Emily’s stomach rolled and she felt her face flush. “I had no idea that it was Walter Newell who hit me. I’d never met the man. I didn’t report it because it was no big deal. It’s an old car. I don’t even have collision insurance. Besides, at first I didn’t realize my car had been hit.”

“You hadn’t met the man,” Stanley said, deadpan, “and yet you’d just come from his house.”

Shit. She avoided Stanley’s gaze, instead looking down at the red light on the recorder. He made it sound damning, but it was purely circumstantial. In the silence that followed, Emily could hear the second hand on the clock behind her on the wall ticking. A door slammed down the hall.

Stanley went on. “By the next day, you knew who he was, didn’t you? You knew he’d hit your car. You knew all of that when you came here with his wife to report him missing.”

She started to deny that but stopped herself. She knew what Frank’s advice would be if he’d answered his damn phone. She stood and announced, “I came here to give a statement about finding a body. I’ve done that. I’m leaving.”

“Of course you can go.” Stanley rocked back in his chair. “But we’ll be keeping your car.”

“You have a warrant?”

“We can get one, and hold your car until we do. Or you can give me the keys and we’ll return it to you as soon as possible.”

Emily tried to keep her expression neutral. What she wanted to do was tell him to stuff it. “How long will you need to keep it for?”

“That depends,” he said, relaxing a notch, as if sensing his advantage. “Depends on what we find. But I can guarantee that you’ll get it back faster if you leave it and let us examine it.”

What choice did Emily have? Reluctantly, she removed her car key from her key ring and handed it over.

Emily was still shaking when she called her mother and asked her to come pick her up at the police station. She hung up before Lila could ask why, all the while kicking herself for coming alone to give what was supposed to have been a written statement.

She took a seat in the lobby. A teenage boy sat in a chair, furiously thumbing away at his cell phone. A couple was huddled together near the exit, their backs to her. When the woman turned, Emily recognized Quinn Newell. She was clutching a tissue and her face was red and bloated. She knew better than to talk to the police without an attorney present. The man in a suit, to whom she’d been talking so intently, was Ryan Melanson, Frank’s law partner.