He clinked the handcuffs on Jack’s left and right wrists. “Jo-Jo called me. She was worried about David hurting Jack.”

I stumbled back, my head spiraling. “Jo-Jo called you?”

“That’s right,” Richards said. “That little lady was worried about your safety and her husband’s. She was really worried David would hurt you both.”

Crashing adrenaline and the booze sent my head spinning. I leaned against the wall. The muscles in my legs turned slack, and I lowered to the floor. My vision blurred and went black.

51 MARISA

51

MARISA

Monday, March 21, 2022

4:05 a.m.

When I woke up in the hospital emergency room, my head was pounding, all the muscles in my body ached, and my mouth was as dry as cotton. A nurse stood by my bed, taking notes as she checked monitors.

“I want to get out of here,” I said.

The nurse looked down at me and smiled. “Good, you’re awake. We were worried about you, given your recent head injury.”

“I’m fine.” I didn’t know that, but it was more important to me to get out of here. In a hospital, I was vulnerable to David.

“The doctors ordered an MRI and a full exam, and they didn’t find any trauma.”

“Terrific.” I tried to sit up, but my head spun. “I need to go home.”

“Detective Richards is outside. He wants to talk to you.”

“Richards?”

“He’s been sitting outside your room since you arrived. Stay put so I can get him. I can’t have you falling.”

I sank back into the pillows and closed my eyes. “Fine.”

The nurse moved around the curtain and out a door. Seconds later footsteps approached my bed. The smell of Richards’s brand of cigarettes reached me before he did. Oddly, the damn scent was comforting.

“Marisa,” he said. A chair slid across the floor to my bed.

I opened my eyes, blinked to clear my vision, and stared into a face etched with fatigue. “Richards. Where are David and Jack?”

“We arrested them both. David and Jack are lawyering up, and both are insisting that you got drunk and went crazy.”

“I’m not crazy. David spiked my drink in January and caused my car accident. And Jack made me drink. I didn’t want it.”

“I know. I know. I had a conversation with Jo-Jo. She’s been guarded but she said enough. She’s got a few legal challenges of her own to handle.”

I shook my head, not caring right now about Jo-Jo’s lies of omission. “Jack said David killed Clare because she didn’t want him.” Tears I’d been unable to shed for thirteen years burned in my eyes, welling until they spilled down my cheeks. “He strangled her, and Jack dumped her body like trash.”

Richards laid a calloused hand over mine. “We’re digging into it all.”

“David worked at Jack’s juvenile facility.” I had to tell him everything I knew.