The Burning Rooms by Anni Taylor

Author:Anni Taylor [Taylor, Anni]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

44

JACE FRANCO

Trissie SaintJames looked about as happy to see us as a cat that’d tumbled into a bucket of ice-water.

Wakeland and I sat across from her in the tiny, airless interview room. Trissie had her hair scraped back and stared at us with dull-blue eyes.

My job was to put cracks in Trissie’s expectations. Make her believe she was all on her own and needed to put her trust in us. Wakeland and I had worked together on interviews for many years and had our techniques well-oiled—but the person Dr Bessemer had described was going to be tricky.

“Good afternoon, Trissie—is that your preferred name? Or Beatrice?” I asked her.

“Call me what you like.” Her voice was bone-dry. “But whatever it is you want to know, you can keep on wanting.”

I recognised the curl to her lip as she spoke. I’d seen that kind of bravado many times—from people who expected that help was on its way.

“I’ll call you Trissie, then,” I said. “Are you curious about the fact that two senior detectives were at Heeni Parata’s house yesterday?”

She shot me a glance that was both wry and puzzled. “Well, that wasn’t about me, as it turns out. It had something to do with Warren.”

“You got that exactly right.” I nodded. “Heeni has some old photos of Warren in a scrapbook. We’re very interested in those photographs.”

“Is that why you’re here?” she asked incredulously. “An old scrapbook?”

“It’s one of two reasons.” I waited. We needed her to engage, to start fishing.

She didn’t disappoint. “So, what’s the other reason?”

“I’ll get to that,” I said, “but first, could you tell us where the scrapbook is?”

She shook her head. “Nope. Never saw it.”

“Right.” I sat back in my chair, pretending to study her. “You know, I wouldn’t have thought Warren would be your style.”

She made a sour face. “He’s not. He’s nothing.”

“He’s a bottom-feeder,” I agreed. “I’ve seen his record. He drags people down. Way down. But look at you. You dress well. You’ve looked after yourself. I mean, that’s how I see it.”

She went silent on me. Was she softening… or shutting down?

I tried again. “You got caught up in a bad situation.”

She slung one foot over her knee and picked at the laces of her shoe. “Yeah, that’s how it went.”

Encouraged, I kept it going. “From what I heard, Warren’s trying to implicate you.”

A frown sprang to her face. “Implicate me in what?”

I put on my best innocent expression. “Child-neglect charges concerning Ariah. I told you we were here for two reasons—that’s the second one.”

“What?” she breathed. “Not my kid, not my problem.”

“Well, that’s where I’m coming from too,” I told her. “But if Warren says he was hardly there, and you were doing the bulk of the childcare, then it becomes a problem. Detective Wakeland and I saw the conditions of that house for ourselves—the dirt, the meth gear, the bathtub full of mouldy toys, the empty fridge, and the tiny little kid sitting outside in the freezing cold next to a steaming pile of dog shi⁠—”

“It was extreme stuff,” Wakeland said, cutting me off.

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