Free The Tenderness of Thieves by Donna Freitas Page B

can take a long time for memories to get straightened out. Details sometimes return months, even years later. I know this is hard on you, but I wanted to see if you’d remembered anything else. Any little detail, even one that doesn’t seem relevant. You never know, it might be the thing that breaks open this whole investigation.”
    I closed my eyes. Told myself to breathe. In. Out.
    Was I going to do it? Was I going to say something about Patrick? Or about his boots?
    “Jane, you’re like a daughter to me, you know that. I hate doing this to you. I hate that this happened to you. To your family. Your mom. Geez.”
    I opened my eyes again. Officer Connolly was shaking his head with sadness. His hand was red from gripping his mug so tightly. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to tell you much,” I said. “I really am. I was in the dark, and a lot of the time I was blindfolded.”
    “I know, Jane, I know. But like I said, even the smallest detail could be important.”
    I stared into his round face, his kind eyes, all classic Irish features and classic red hair. My father and Officer Connolly had been friends. Ridden alongside each other one year in a squad car. “There is one thing,” I said. The words tiptoed from my mouth. Tested the air. “It’s probably nothing.”
    Everything about Officer Connolly lifted right then. Head, eyebrows, chin, shoulders. He nodded. “Go on.” Even his voice had more altitude.
    “Before they”—I swallowed. My throat was sandy. The beach after the tide has pulled away—“before they tied the blindfold, there was this flash of metal near the floor. It was a boot. One of them had metal-toed boots.”
    Officer Connolly was nodding so hard he was bouncing. The chair squeaked with it. “Good, good.” He grabbed a pen and wrote something on a yellow legal pad. The edges of the paper curled upward in the humidity. He smiled at me, all encouragement and approval. “You never know.” He flicked the top of the pen once, then twice, the ballpoint disappearing, then reappearing. “That could be the missing piece that solves this.”
    “Okay.”
    Officer Connolly held the pen poised and ready for more. Black ink had stained his index finger. “Anything else, Jane?”
    My lips parted.
Patrick McCallen.
Possible owner of the boots. His name was right there, heavy on my tongue. But he’d been so nice to me last night—or he’d tried to be. It didn’t make sense. I needed to be sure before I gave him up. So I shook my head. “Nothing else,” I told Officer Connolly.
    “All righty, all righty,” he said, still nodding, though less forcefully than before. “You done good today. You done real good, Janie.” That name from his mouth, Janie, the nickname from my childhood, before I’d grown up to be just Jane. Officer Connolly stood, and the chair creaked with relief.
    “Sorry I’m not more helpful.”
    “Nah, you’ve been helpful. Don’t you worry. Thanks for coming down here today. I’ll show you out now.”
    “That’s okay. I know my way.”
    He sighed long and heavy, like the world was pressing him down. Looked at me with more sadness in his tired green eyes. “That you do now. That you do. If you’re sure.”
    “I’m sure, but thanks.”
    Just before I left his office, he stopped me one last time. “Remember, if there’s anything else that comes back to you, anything at all . . .” He trailed off.
    “I know. Anything.” My hand was already on the doorknob, turning it. “I wish I wasn’t your only witness.” I said this in a small voice, so small I don’t even know if he heard me. “I wish with all my heart that the only other witness wasn’t dead,” I added in an even smaller one, before I was through the door and pushing my way outside into the gray of the cloudy day.

February 19
    That night, I’d fallen asleep by accident. Head resting against the wall of the reading nook, face turned away from the lamplight. It was only a nap, but it was long