Cassie shook her head. "No," she said, a slight, cool syllable that dropped like a depth charge. "Maybe one of you-I'd bet on Shane; he's the one I'd leave out, myself-went to the pictures, so he could tell the other two the plot of the film, in case anyone asked. Maybe, if you were smart, you all three went into the cinema and then slipped out the fire exit as soon as the lights went down, so you'd have an alibi. But before six o'clock, two of you, at least, were back in Knocknaree, in the wood."
"The kids always went home for tea at half past six, and you knew it could take you awhile to find them; the wood was pretty big, back then. But you found them, all right. They were playing, not hiding; probably they were making plenty of noise. You sneaked up on them, just like they'd snuck up on you, and you grabbed them."
We had talked all this over beforehand, of course we had: gone through it again and again, found a theory that fit with everything we had, tested every detail. But some tiny slippery unease was stirring in me, twitching and elbowing-
"We never even went into the bloody wood that day. We-"
"You pulled the kids' shoes off, to make it harder for them to run away. Then you killed Jamie. We won't be sure how till we find the bodies, but I'm betting on a blade. You either stabbed her or cut her throat. Somehow or other, her blood went into Adam's shoes; maybe you deliberately used them to catch the blood, trying not to leave too much evidence. Maybe you were planning to throw the shoes into the river, along with the bodies. But then, Jonathan, while you were dealing with Peter, you took your eye off Adam. He grabbed his shoes and he ran like fuck. There were slash marks in his T-shirt: I think one of you was stabbing at him as he ran, just missed him… But you lost him. He knew that wood even better than you did, and he hid till the searchers found him. How did that make you feel, Jonathan? Knowing that you'd done all that for nothing, and there was still a witness out there?"
Jonathan stared into space, his jaw set. My hands were shaking; I slid them under the edge of the table.
"See, Jonathan," Cassie said, "this is why I think there were only two of you there. Three big guys against three little kids, it would've been no contest: you wouldn't have needed to take their shoes off to stop them running, you could have just held down one kid each, and Adam would never have made it home. But if there were only two of you, trying to subdue the three of them…"
"Mr. Devlin," I said. My voice sounded strange, echoing. "If you're the one who wasn't actually there-if you're the one who went to the cinema to provide an alibi-then you need to tell us. There's a big, big difference between being a murderer and being an accessory."
Jonathan shot me a vicious et-tu-Brute look. "You're out of your bloody minds," he said. He was breathing hard through his nose. "You-
"I know you weren't the ringleader, Mr. Devlin," I said. "That was Cathal Mills. He's told us so. He said, and I quote, 'Jonner would never in a million years have had the balls to think of it.' If you were only an accessory, or only a witness, do yourself a favor and tell us now."
"That's a load of shite. Cathal didn't confess to any murders, because we didn't
"Katy," Cassie said, her eyebrows lifting. "OK, fair enough: we'll come back to Peter and Jamie. Let's talk about Katy." She shoved her chair back with a screech-Jonathan's shoulders leaped-and crossed, fast, to the wall. "These are Katy's medical records. Four years of unexplained gastric illness, ending this spring when she told her ballet teacher it was going to stop and, hey presto, it stopped. Our medical examiner says there was no sign of anything wrong with her. Do you know what that says to us? It says someone was poisoning Katy. It's easily done: a little toilet bleach here, a dose of oven cleaner there, even salt water'll do it. It happens all the time."
I was watching Jonathan. The angry flush had drained out of his cheeks; he was white, bone-white. That tiny convulsive unease inside me evaporated like mist and it hit me, all over again: he knew.
