Free A Perfect Life by Mike Stewart Page B

the arrival of the cops—everything had been moving too quickly to be processed. His mind felt sluggish, his thoughts bogged in a fog of sleeplessness. “Doesn't make much sense, does it?”
    “No, Scott. No, it doesn't.” When Walker spoke again, his voice had grown calm and quiet. “But I'll tell you what does make some sense. It makes some sense that maybe those two boys did have somethin' to do with this Hunter woman's death, that maybe they broke in, woke you up, and confessed to the murder in a way that nobody's gonna believe. Even if you got some of it on tape . . . there ain't no witnesses. Think about it: Who the hell's gonna believe you didn't stage the tape to support the rest of your story?” Walker leaned forward to look up at the garage. “Somebody wanted you to sound like you were makin' all this up, Scott.”
    Silence filled the interior of the Cadillac like frost in a meat locker. Seconds passed, and the logic of Cannonball's argument settled through the mush inside the young man's skull. “Oh, hell.” Scott's words sounded weak, his voice deflated. “I was worrying about what they might've taken. Instead . . .” His voice trailed off.
    Walker finished the thought. “Instead you should've been worryin' about is what those two boys left. If they didn't break in to take somethin', maybe they broke in to leave somethin' behind.”
    “Like . . . you mean to plant some evidence from Patricia Hunter's murder?”
    “Yeah,” Walker said, “that's what I mean.”
    Scott stepped back out into the winter storm and ran over frozen ground to his apartment.

CHAPTER 10
    Scott was halfway up the steps before he realized he couldn't just rush in and order the police out of his home. The time for keeping the cops out of this was past. Cedris met him at the front door.
    “What's the hurry?”
    Scott pushed by him into the room. “Cold.” He glanced back. “How about closing the door?”
    Cedris pushed the door shut. “We were getting ready to go back over your statement. If you wouldn't mind stepping into . . .”
    Scott's mind raced. If he kept quiet and just let them find some kind of planted evidence, he was screwed. If he spoke up and told Cedris that he suspected the burglars of planting evidence, he was screwed with an explanation. The latter sounded better than the former. Not much, but still better. “Detective? My friend wanted to know what happened. It occurred to him that the burglar told me to call the cops for a reason.”
    “Is that right?” Cedris smiled. “Well, did your friend have a theory? I'll take all the help I can get.”
    “The burglar knew about Patricia Hunter's murder, right?”
    The man looked at Scott like he'd lost his mind. “Uh-huh.”
    “Guy even told me to call 911. So, my friend says, what if they came here to leave something, to hide something in all this mess they made? Doesn't that make some kind of sense? You know, maybe they planned to plant some kind of evidence to shift the blame to me or maybe just to shift it away from them. Then I woke up and popped one of them in the stomach with a bat. After that, they had to improvise, right?”
    Cedris said nothing.
    “I mean, the guy I hit went nuts and trashed my living room. And—”
    “And the burglar you talked with through the door, he improvised admitting the murder of Patricia Hunter?”
    Scott stopped short. “Hell, I don't know. Nothing about this makes sense.”
    The lieutenant scratched his jaw. “So you're changing your earlier statement.”
    “Hell, no. I'm just trying to help. I'm not changing anything. This just occurred to me, that's all.”
    Cedris flipped back a page in his little notebook. “I thought you said this occurred to your friend.”
    “Right.”
    “Well, which is it, Mr. Thomas? Was this new theory your idea or your friend's?”
    “I'm trying to be helpful, and you keep twisting my words.” Scott was beyond exhausted, and he could feel his face becoming flushed with anger and