirty seconds. Anybody could have come in or gone out.”
“Was that usual for you?” Worthington asked. “Being in that cubicle?”
“No.” She knew why he was asking. Because he knew it wasn’t usual. He wondered if she were making this up. If she’d hitherselfin the head, maybe, to gain sympathy? Or… what? “I have heavy periods. I prefer to be modest at that time of the month. I can’t wear tampons, you see, and sometimes, I have to change my pad unexpectedly. I get clotting,” she decided to throw in. “They can be large. It gets pretty messy. Drippy.”
