Matt glanced at his watch, then leaned forward in his seat, his knee bumping mine. He lowered his voice. “She accused you of poisoning yourself.”
Of course she did. Neena wasn’t stupid, despite her complete underestimation of me. I still flinched, as if surprised. “Why would I dothat?” I pressed my lips together and growled, wondering if he had believed any part of the accusation.
He shouldn’t. It was why I’d gone to such painful and life-threatening lengths.
“So, you faked your fall, also, right? And the gunman?” I choked out a bitter laugh. “All of us. A conspiracy against her.”
He nodded. “Right. A conspiracy. I think she even used that word.”
I considered hugging him but offered my sleeve of crackers instead. He took one, breaking the saltine in half before eating it.
“Mr. Ryder? Mrs. Winthorpe?” The uniform at the end of the hall smiled at us. “They’re ready for you.”
The evidence was stacked in three piles, the division quickly explained.
“This,” Detective Cullen stated, her hand resting atop the smallest stack, “is what we can tie to Neena in a manner that would hold up in court. It includes the cash and photos found in her bedroom, phone records and affidavits that prove her sexual relationship with William Winthorpe, and the financial gain she would have secured by Mr. Ryder’s death.”
The district attorney sat to my left in a pinstripe suit that barely fit. His bald head nodded, as if blessing the designation.
She moved to the second stack. “This is circumstantial evidence. It’s suspicious on its own but allows for more than one possibility. An intelligent person could look at all these facts and assume that Neena is responsible for all of them, but—”
“It allows for reasonable doubt,” the district attorney rasped, leaning back in his chair and undoing the suit’s top button. “And reasonable doubt is the death of all criminal cases.”
I could feel—in the nervous tic of his hands, his avoidance of my eye contact—his concern about his record. For cases brought by the DA’s office, he’d had fourteen wins and one mistrial. I’d been watching that record, which was why I was confident, no matter what opinion Matt voiced in this room, that there was only one possible outcome. They would drop this case and “await more evidence.” Evidence that would never come, because it didn’t exist.
Which was all fine by me. I wasn’t a monster. I never wanted Neena to go to trial, or be sentenced, or have a record. All I wanted was for her life to be systematically destroyed.
Goodbye, reputation.
Goodbye, career.
Goodbye, husband.
It hadn’t even been that hard. And completely unanticipated. Who would suspect the setup of an intentionally botched crime, designed for the purposes of sabotaging a marriage? I settled back in my seat and crossed my Manolo Blahniks at the ankle, listening as the DA justified to Matt why his “almost death” would go unpunished.
“What’s the other pile?” Matt interrupted, lifting his chin in the direction of the third stack.
“Evidence we found that doesn’t tie to Neena and might convince a jury of her innocence.”
My eye twitched, my attention zeroing in on the short bunch of folders stacked at the end of the table. Outside, I kept my slightly bored expression, hiding a yawn behind one perfectly manicured hand.
“Evidence like what?” Matt asked.
It was a question I was both frantic for and terrified of. After all, I’d thought through everything. Worn gloves when handling anything important. Visited their home enough so that my DNA would be ignored. Put my own life in danger to mislead Matt.
Detective Cullen pulled the folders toward her and flipped open the top flap. “Let’s see ... there’s the man who came into your home, obviously. We have little to nothing on him. No fingerprints, no DNA, no forced entry. He was either given a key or you left the doors unlocked, which ...” She peered at Matt. “You said you didn’t do.”
“I didn’t.”
Of course he hadn’t. I’d given the man a copy of my key to their back door. Easy entry had been part of the deal, along with four bags of the Bakers’ cocaine. For my high school’s old drug dealer, it’d been a hell of a deal. All he’d had to do was spend five minutes in a quiet house with an unloaded gun. It hadn’t misfired in Matt’s mouth. It had never had a bullettofire. One trigger pull and he’d left, following my careful instructions to get out of the neighborhood and jog a quarter mile to the main road, where a car was parked in one of the only restaurant parking lots without security cameras.
“And no security system at your house,” she finished with a sigh. “So we have next to nothing on him. We’ve gone over Dr. Ryder’s business and personal accounts and can’t find any large cash withdrawals or suspicious checks.”
“But she was hiding cash,” Matt protested. “Couldn’t she have just used some of that?”
“Sure.” Chief McIntyre took a moment to earn her paycheck. “And she probably did. But we can’t prove that.”
“My concern is that the shooter will try again.” I spoke up. “Is Neena done?”