Page 23 of Her Baby, Her Badge

Grace.

She forced aside that troubling possibility and got back to work. She glanced at Jamie. Still busy with the sketch artist. So she motioned for Livvy and Dutton to follow her toward the interview with Brian. She showed Dutton into the observation area—not a room with a two-way mirror, but rather a computer where he’d be able to hear and see the interview.

Even though his observing was somewhat of a concession, Grace truly hoped he did hear something that would give them a clue as to why Brian might have targeted them. Of their two top suspects, she preferred Brian to be the killer, rather than Cassie. It was harder to accept when it was someone she knew who wanted Dutton and her dead.

Grace took in a couple of deep breaths before she stepped into the interview room, and she got her first look at Brian. He was seated, his elbows on the metal table, and his hands bracketing the sides of his head. There was indeed blood on the front of his shirt, his hands, his jaw and even in his pale blond hair. She also saw a deep cut on his forehead and some scrapes and bruises on his arms and hands.

He immediately looked up, spearing her with eyes that were bloodshot. “Sheriff Granger?” he asked, getting to his feet.

She nodded and motioned for him to stay seated. “Were you read your rights, Mr. Waterman?” Grace asked.

She was certain he had been. However, she wanted both the question and his response on the recording that Livvy had started the moment they’d stepped into the room. Ditto foractivating the camera mounted on the wall. A reminder that Dutton was watching every bit of this.

Brian pointed to Livvy. “She Mirandized me. But it wasn’t necessary. There’s been a big misunderstanding.”

Grace had been a cop long enough to know that some suspects clammed up and some couldn’t stop talking. She figured Brian was the latter because he continued as they took seats across from him.

“After I got the horrible news about Elaine, I got drunk.” He shook his head as if disgusted with himself. “It’s what I do. I drink when I’m stressed and when I can’t deal. I just couldn’t deal,” he added, his voice cracking.

“Were you drinking at a bar or at home?” Grace asked. Because a bar would likely have security footage.

“Home,” he said, dashing any notion of security footage. “When I got the call about Elaine, I walked around in a haze for a while. I was probably in shock. By the time I needed a drink, it was too late to go to a bar.”

Grace kept her face blank. “Was anyone with you?”

“No. I was alone.” He groaned and pressed his hands to his head again. “I’m not sure how much I drank, but I’m sure it was a lot. And then I heard something on my back porch. Or at least I thought I did. So I went outside to see.”

Now Grace added some skepticism to her expression. “You’d just learned someone had murdered your fiancée, and you weren’t concerned the killer might have come to your place? Your instincts weren’t to call the cops?”

“No.” Brian’s eyes widened, and he seemed stunned at that possibility. “It never occurred to me, but I was pretty drunk by then.”

Her skepticism went up a notch, though Grace silently had to admit that being drunk didn’t lead to clear thinking. “What happened next?”

“I fell off the porch,” he readily admitted. He pointed toward the gash on his head. “That’s when I got this. Man, it started bleeding, and the blood got in my eyes. I couldn’t see so I was staggering around, trying to find my way back inside.”

Livvy jotted something down on a notepad, no doubt a reminder to ask SAPD to check the back porch for any blood. Grace wanted more than that, though. She believed that she had enough to get a search warrant for Brian’s place, and she’d press for one once this interview was over. But that would be much easier if she could actually arrest the man, so she continued with her questions.

“Did you call out to any of your neighbors? Or try to use your phone to ask someone for help?”

“No and no.” His tone was a little sharp now, and Grace hoped his annoyance, and possible anger, paid off. Angry people sometimes vented. “It was late, and I didn’t want to wake anyone. And I’d left my phone inside.”

“So you staggered around,” Grace continued, upping her own sharp, skeptical tone, “and then what?”

Brian seemed ready to snap out a response, but then Grace could see the man visibly making an attempt to rein in his emotions. “Like I said, I tried to get back to the porch, but I guess I went the wrong way, because this morning I woke up, and I was in the drainage ditch behind my house. I must have passed out from the cut on my head and the alcohol and fallen in there.”

Grace knew that could be the truth.Could be. But there was a reason this man was her top suspect, and she played that particular card.

“You told the cops that you were in El Paso when your fiancée was murdered,” Grace stated.

There was no panic on his face, which meant he’d already known he’d be questioned about this. Of course, he had. It would have been next to impossible for him to travel all the way fromEl Paso, which was an eleven-hour drive. And Brian hadn’t flown since Livvy had checked airline records and the man hadn’t been on any flight that would have fit the timing of his drunken account.

“Yes, that,” Brian muttered, and he took a moment. “I fudged the truth about that.”

“You lied,” Grace snapped. And she saw that flash of temper again. His jaw muscles tightened.

“Yes,” he admitted. “I love my fiancée.Loved,” he amended, “but I needed some time away from her. I felt smothered, and I didn’t think she’d understand, so I made up the work story. I told it to her and her parents, and then booked a hotel in El Paso under my name. I did a digital check-in on my phone so it would look as if I’d actually been there.”

Brian hadn’t mentioned the possible reason he felt smothered—because he was seeing another woman. And since he hadn’t mentioned his chat with Felicity to beg her to give him an alibi, it meant Felicity had thankfully followed Grace’s instructions and hadn’t told Brian about her phone call to the cops.

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