The lisp number one used was all wrong. He did a frontal lisp, sticking his tongue out between his teeth to replace the s with a th. It didn’t sound anything like Gavin’s lateral lisp, which resembled a wet slurp against his cheeks. Sadie would pick him out of the lineup on that alone. And if he refused to say anything, she would take a closer look at him and see past the shaved head.

“Number two.”

Gavin still had a chance to beat this thing. The speech therapist Gavin’s mother hired when he was in third grade had shown Gavin a technique. What did he call it? The butterfly technique.

“Number three.”

Gavin hated that doctor, and he hated his mother for forcing therapy on him. She wore her embarrassment of Gavin like a plaster cast. Gavin resisted her attempts to change him and gave the doctor a piss-poor effort at best. Eventually, Gavin’s mother quit trying and left him to his lisp.

“Number four.”

How did the butterfly technique work again? The air had to flow over the tongue, not around it.

Number four stepped forward and said the line using the same incorrect technique as the first three.

“Number five, step forward and say, ‘All you had to do was be nice.’”

Touch tongue to teeth. Push the air over the top. Gavin stepped forward, swallowed—and spoke.

Chapter 20

Sadie Vauk had been discharged from the hospital hours earlier, so Niki had picked her up at her father’s house to bring her to the lineup. She’d looked healthier than she had in her hospital bed, with styled hair and makeup to give her face some color, but behind it, Niki could still see the battered woman from that morning.

Niki activated her squad camera for the drive in with Sadie, recording their conversation so that she would have proof that nothing was said to sway Sadie’s opinion. The case against Gavin Spencer would live or die with the lineup, and Gavin’s attorney would fight hard to keep it out, so it had to be done by the book.

“You’ll be behind a one-way mirror,” Niki said. “The men in the lineup won’t be able to see you.”

“Will he be one of them?”

“All we’re asking is that you look at these men, and if you recognize one as the man who came to your salon, let us know. If you don’t, that’s okay too. There is no right or wrong answer.”

Sadie nodded her understanding while folding her finger into knots on her lap.

“It’ll be okay,” Niki said. “Just do your best.”

The room where Sadie would stand had a single sixty-watt bulb to keep things somewhat dim behind the one-way mirror. Niki positioned Sadie, then stepped behind her so that there could be no claim that a nonverbal cue had exposed Niki’s preference for Gavin. Then Niki called Detective Tony Voss, who had collected the men to stand with Gavin in the lineup. When they were all in place, she called Matty to bring Gavin to the party.