“What about Jason? Did you kill Jason?”

“No.” Billie shook her head firmly. “I thought he’d run away. I wouldn’t have blamed him for that.”

She looked Lorna directly in the eyes and told her bluntly, “I do not deny that I was harder on my kids than I should have been. There were times when I hurt them bad, and I will have to face God with that. He knows how sorry I am for any pain I caused them when I had them. I guess maybe that’s why He took them away from me. Mary Beth always said she didn’t believe that God did things like that, but still. If you don’t take care of what you have, you lose it, that’s what my momma always used to say.” She cleared her throat. “I think about the times I hurt them, and the times I had them so scared, they could hardly breathe. I was a different person back then. I drank too much and I worked too much and I slept too little. I had two jobs and I still had no money and no life. I was fifteen years old when I had Jason, twenty when Melinda was born. And their father left me here with them when she was just a year old. I was left high and dry with two small kids, barely old enough to legally buy a drink.”

Billie took a deep breath.

“I was a lousy mother, I’d be the first to admit that. But I didn’t kill my kids.” She paused, then added, “I swear it on Mary Beth’s memory. I did not kill my kids.”

Brad opened the door again, and this time stepped into the room. “Lorna, I have to ask you to-”

“Yes, yes. I’m leaving.” Lorna stood up. “May I come back to see you?”

“I don’t know where they’re going to take me from here,” Billie told her.

“I’ll find you.” Lorna turned to leave, then looked back over her shoulder. “Thank you. For… for all the things you said.”

Billie nodded, then turned her face to the door, where her lawyer stood. Lorna walked past him into the hallway.

“You were in there a long time,” Chief Walker noted as she passed. “What did you talk about?”

“A lot of things.” Lorna paused, then said, “You don’t really believe she killed Jason, do you?”

His eyes narrowed. “Did she tell you she didn’t?”

“Yes, she told me she didn’t. Didn’t she tell you the same?”

He waved his hand. “Everyone says they didn’t do whatever it is they’ve been arrested for. I never expect anyone to admit to anything anymore.”

The phone was ringing in his office, and he went in to answer it. A second later, he closed the door behind him.

“She didn’t kill him,” Lorna said to Brad when they reached the lobby.

“She convinced you of that?”

“What evidence do you have?”

He raised his eyebrows almost to his hairline. “I’m sorry, I thought that was business school you went to, not law school.”

“Is that your way of saying it’s none of my business?” she asked softly, trying not to sound as if she was challenging him, which she had no right to do.

“We know that she was physical with her kids. She didn’t deny that she’d been the cause of those broken bones he’d had. We know that she did think he killed his sister, and that she had questioned him about it on more than one occasion. She told me that. So what would stop her from trying to beat it out of him? She’d beaten him before, she said she did. Maybe that last time, things just got out of hand. I think it was an accident, I’ll give you that. I don’t think she intended to kill him, but I think she killed him, all the same.”

She started to say something, and he cut her off.

“The last time they questioned her, years ago, they felt very strongly, my dad and the DA did, that she had a hand in whatever it was that had happened to her kids. Back then, they didn’t even have a body. Now we do. It shows signs of abuse that she admits to. The night that Jason Eagan disappeared, he’d been drinking with a couple of guys out at White Marsh Park. He was dropped off at three in the morning and was seen walking up his front steps. No one has reported having seen him since that moment.”

“That doesn’t mean his mother killed him.”

“She admits she got into an argument with him that night after he came home. She admits everything, except the actual murder.” Brad folded his arms over his chest. “It’s good enough for the DA, Lorna. I’d think it would be good enough for you, especially since Melinda was your friend.”

“I don’t know, Brad. I just don’t see it.”

“Well, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.”

His radio squawked and he responded.

“Accident out there at the intersection.” He started to the door. “It’s gonna cause a major traffic jam. You might want to take one of the back roads home.”

Lorna stood in the lobby for a long minute, then followed him outside. She got into her car and fished around in the bottom of her bag for her keys, then remembered they were in her jeans pocket. When she started the ignition, the radio came on. She snapped it off, wanting silence, and drove home mechanically, without thinking where she was going, and got caught in the traffic jam Brad had warned her about.

Lorna sat behind a dark red pickup while the injured were loaded onto gurneys, her mind still trying to process everything Billie Eagan had told her.

That Billie and her mother had, over the years, become friends.

That Mary Beth had taken Billie in and given her a place to live. That she’d made sure Billie had food to eat and medical care, and the support she’d needed to overcome her addictions.

That Mary Beth had believed in Billie’s innocence.

Had she? Or was Billie just trying to find a sympathetic ear?

She was still debating that point when Brad waved her through the intersection.

When Lorna was in line to pay for her coffee at the mini-mart the next morning, a hand reached past her from behind and plunked down two quarters.

“ County Herald.” The man attached to the hand held up the newspaper for the clerk to see and turned to go on his way, but not before Lorna caught the headline.

“One large coffee?” the clerk asked.

“And one Herald,” Lorna said.

She picked up the paper on the way out of the store and folded it, carrying it under one arm till she reached the car. Once behind the wheel, she opened the paper and scanned the front page.

Callen Cops Catch Killer! screamed the caption over the picture that sat right on the fold. In it, Billie Eagan was being led from her house in handcuffs, looking confused and tired. The story reiterated the disappearances of both of her children and the “facts” that led to her arrest.

This isn’t right, Lorna told herself as she pulled out of the parking lot. It just doesn’t feel right.

She read through the item again when she got home. She’d thought about Billie for much of last night, and had come to the conclusion that if her mother had been convinced of Billie’s innocence, there must be something there. But how to convince Chief Walker of that, without any evidence to the contrary?

And how to begin going about looking for something that could help Billie? Lorna wasn’t a lawyer, as Brad Walker had pointed out, and all she knew about investigating crime she’d learned from watching CSI and Law & Order, and her newest favorite, Medium. There were no psychics in Callen, that she was aware of, and she knew no sleuths to call upon for advice.

Not quite true, she reminded herself as she sipped her coffee. There is Regan Landry…

Regan, who had shared a flat in London with Lorna and six other girls one summer long ago, and who, following in the footsteps of her famous father, was making a name for herself as a major writer of true crime fiction.

While it had been years since the two women had seen each other, they had stayed in touch. Most recently, Lorna had written a letter of condolence when Regan’s father had been murdered last September. Regan had responded with a note and had sent her business card with her phone numbers… Where had Lorna put that?