Page 14 of Everyone Here Is Lying
“What?” He glances again at his mom, who looks appalled and ill. He turns back to the detective and says, rather wildly, “Why are you asking me that? I didn’t do anything!”
“Okay, Michael, all right, we just had to ask, okay?” Bledsoe leans back in his chair and says, “You didn’t hang up Avery’s jean jacket, then?”
“No.” He’s telling them the truth. He didn’t hang up the jacket. He didn’t clean up. He didn’t see his father. He’s told them the truth, but they don’t seem to believe him.
“How would you describe your dad, Michael?” the detective asks.
They think Dad did it, Michael worries.They’re wrong.Dad wasn’t there. He’s telling them the truth.Finally, he says, “He’s good. He’s a good dad.”
“Does he ever lose his temper with you?”
Michael shakes his head slowly. “No.” The detective waits; he wants more. Michael doesn’t want to say anything more. He wants this to end.
“Does he ever lose his temper with your sister?”
Now Michael can’t look at his mother, he can’t bear to. He doesn’t know how to answer. He can feel time passing, until his silence is the answer they’re looking for and it’s too late.
“What did he do when he lost his temper with your sister?”
Michael swallows and says, “Sometimes he’d yell at her.”
Bledsoe nods slowly. “Did he ever hit her?”
“Not really.”
“It’s a yes-or-no answer, Michael.”
“He just slapped her sometimes, to calm her down.”
“To calm her down,” Bledsoe repeats.
“She deserved it,” Michael says in his father’s defense.
The two detectives shift their eyes to stare at his mother.
Ten
Gully follows Bledsoe, Erin, and Michael out of the interview room. They are all silent. They’re done, for now. The revelations arising from these short interviews are disturbing. The father has no alibi. The father has a temper, has a history of losing it with his troubled daughter. He’s been known to slap her on several occasions. This has caused friction between the parents, has soured the marriage, something the mother finally—reluctantly—admitted.
Bledsoe is a better interrogator than Gully expected. She was impressed. She can tell he thinks that William Wooler may have done something to his daughter. It’s certainly possible. But she worries that Bledsoe will develop tunnel vision, fail to consider other possibilities. She’s seen it happen before, with other detectives she’s known. She will have to make sure that doesn’t happen here.
•••
Nora comes downto the kitchen to find Al and Ryan already there, eating breakfast and drinking coffee. She’s usually the first one downstairs, but this morning she slept later than usual—she’d been awake most of the night, managing to fall asleep only in the darkest hour before dawn.
Now she pours herself a cup of coffee from the carafe. “Good morning,” she says.
They both grunt back a reply.
Al has his laptop open on the kitchen table beside him, while Ryan scrolls on his phone. She hates having technology at the table, but today is different. She wants to scroll her phone, too, but she doesn’t want to look too eager, and they know she never looks at her phone before breakfast. She doesn’t quite know how to act, what the appropriate level of concern should be.
“What’s the latest?” she asks, sipping her coffee, sitting down beside Al. Faith will be getting up soon.
Al looks up at her. “They haven’t found her.”
Nora’s heart sinks.
“They’re treating the Woolers’ house as a crime scene,” Al says.
