Page 38 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

“But not bad enough to go to the police.”

“It wouldn’t have helped, but, yeah, I probably should have done something. I am now.”

“Twenty years later. Wow. How heroic,” she said as she eyed Nikki.

“But it’ll change everything, you know. Even if Niall’s new testimony doesn’t get my mother out of jail, when the press gets wind that the daughter of the judge and the niece of the defense counsel withheld evidence, this whole thing is gonna blow up in your face.”

“Probably.”

“So how are you going to do it? Come clean in one of your articles?”

Nikki’s guilt was nearly palpable, but she set it aside for the moment. “I’m really sorry for what happened to you and your siblings. What you went through was unspeakable, and I won’t even suggest that I know how you feel, because I don’t. But I’d really like to tell your side of the story.”

“Back to that.” Her smile was a smirk.

“Well . . . yes.”

She inhaled and then exhaled slowly, giving Nikki a long look. “I’m going to have to talk to someone eventually, I suppose, and I can’t stand that reporter from WKAM. Lynnetta What’s-her-face.”

“Ricci.”

“Yeah, that one.” Blythe rolled away from the door, leaving it open, a tacit invitation. “So I guess it may as well be you. At least you knew Amity. My only thing is this: it’s got to be exclusive. I’m not going to talk to anyone else. No one. It’s just too hard.”

“I’m just saying that I was wrong. I got the facts mixed up in my mind. I was just a kid!” Niall O’Henry’s voice was clear if sibilant and raspy, sounding a little like a snake, Morrisette thought. She reminded herself that he had only been a boy of eight, a little kid who had witnessed something out of a horror movie on the night he’d been shot, but as he sat in the interrogation room, with his high-dollar lawyer at his side, she couldn’t help but doubt his motives. She’d been born suspicious, and a string of loser men in her life, along with her job in law enforcement, hadn’t added to her trust factor.

In fact, she thought she had a pretty good handle on knowing when she was being peddled a load of bull, and right now, staring at Niall O’Henry—watching him fidget in his suit, and cast his nervous gaze to his attorney, and lick his dry lips—made her think he wasn’t exactly opening up with the whole story.

“Why the change of heart now?” Reed asked. He too was in the room, seated across the table from Niall while Morrisette preferred standing by the wall. Cameras were running, of course; everyone in the room knew about and had agreed to the recording. They were also being viewed by others in the department, their faces hidden by a two-way mirror.

Niall pulled at his shirt and tie, as if they were suddenly too tight, while beside him, David Blass, imposing as ever, showed no emotion whatsoever. He was taciturn and stoic, not one strand of his thick, white hair so much as moving in the warm breeze created by the heating system.

Niall’s skin was beginning to glisten with sweat. The guy was nervous as hell. “I just . . . I just feel it’s time. I’ve found Jesus Christ, and I can’t live the lie any longer.”

“It’s been twenty years,” Reed said.

“I know! I’ve been struggling with what happened that night all my life.” Niall stared at Reed and didn’t blink, as if his contacts were holding up his eyelids. “I’m sorry, but I have to do this. It’s the right thing. I’ve . . . I’ve . . .” Anot

her furtive glance at his attorney, which warranted an almost imperceptible nod from Blass. “I’ve been seeing a psychologist, and she’s been working with me. Repressed memory treatment. I’ve seen doctors and hypnotists, psychiatrists and acupuncturists—you name it—to deal with my injuries from that night, the physical and the mental.” His voice had taken on a wheezing tone as he became more agitated, serving to remind everyone of the trauma he’d gone through. “Finally, I found Dr. Williams with the All Mental Health team, and she’s been wonderful.”

Morrisette said, “I thought you found religion.”

“Yes, yes, I did. I mean, I have.” He was nodding enthusiastically.

“I’ve always been surrounded by Christians. My stepmother has a very strong faith.”

“That would be June O’Henry?”

“Yes. She married my father not long after . . .” His eyebrows pulled together as he thought. “Well, I think it was during Mother’s trial.” Nodding now, remembering, he added, “June always forced us, me and my sister, to go to church service, and Bible study and Sunday school and everything”—he waved a hand as if to indicate that everything was all-inclusive as far as religion went—“well, all the services associated with the church, but I was a kid and I thought it was all baloney.” He looked down, ashamed, a bit of red creeping up the back of his neck and then crawling across his cheeks and flushing his skin. “I was acting out, didn’t like my new mom. Her faith was strong, rock-steady, and she was strict, not afraid to use the hickory switch, if you know what I mean. Of course, I wasn’t happy and . . . well, I was confused. Rebelling. I know that now.”

“And now you’re not?”

“Of course not. I’m a grown man.”

“And you go along with a religion that uses venomous snakes in its rites?”

“Last I heard, Detective, there was freedom of religion in this country,” Niall said.

“And your sister Amity was bitten by a snake the night she was killed. Correct?”

---