“Nancy?” he asked. He sat back in his chair, his silence confirmation.
“How did you get her to falsify the DNA test?”
He licked his lips. “We don’t have time for this.”
“And why? Why confess to a killing you didn’t do?”
He worked his scruffy jaw in frustration. “I answer your questions, then you get to Ravinder?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Get rid of the hulk.”
Sun turned to him.
“This again?” Quincy asked. When she didn’t respond, he made a grand show of standing, his annoyance evident in every sharp move he made. He knocked on the door to be let out and exited with the same enthusiastic performance.
After the door closed, she refocused on Wynn. “You confessed to a murder you didn’t commit.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“You didn’t do it,” she reiterated.
“Doesn’t matter who did it, apple blossom. You get to solve the case. I go down for the killing. Everyone is happy.”
“That’s not how the law works.”
“Listen. Just because I didn’t kill Brick doesn’t mean I haven’t killed.” He leaned closer. “How did you figure it out?”
“I remembered.”
“Oh, son of a bitch. That must’ve sucked.”
“You have no idea.” Her exhaustion, her devastation, was catching up to her. She rubbed her eyes. “I don’t want to play games anymore.”
“That’s too bad.”
She had to be honest with him. There was a part of Wynn Ravinder that was noble. She could tell by the way he reacted to her. He tried to put up a front, but for some reason a part of him truly cared for her. Now to find out how much sway that part had.
She studied her hands, and said, “I’m in love with him.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and watched her.
“I’ve been in love with him since I was a kid. I’m pretty sure my very first memory is of Levi Ravinder doing jumps on a Huffy. I think the fireworks bursting and sparkling around him were my imagination, but the rest was all him. And then last night, it all came back to me in a rush.” She blinked through the tears, unable to believe she was losing it like that in front of an inmate. “It was him.”
“Finally,” he said, tilting his head to one side. “I thought you’d never show yourself.”
“Wynn, why was he there? Why do you know so much about what happened that night?”
He released a heavy sigh, resigned to telling her the truth. He put his elbows on the table and clasped his hands. “When I heard what Brick was up to, I was working a job in Colorado.”
She sniffed, and asked, “Hitman?”
“Close. Logger.”
“Ah.”
“It was over and done by the time I got to town. When I found him that night, he was delirious. Bleeding to death in his bed. Refusing to tell me what happened. Swearing he’d be fine. He just needed to sleep it off.” He chuckled softly.
It took her a moment to realize he was talking about Levi. She stilled, hanging on his every word.
“His sheets were soaked with blood, and this was hours after he got you to the hospital.”
His words crushed her and it took everything in her to maintain her composure. “Why didn’t he go to a hospital?”
“Too many questions, apple. But I had no choice. I had to risk it. I wrapped him up the best I could and took him to an emergency room.”
“But there were no stabbing victims admitted into any of the local hospitals.”
“I drove him into Albuquerque. That was the biggest risk. I was scared shitless he was going to bleed to death on the way there. Took him to Southside. Admitted him under a false name. Then I whisked him out of there as soon as I could after surgery.”
The image of Levi almost bleeding to death made her queasy.
He saddened as he thought back. “He was in a bad way. Told me everything in his drugged state. Well, most everything.” He grinned up at her. “There were never any ropes, were there?”
Her test. She shook her head. “No. Chains. I only remember chains. And possibly duct tape.”
“Clever girl.”
She shrugged. “Hardly. It took me fifteen years to figure this out.”
“Brain injuries tend to do that. I went back and buried the body in a shallow grave, but I figure the animals got to him anyway.”
“They did. Not all of him, of course. And the knife?”
“I have it. Like I said.”
“Are you going to tell me where?”
“In due time.”
“Was he—” She could hardly believe she was asking this. Did she really want the truth? “Was he a part of it?”
The look he gave her was filled with almost as much sympathy as dubiousness. “You know the answer to that as well as I do.”
“No, I know. I just thought maybe Kubrick had coerced him or forced him somehow.”
“Apple, when have you ever known Levi Ravinder to be forced into anything he didn’t want to do?”
“Then why not just tell me? After all these years, why keep it a secret?”
“Who the hell knows?” He raked a hand through his shoulder-length blond hair. “Pride? Self-preservation?”
She bit her bottom lip. “He could’ve died saving my life and I would never have known.”
He studied her a long moment. “Do you have any idea what it would’ve done to him if you’d died?”
His question surprised her.
“He would’ve never gotten over it. He would not be the same man you see today. Besides, you helped.”
“I helped what?”
“You helped him win the fight that night.”
The snort that escaped her expressed her feelings on the subject beautifully, but she elaborated anyway. “Wynn, I literally lay there and watched as Levi was stabbed over and over. I couldn’t have been more useless if I were made of hair gel.”
“When Brick was abducting you, I guess he’d drugged you, but you fought back regardless. You bit his hand. That’s how Levi figured it out. He knew you were missing, saw Brick’s hand, and put two and two together. In a way, apple, you aided in your own rescue.”
She remembered Brick’s yell when he was taking her from her truck. Blood on his hand. But she didn’t remember biting him. “I thought he hurt it on the truck somehow.”
“You bit him. You clamped down so hard, you literally took a chunk out it. It weakened him. Made it possible for Levi to wrest the knife away.”
“He told you that?”
“He did. Again, he was high as a kite, but he rarely lies either way.”
“Wait a minute,” she said, when it dawned on her. “All those confessions muddying the waters. That was you.”
“A few, yeah. Not all. What can I say? The man is loved.”
“The man is almost worshiped, truth be known. And why do you keep calling me apple?”
He laughed softly. “You don’t remember? You stole apples out of my tree one summer. I chased your ass for a half a mile, at which point you turned and threw a half-eaten Granny Smith at me.”