The Mole in His Bed novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Missing Persons

Judith Ames opened her door at two in the morning in a gray robe.

Her reading glasses were pushed up on her head, and she held a gun.

"I told you I wouldn't hear any of it," she said to me. Then she saw who stood behind me. "And you brought him."

"Her mother is gone," Neil said. "I need to make a statement."

"A statement about what?"

"About me."

She looked at him for a long moment, then stepped back from the door.

I spread the photographs of the forty pages across her table first, because I had taken them on my phone in the car, one by one, with Neil driving.

Judith read the first page and stopped breathing for a moment.

"Where did you get this?"

"A hole in my own hall closet."

"And the notes on the wall?"

"Mine," Neil said.

He took the chair across from her, and set his badge on the table, and his gun beside it.

"Turn on your recorder," he said.

Judith switched it on.

"Lieutenant Neil Garrick, Baltimore PD, Major Crimes," he said.

"On the forty-first day after Detective Cora Tallant's reported death, I found proof the evidence against her was forged."

"I told nobody. I kept the proof from the chief, from the task force and from the state."

"For four years and ten months I let her mother believe her daughter was a traitor."

I stood at the counter with my arms folded and said nothing.

"On Monday I stood in your courtroom and swore that she sold out a hundred and twelve officers."

"I knew it was false when I said it."

"Do you understand what you're telling me?" Judith said.

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