My phone buzzes in my pocket with a text from Sonia:
The cop is here.
He’s early—even more annoying than being late.
I stuff the phone back in my pocket.
“I’ve got to go talk to Hawks,” I say.
“Should I come?” Mara asks, her expression strained.
“No need, I’ll handle it. Keep working.”
Officer Hawks waits downstairs, next to Janice’s desk. He’s not the lead detective on the case—that’s an older officer named Potts. But according to my sources, the SFPD has egg on their face from all the young female bodies stacking up on their beaches. There’s a good chance Potts is about to get the boot and Hawks will be promoted. A fact of which he is probably well aware.
That’s why he’s here at my studio, digging down on every possible lead.
I pause at the base of the stairs, examining him before I step into view.
When he interviewed Mara, he wore the standard navy uniform with his gold badge pinned upon his breast.
Today he’s dressed in plain clothes—button-up shirt, slacks, and a sport coat. That could mean he’s off-duty. Or only trying to put me at ease—trying to make me think this meeting is a formality, not an interview.
In the plain tan jacket and Buddy Holly glasses, he looks a bit like a professor. Only the haircut gives him away—too fresh, too short, and too presidential. Our boy Hawks is ambitious. That’s the haircut of someone who wants his promotion badly.
He was polite to Mara when he interviewed her. Which means I don’t have to hunt him down off-hours. At least, not yet.
I step out into the lobby, striding toward him.
“Officer Hawks.”
“Mr. Blackwell.”
He holds out his hand to shake.
Sometimes I don’t shake hands, sometimes I do. It depends on what response I want to elicit.
In this case, I take the proffered hand. Hawk’s shake is firm, right on the edge of aggressive. He gives me a sharp look through the clear lenses of his glasses.
I keep my expression calm and relaxed. I already showed Hawks my teeth when he had Mara locked in an interrogation room. Today, I’m all politeness.
“We can speak in here,” I say, leading him into a conference room on the ground floor. I have no intention of allowing Hawks any deeper into the building.
“Is Mara here, too?” Hawks inquires pleasantly.
“She has a studio on the fourth floor.”
That’s not exactly an answer, something Hawks notes as well, his eyes flicking fractionally toward the ceiling before settling on my face again.
“I heard she’s living with you now.”
“That’s right.”
“How long have you two been dating?”
“It’s hard to put a timeframe on these things. You know how intangible a relationship can be. The art world is small. We’ve been in the same circle for some time, orbiting one another.”
I’m evasive on purpose. I say nothing that can be contradicted or disproven. Hawks will notice this too, but I don’t care. I want to annoy him. I want to push him to tip his cards.
I gesture to the conference room table, with its assortment of midcentury modern chairs, deliberately mismatched. Hawks takes a seat directly across from me.
He’s not taking notes, but I have no doubt he’ll remember everything I say, and probably write it down afterward.
“Did you ever meet Erin Whalstrom?” Hawks asks.
“Once or twice. Like I said, it’s an insular industry. I’m sure we attended the same parties and events.”
“Did you ever see Erin with Alastor Shaw?”
“Yes. I saw them talking the night of Oasis.”
“Shaw said that he and Erin had sex in the stairwell.”
I shrug. “I wasn’t present for that.”
“Did you see them leave the show together?”
“No.”
“Did you see Shaw leave at all?”
“No.”
“What was the last time you saw him?”
“I have no idea. There’s more wine than art at those things.”
“Did you see Mara there?”
I hesitate a fraction of a second, distracted by the vivid image of the first time I laid eyes on her. I see the wine splashing across her dress, soaking into the cotton, dark as blood.
“Well?” Hawks prompts me, leaning forward, blue eyes keen behind his glasses.
“Yes, I saw her. Only for a moment, early in the night.”
“But you didn’t see her leave.”
“No.”
Hawks lets the silence stretch between us. This is an age-old technique, to encourage me to add on to my statement. To get me babbling.
I keep my mouth firmly shut. Smiling at Hawks. Waiting with equal patience.
Hawks switches tactics.
“How long have you known Alastor Shaw?”
“We went to art school together.”
“Really.”
He didn’t know that. Sloppy, sloppy, officer.
I can tell he’s annoyed at the omission—color rises up from the collar of his shirt.
“The Siren called you rivals,” Hawks says.
“The Siren likes to stir up drama.”
“You’re not rivals?”
“I don’t believe in rivalry—I’m only in competition with myself.”
“Would you call yourselves friends?”
“Not particularly.”
“Just another acquaintance.”
“That’s right.”
Hawks is tiring of these bland answers. He sucks a little air through his teeth.
“I’m surprised you agreed to meet with me without your lawyer present. You were adamant that any communication with Mara go through your attorney.”
“I still am. She was treated disrespectfully by the police after she was attacked.”
“That wasn’t my department.”
“I don’t care who it was. It won’t happen again.”
“But you’re not concerned about being … disrespected.”
“I’m sure you know better than that.” I smile at Officer Hawks. He doesn’t smile back.
“Where were you the night of November second?” he abruptly asks.
“I have no idea. Do you remember where you were on random evenings weeks past?”
“Do you keep a calendar?”
“No.”
“Does your secretary?”
“No.”
This is true. I don’t allow Janice to keep any record of my appointments. Sonia memorizes my schedule—but she certainly wouldn’t recite it for Hawks.
“Do you know a woman named Maddie Walker?”
“No.”
Hawks takes a photograph out of the inside breast pocket of his sport coat. He slides it across the table toward me.
I look at the picture without touching it. It shows a dark-haired girl laying on a steel table, eyes closed, clearly dead. Her skin bluish-gray, mottled with bruises around the jaw. Shaw was rough when he wrenched her mouth open and stuffed a snake in it.
I recognize her from the top floor of the tenements, where Shaw had her strung up in his spiderweb.
I want to rip his fucking throat out, remembering how he lured me up there and trapped me, calling in a fleet of cops to catch me with the body.