Read Online Idyll Threats by Stephanie Gayle - Free Book Online Page B

older white male. He headed for the back, out of frame in seconds.
    â€œThat's it?” I asked.
    Revere hit the remote's stop button. “That's it.”
    â€œWhat's the time?”
    â€œNine forty-two p.m. She told Donny she was going to see a friend.” The man in the cabin, no doubt.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œDidn't say.”
    She'd walked out of the store and gone to the cabin, where we met. Less than two hours later, she was dead. “No one's said boo about meeting her that night,” Finnegan said.
    â€œDid the cashier come forward with this?” I asked.
    â€œNo,” Revere said. He tugged at his dress-shirt cuffs.
    â€œHow'd you find it?”
    He said, “Good old-fashioned police work.” I clenched my jaw. “I went door-to-door, covering all buildings within a two-mile radius.” We should've done that. We had done that, or so I'd thought. But we'd missed this. What else had we missed?
    â€œGood work. I want to see this Donny Browning.”
    â€œI can type up my notes in fifteen minutes,” he said.
    â€œI'd like to talk to him myself.”
    â€œHe worked the rest of the night. The tape shows him there until five thirty a.m.” Revere sounded like an exasperated parent, explaining a simple concept to a whining child.
    But I wasn't his child. “Tapes can be faked.”
    â€œAnd destroyed, which he didn't do. Honestly, this kid's not bright enough to edit a videotape.” He looked annoyed. The others enjoyed this. Finnegan and Wright might think I was too hands-on, but they didn't like Revere. And they sure as fuck didn't like being upstaged by him.
    â€œPick him up,” I said to Wright. “Bring him in.”
    â€œYes, sir.” He saluted me. His smile got wider as he walked past Revere.
    Forty minutes later, I met the cashier. Donny Browning had close-set eyes, a weak chin, and a baseball cap he had to be told to remove. His nicotine-yellowed fingertips would've outed him as a smoker if his stink hadn't first.
    â€œSo, Donny. You saw Cecilia the night she died.”
    His eyes jackrabbited about the room. “I want my lawyer.”
    â€œYou have an attorney you'd like to contact?” What gas-station employee had a lawyer on call?
    â€œYeah. Douglas Browning. My father.”
    I let him place the call. Twenty minutes later, his father came to the station loaded for bear. I must've looked furry, because he went straight for me. “Why are you interrogating Donny?” He wore his money: leather briefcase and a fancy, silk-blend suit.
    We talked in my office. I wanted home-court advantage. “Donny saw Cecilia North the night she was murdered. We want to ask some questions about his interaction with her.”
    â€œHe's already answered questions.”
    â€œWe have a few more. Donny might remember something that helps us catch her killer.” That deflated him. He couldn't fault our cause.
    â€œI'll join you.” He brushed my office lint from his suit. “I've seen the news. Abner Louima. Seems you New York cops like to play rough with suspects.”
    Abner Louima. The papers and TV were full of him. The Haitian resident of Brooklyn who'd been arrested, then sodomized with a broom handle by two New York police officers while in custody. No doubt people would be taking to the streets in protest soon.
    â€œWe're not in New York,” I said.
    Mr. Browning harrumphed and followed me out of my office.
    When his father entered the interview room, Donny looked scared. Mr. Browning sat at the same side of the battered table as his son. But he was careful not to touch him.
    Mr. Browning said, “Did they ask you anything after you called me?”
    â€œNo,” Donny said. He squirmed in his chair.
    â€œMay we continue?” I asked. No one objected. “Donny, what time did Cecilia come into the store?”
    â€œTen o'clock or so.” He was off by almost twenty minutes, but that wasn't a