“No,” he replied. “And I don’t understand why you’re still looking at me.”
“It’s not so much that we’re looking at you,” she explained, “but your sister appears to be ground zero.”
“That would be very depressing,” he noted. “But, at the same time, you know that’s not my fault.”
“No, outside of the persisting fact that you confessed, so the entire investigation was derailed.”
He raised his hands in frustration. “How long do I have to keep paying for that?”
“I’m not sure.” She faced him, studying him carefully. He was a little bit nervous, but then he was being called out on something that he was protesting. Whether you were innocent or guilty, everybody got nervous when they were talked to by the cops like this. “What about your family?” she asked.
“What about them?” he asked. “My mother came to visit me. Both my parents came. At one point in time an uncle came too.”
“What uncle?”
He frowned. “You probably already tracked him down since he’s got a criminal record of his own.”
“For armed robbery?”
“Yes, armed robbery but not murder. And definitely not torture. That should be good then, right?”
“It means they’re about power and abuse, maybe even religion.”
At the wordreligion, he paled ever-so-slightly and took a half step back. “That just sounds like some fanatic,” he said, muttering to himself. He looked back nervously at the house. “Please don’t even bring this up to my mother. She’s having a tough enough time.”
“I get it,” she replied. “I definitely do.”
“Yeah, what doyouget?” he asked, with a sneer. “You have no idea and nothing to do with everything in my world.”
“No, of course not, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get all the problems.”
He groaned. “Fine, maybe you get some of it. Just please don’t get a hold of my mother anymore.”
“She believed in you the whole time, didn’t she?”
“She did,” he agreed. “But she only had two kids, and one was gone.”
“And you were doing a lot of drugs back then, right?”
“I already told you that.”
“Did any of your friends get into torture like this?”
“No,” he stated, “at least not that I know of. How the hell would I know?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, trying for a neutral tone.
Rodney was just off to her side, studying Rick. “So, how often did your uncle come visit you?”
“You mean, when he wasn’t in jail himself? You can check his jail time against the murders. I’m sure it’ll probably exonerate him.”
“That check is in process now,” Rodney confirmed.
“It should be a quick phone call,” Rick stated.
She smiled. “So, who else?”
“What do you mean, who else?” he asked.