‘You said Clarkson made phone calls earlier. Did you hear who he was talking to? What he was saying?’
‘It was all muffled.’
‘What about the nameAbby. Does that ring a bell?’
‘I’m sorry, Nella ...’
‘Ma’am?’ One of the forensic officers was making a beeline towards her. ‘This is still an active crime scene.’
‘Ian, I’ll talk to you guys later.’ Nella hung up on his heavy breaths and turned to the forensics woman. ‘This is my office. And you need to make up your mind if you’re treating this as a suicide or murder. If it’s the former, then you need to get out. If it’s murder, you need to re-do every search you’ve just done.’
‘Youneed to leave, Ms Barbarani. I don’t care who your family are.’
‘Well, you should care whoIam. See that door – whose name is that? Or are basic literacy skills not a prerequisite for entry into the police force?’
‘Nella.’ Jett’s voice came from behind her, not from the car, where he should be. ‘Let them do their job, c’mon.’
‘They’re doing it wrong,’ she snapped, loud enough for the forensic techs to hear, but she allowed him to pull her towards Bessy.
‘They think he did it to himself,’ she said as Jett shut the driver’s door. Exhaustion pressed Nella’s bones into the leather as Bessy sighed under their weight.
‘Grey said as much. But wait for the coroner to determine the official cause of death. At least they’re treating it as a crime scene.’
Jett’s face looked older, somehow, his scar deeper, darker. Nella had always wondered what it would feel like if she traced it with her finger. She’d always felt like she could stare at his face forever and still find something she hadn’t seen before, like even his face was deliberately keeping secrets from her.
She shook her head. ‘I knew him. He wouldn’t do that. This has to be the La Marcas. Maybe Forrest again.’
‘Nel.’ Jett pinched the bridge of his nose and her stomach tightened; he always did that when he thought she was being unreasonable. Bratty. ‘I really don’t think this was the La Marcas. Sometimes there are no signs.’
Her breath caught. She knew Jett well enough to realise he wasn’t just regurgitating mental health awareness month catch phrases. ‘Who?’ she asked gently.
‘My brother.’ Jett’s jaw was tight. ‘Well, foster brother. Ray.’
‘How old were you?’ Should she put a hand on his shoulder? No, they didn’t touch each other like that. But that’s what she’d do if it was Grey or Ian, so why couldn’t she do it with Jett?
‘Eleven.’ He frowned out the window, the lights from the cop cars casting his face in blue. ‘He was sixteen.’
Her heart petrified. ‘I’m sorry, Jett.’
‘My point is, he was the happiest, loudest, most confident person I knew. Sometimes there are just no signs.’
‘But now that you know, surely you can look back and notice things that were there?’
Jett’s lip twitched. She wanted to take it back.
‘We’re not talking about Ray anymore, are we?’ He watched her carefully.
Shehadbeen talking about Ray. But Jett had always been like a fucking submarine when it came to her underlying meaning. He dove right down and could somehow see what was beneath her snarky comments. Maybe on some level she’d been talking about six months ago. How she hadn’t seen the signs. Hadn’t been able to save her father. Her sister.
She should have known it was coming.
She didn’t want to go there. ‘That’s some heavy baggage to start carrying so young,’ she said instead, picking at a thread on her tracksuit pants. Every time she thought of Jett as a kid her insides tensed up. He hadn’t told her much even though she’d been so curious about his parents when she was younger and stupid, asking too many questions.
‘Which one was Black?’ she’d asked.
‘I don’t even know ifI’mBlack,’ he’d said. ‘My mum was white – says so on my birth certificate. No info on my dad. All I know is that he wasn’t born here – he immigrated from somewhere, one of the other six continents. Probably not Antarctica, but who knows.’
‘Don’tyouwant to know?’ Some part of her had secretly wished his past was her own, that she didn’t know her father, that she’d been left somewhere, abandoned, with nowhere to go but up. Instead of where she stood, trying to balance on a pinnacle with everyone tearing at her flesh, hoping to rip her down.
