Free To Love and to Kill by M. William Phelps Page B

after midnight, indicating that the MCSO wanted her to come back in and chat some more. Would she mind?
    â€œYeah, okay,” Emilia begrudgingly said.
    Buie sent a patrol car to pick her up. What he didn’t tell Emilia was that between the time she had gone back home and then, he had developed new information about the case.
    And it involved her.
    It was 12:39 A.M. when Emilia sat back down in the interview suite at Major Crimes to give her third interview within the span of about ten hours. She didn’t know it, but Josh was getting rustled awake from his cell to be interviewed, so they could record it and then play back sections for her if Josh said anything that could help—a standard police tactic when two people are thought to be involved and know more than they are sharing. Buie and Spivey were certain that between the two of them—Josh and Emilia—they would figure out where Heather was and what had happened to her. The hope at this point was that she had been kidnapped and was being held somewhere. Or perhaps Josh had threatened Heather and had scared her into leaving town. Thus far, there was no indication that anything deadly had happened to Heather.
    â€œHow are you?” Buie asked Emilia as she settled in.
    â€œExhausted,” Emilia said.
    â€œYou and me both.” Buie took a pause. “Listen, I had you brought back here because we developed some new information, okay? However, you are not under arrest.”
    Emilia, who seemed calm, but very tired, nodded, indicating that she understood. Still, that last comment from Buie seemed to be serious. This was not a conversation anymore, Emilia knew. She was being interrogated.
    Buie got serious. He said, “Because I had a patrol car bring you back here, okay, I need to question you—okay?” He explained that before he asked his first question, the MCSO needed to advise Emilia of her rights. “These rights are just so you and I can talk.”
    Emilia said she understood.
    After Buie read Emilia her Miranda rights, as a professional formality, he asked if she was ready and willing to talk to him. At this point, Emilia could have said no, that she wanted a lawyer. But it sounded as though she had nothing to hide.
    â€œI mean, I don’t see why not,” Emilia said.
    Buie stood. He approached Emilia and explained: “Before we start, I want to go get something—I want you to listen to something, okay? Then I want you to tell me your thoughts after that. Okay?”
    Emilia again nodded yes. She was curious as to what was going on.
    Buie had interviewed Josh during the intervening time Emilia had left the MCSO, returned and sat down again with them. Josh was actually just in the adjacent room from where Emilia was now sitting. Buie had recorded that interview with Josh. When he returned to Emilia after a brief break, Buie had a tape recorder with him. He had obviously gotten something he could use from Josh. He placed it on the table in front of Emilia, who looked up, as if to say, “What the hell are you doing?”
    Buie didn’t say much. He hit the PLAY button and pointed to the tape recorder. “Listen.”
    The interview ran several hours. In it, Josh had admitted to knowing where Heather was, without giving away the location, what happened to her, why she was gone, or if she was alive or dead.
    While the tape played, changing his tone from friendly to very serious, Buie said, “You can stop me at any time, okay, but Josh has got you driving the bus! He’s saying that you told him. . . .” Buie was obviously no longer the good cop, who was just having a friendly conversation with Emilia. The MCSO had information that Emilia was involved in some way. She needed to explain her role.
    Emilia was confused. Told him what? What is going on here? she wondered.
    She felt blindsided. What had Josh gone and done now? Had he turned on her? Was he lying to them about her? This worried