Page 52 of There is No Devil

“You’re not rivals?”

“I don’t believe in rivalry—I’m only in competition with myself.”

“Would you call yourselves friends?”

“Not particularly.”

“Just another acquaintance.”

“That’s right.”

Hawks is tiring of these bland answers. He sucks a little air through his teeth.

“I’m surprised you agreed to meet with me without your lawyer present. You were adamant that any communication with Mara go through your attorney.”

“I still am. She was treated disrespectfully by the police after she was attacked.”

“That wasn’t my department.”

“I don’t care who it was. It won’t happen again.”

“Butyou’renot concerned about being … disrespected.”

“I’m sure you know better than that.” I smile at Officer Hawks. He doesn’t smile back.

“Where were you the night of November second?” he abruptly asks.

“I have no idea. Do you remember where you were on random evenings weeks past?”

“Do you keep a calendar?”

“No.”

“Does your secretary?”

“No.”

This is true. I don’t allow Janice to keep any record of my appointments. Sonia memorizes my schedule—but she certainly wouldn’t recite it for Hawks.

“Do you know a woman named Maddie Walker?”

“No.”

Hawks takes a photograph out of the inside breast pocket of his sport coat. He slides it across the table toward me.

I look at the picture without touching it. It shows a dark-haired girl laying on a steel table, eyes closed, clearly dead. Her skin bluish-gray, mottled with bruises around the jaw. Shaw was rough when he wrenched her mouth open and stuffed a snake in it.

I recognize her from the top floor of the tenements, where Shaw had her strung up in his spiderweb.

I want to rip his fucking throat out, remembering how he lured me up there and trapped me, calling in a fleet of cops to catch me with the body.

It was a stupid mistake, one that still humiliates me. But I can’t let any hint of that emotion show on my face.

Hawks watches closely for a reaction. That’s why he gave me a photo of the corpse and not a picture of the girl taken when she was still alive. He’s looking for clues on my face.

Do I recognize her? Am I shocked by the image?

Or, most damning of all:

---