Page 76 of No Offense

“That’s not what I’m saying.” Beckwith shook his head with enough force that tears streamed back toward his ears. “We made sure, you know, the baby got born all right and left it in a safe place, where someone decent would find it—people who go to libraries are all smart, you know—civic-minded? People who read books are found to be more empathetic than those who don’t. They have some idea, at least, of how to raise a kid. And then we ran.”

“It was the least you could do,” John said, and meant it. It was the very least the kid could do.

“Right? But somehow... I don’t know. I couldn’t—I couldn’t leave.”

“When you say ‘we,’ who do you mean?”

“Aw, those idiots from last year.” Beckwith rocked back in his chair, thoroughly disgusted with his own choice in friends. “You remember.”

“From the MTV house?”

“Yeah, same group, more or less.” Beckwith, having onceclaimed he wouldn’t say a word until his lawyer showed up, now couldn’t shut up. He seemed to be finding catharsis in spilling his guts to the sheriff. John wondered if he knew every word he said was being recorded, observed by the state’s attorney as well as numerous other individuals, and jotted down by John himself in his notebook. “Bunch of followers. Not an original idea or spark of imagination in a single one of them. At least Tabby really believed in the movement, though, you know? And in me.” Beckwith’s voice caught on a sob. “She always believed in me.”

John nodded, jotted the wordsIs this guy for real?in his notebook, and underlined them. “Maybe that’s why you couldn’t leave.”

“What?” Beckwith looked up from the pity party he was having for himself. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m just circling back to my original question. After you so generously abandoned your own baby in a place where she would be found by someone more civic-minded than yourself, and then left your girlfriend to die—”

“Hey, I told you, I didn’t leave her to die!”

“I’m sorry, let me rephrase that. When you left her bleeding to death in an empty building and took her cell phone so she couldn’t call for help—”

“God, would you stop ragging on me?” Beckwith pleaded. “I’ve already got a father to do that, okay? I don’t need you doing it, too. I know I screwed up, all right? And guess what, I never wanted to be a father myself, but I guess if I have to, I want to be a good father, not like mine, who’s never done anything but tell me what a loser I am, practically from theday I was born. Nothing I’ve ever done was good enough. Not like he was ever there for me—”

“Well, fortunately you’re going to be there for your child,” John said, closing his notebook with a snap and rising to his feet. “You’re going to be doing it from jail, but you’re going to be there for her. She and her mother can come see you every Sunday during visiting hours. I’m pretty sure you know that, though. That’s probably the real reason why you let yourself get caught. So you wouldn’t have to take any more parental responsibility toward her than that.”

“No!” Now Beckwith, who’d been completely unresisting up until then, took a lunge at him. “That isn’t true!”

John pushed the much smaller man back down into his seat.

“Oh, pipe down, Larry,” he said irritably. “It’s true and you know it. Your days of living off Daddy’s money, not to mention other people’s property and hard work, are over, and you knew it the minute you heard you yourself were a father. That got you so scared you decided you’d rather go to jail than face up to life as a parent. So suck it up. You got what you wanted. And no lawyer in the world is going to be able to bail you out of this one.”

With that, John turned and left the interview room, only to run into Pete Abramowitz in the hallway.

“How was that?” he asked the attorney.

“Magnificent.” Pete was grinning. “He’s in there sobbing like a toddler right now.”

“Because I said he likes a girl.” John felt disgusted with himself and the world in general.

“Well, hearing that kind of thing has to be hard on a sociopath.”

“Good,” John said. “Don’t accept a plea.”

“No worries. I’ll make sure he gets the max. You do realize he won’t be in your jail for long though, right? Once he’s convicted, he’ll probably get sent to prison upstate.”

John thought with relish of all the seaweed that needed removing on Little Bridge’s beaches, and how unhappy Beckwith was going to look in an orange jumpsuit, raking it.

“I know,” he said. “But I’ll enjoy his stay while it lasts.”

Pete winked. “Okay, then.”

It was at that moment that Marguerite came up to them and said, “Excuse me, Chief? There’s someone waiting to see you in your office.”

John tried not to make a face. It wasn’t the sergeant’s fault. “Marguerite, I thought I told you, no interviews with the press until—”

“It’s not press, Chief.” Marguerite was having a hard time suppressing a grin. “It’s Molly Montgomery, the librarian and, uh... she’s holding a pie.”