The Mole in His Bed novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Played Over the Pier

I walked up that aisle with four thousand people watching, and nobody spoke.

I had walked into rooms like this one for five years, and I had always been somebody else.

This time I wore my own name.

Somebody hissed as I passed the tenth row, and somebody else began to cry.

Winnie's hand shot out from the third row and caught mine.

She squeezed once, hard, and let go.

I climbed the steps to the podium with my knees shaking.

Paula stepped back from the microphone with a face full of sorrow.

"Thank you for coming," she said, so only I could hear. "I did hope you would."

I took the microphone in my left hand, with the burn scar showing under the cuff.

"My name is Cora Tallant," I said.

The sound system carried it out over the water, and came back off the granite.

"Five years ago I was a detective in Major Crimes. I wasn't a traitor, and I never took a dollar from Elias Crane."

Murmurs rose and broke.

"I was sent inside his company by the Captain, whose name is fourth in the second column."

"He wrote it all down in a brown notebook. Sergeant Crowe signed it out of evidence a week after the raid."

"That's a lie," Paula said, clearly, to the crowd. "You see what she does? She uses their dead."

"Then show them the notebook."

"It was destroyed. Everyone knows it was destroyed."

"The log says you signed it out, Paula."

"And I burned it myself, with my hands shaking, because it was a lie!" Her voice cracked on the last word. "The man who wrote it was dying of guilt."

She did tears so well.

Two rows of widows were looking at her with open sympathy, and I felt the whole day tilt away from me.

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