Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 76717 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76717 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Jason rubs at his forehead. “Christ, if that isn’t the fucking truth.” He turns to me. “But I have to talk to you about something. Something I—”
Henry’s phone starts ringing. He grabs it out of his pocket, looks at the caller ID. “Hold that thought, Jason. You’ll want to hear this.” He accepts the call and puts it on speaker. “Hello?”
“Henry Simpson?”
“Speaking.”
“Great. This is Detective MacDougal with Boulder Police.”
“Right,” Henry says. “Tabitha, would you mind giving us the room? This is kind of a private matter.”
Tabitha frowns but then stands. “Of course.”
Once Tabitha is in the other room, Henry turns back to his phone. “Sorry, just wanted to keep this private, Detective.”
“Understood. We’re calling about the fingerprint sample you submitted. We were able to rush it and get the analysis done quickly.”
Henry grins. “Excellent. Detective, I have you on speakerphone with my sister, Angie, and her”—he lifts his eyebrows at me—“friend Jason Lansing. He’s the doctor, the husband of the woman whose death we’re looking into.”
“Oh, great. Dr. Lansing, a pleasure to talk to you as well.”
“Thank you,” Jason says. “Were you able to confirm if the fingerprints were a match?”
Detective MacDougal pauses, and we hear the shuffling of papers. “Results are positive. Ralph Normandy and Ronny Burgundy are the same person.”
“Hell yes!” Henry pumps a fist into the air. “Thank you.”
“We’ll be in touch once we put this whole case together, Mr. Simpson. Have a great rest of your day.”
The call ends, and Jason falls onto the couch, heaving out a sigh. “Henry, I think I’ll have that drink now.”
“Of course. What’ll you have?”
“Do you still have bourbon, Angie?”
Henry holds up a hand. “I brought some of the good stuff from the Western Slope.” He walks to the kitchen, and a moment later comes back with a glass of bourbon for Jason.
He takes a quick sip. “Good stuff.”
Henry nods. “It’s called Peach Street, made on the Western Slope. My Uncle Talon got me started on it when I turned twenty-one. Best bourbon ever.”
“It is good. Really smooth.” He takes another drink. “Now, about Ralph. Or Ronny—”
“We’ll get him straightened out in a second,” Henry says. “For right now, we need to focus on you, Jason. You still don’t have an alibi. We might be able to prove that Ralph murdered Lindsay, but all that does is give you a much stronger motive to beat the shit out of him.”
“Well, I do have an alibi, but I don’t have any witnesses. I was just home alone.”
“Man, that sucks,” Henry says.
The doorbell rings then.
Tabitha comes back into the room. “That’s probably the pizza. I’ll get it, Ange.”
“Thanks,” I say.
Tabitha returns with three pizza boxes and takes them into the kitchen.
“So no luck getting the guy to confess that he had himself beaten up?” Henry asks.
“Nope. He’s standing firm. Says I did it. But I didn’t.”
“You don’t have to keep convincing me. I believe you, man.”
Nice of him, considering he doesn’t even know Jason. But he trusts me, which I appreciate.
“So what were you doing while you were home that night?” Henry asks.
“I’ve already been through all of this with Blake, but if you think it’ll help…”
He shrugs. “You never know.”
“Okay.” Jason draws in a deep breath. “I was home that night. I had just figured out that my wife, Lindsay, probably hadn’t committed suicide, so I was shaken up. I was pacing around a lot.”
“Okay. Is there any way someone might’ve been able to see you from the outside?”
“I don’t know.” He frowns. “Maybe my neighbors. But Angie didn’t see me. I mean, she wasn’t peeping in my windows or anything. I don’t really know any of my other neighbors. I’ve kind of been a loner for the last three years.”
“Did you eat anything? Go to the refrigerator?”
“How is this supposed to help?” Jason asks. “I already went through all of it with Blake.”
“Blake is the best, for sure,” Henry says. “But he’s also old-school.” He crosses his arms. “So did you go to your kitchen?”
Jason wrinkles his forehead. “I know I had a drink. Wasn’t very hungry, but I forced myself to eat a little bit.”
“What did you eat?”
“What does that matter?”
“What you ate doesn’t matter,” Henry says, “but it might jog something else.”
I sit, letting Tabitha serve the pizza. I find this interrogation of Jason really intriguing. “Since when do you know so much about gathering evidence?” I ask Henry.
He chuckles. “I watch a lot of police drama shows.”
I laugh. “Can I get you to have some pizza?”
“Yeah, as soon as I’m done questioning Jason. So what did you eat?”
“Like I said, wasn’t hungry, so I grabbed the bag of potato chips off the top of my refrigerator, opened them, ate a few chips. They were dry and crackly down my throat, I remember that. I drank some water, and then I went back to the computer. I was going to look on Facebook, and that’s when the electricity blipped.”