Free None So Blind by Barbara Fradkin Page B

you’ve got blood all over you. ‘I don’t remember, it’s all a blank.’ How do you disprove that?”
    He turned from the dishwasher to face her. Hannah was in her first year of a criminology degree, but in typical Hannah fashion, until now she had shared almost nothing with them. Now he realized she was wrestling with important issues of justice, evil, and the dark labyrinth of the human mind. Heady ideas for a twenty-year-old, especially after all she had been through in her young life.
    She seemed to be asking him to help her rather than argue with her.
    “That’s the big question,” he said gently. “I’m bushed. Let’s make some tea and go sit in the living room.”
    She seemed embarrassed. Ready to flee again. He touched her arm as he moved past to fill the kettle. “I really could use your thoughts on this.”
    Rosten’s psyche — the contradictions and inconsistencies — had always confounded him. As a young detective, he had shrugged off his doubts. He was not a shrink, he’d told himself. It was not his job to analyze or to explain, merely to follow the trail of evidence.
    Yet the psyche was at the core of it all.
    Hannah said nothing as they prepared two cups of tea and headed into the living room. “I don’t really know too much,” she muttered, fussing with the cushions as she prepared to settle in. “It’s just a first-year paper. Short.”
    “All the same, you’ve researched the theory of amnesia. I know Rosten and the circumstances of the murder. Maybe we can tease it out.”
    She twirled her cup. “I know Rosten too. I used him as a case study.”
    His eyes widened, prompting her to scowl. “I’d have to be living under a rock in this house not to hear you and Sharon talking these past few months.”
    His jaw dropped in dismay, but she cut him off. “Calm down, I didn’t report any of that stuff. I just read the court transcripts.”
    “Okay,” he said carefully. “What’s your take on him?”
    She fidgeted. Blew on her tea. “I keep coming back to why he would have killed her in the first place? He could have slept with her; lots of profs sleep with their students without a bit of trouble.”
    “I always figured she was going to blow the whistle on him. Even back then, universities disapproved of faculty seducing students. He would have faced not only gossip and scandal but also disciplinary action. Possibly the denial of tenure when it came up. Not to mention repercussions with his wife. She might have left him and taken his children away. As indeed she did.”
    He could see Hannah weighing his words. Rejecting them. “But did you have any evidence that this girl, Jackie, was threatening to rat him out?”
    “No. We never even had proof they were having a private relationship, other than the tutoring.”
    “So she didn’t talk to girlfriends? Her mom? Even just hinting at it?”
    He shook his head.
    “See, that’s the thing, that’s not normal. Girls talk about stuff like that. Unless we’re really ashamed or afraid, we’d be sounding out what we should do. She didn’t even mention this to her sister? Weren’t they almost the same age?”
    Green rifled through long-forgotten memories. Julia and Jackie were four years apart but had never been close. Their temperaments were too different, and because Julia wasn’t attending university, they had few experiences in common. But more than that, after the murder no one had wanted to push Julia to talk about her sister. At first she’d been convinced Jackie had run away to avoid dealing with her stepfather when he was drunk, and she’d been inconsolable when Jackie’s body was found. She had blamed Lucas and become hysterical the moment anyone questioned her reasons.
    “I don’t think her sister had any idea that a relationship was going on,” he said finally.
    Hannah looked unconvinced. “That’s a massive secret to keep from your friends and your sister. Maybe there was no relationship. Maybe Rosten hit on her