“That’s what she says now.”
“Where was it?” David persisted. “The grocery store? The movies? Driving along on the highway? Or did you see her while you were out biking? Is that how you picked your victims?”
Burke slowly rocked back. “I’ve tried to be nice to you, but it doesn’t make any difference. You still badger me regardless.”
“You and I are not friends,” David pointed out. “We will never be friends. Just answer the question.”
“I already did. In court.” He’d claimed he found her pulled over on the side of the road, lost and in need of directions. He’d said she invited him to her house.
Which was total bullshit, of course.
“Why not repeat the lies now?” David said. “Afraid you’ll get tangled up in them?”
“Maybe if you didn’t get a hard-on every time you think of Skye, you’d be able to see that I got the worst of the encounter. I lost a lot of blood that night. I lost my dental practice, my house and most of my belongings. My family was publicly humiliated. And I’ve spent the last three years living in a four-by-ten cage, sleeping on a steel bed with a two-inch mattress. When I get to go outside, I spend my time ambling around a crowded cement yard between a cinder-block wall and a scaffold filled with guards holding rifles. And you know what I do? I count the holes made by the bullets that’ve been fired into the yard while trying to avoid any altercation that’ll start the bullets raining down again.” He folded his arms. “It’s not safe in here.”
David laughed. “That’s a bit dramatic even for you. They use rubber bullets.”
“They didn’t used to. Anyway, have you ever been shot with a rubber bullet?”
“You look healthy enough to me.”
“It’s not safe,” he repeated. “Why else would I ask my wife not to visit?”
The sudden mention of Jane took David by surprise. Oliver had never wanted to talk about his wife before. Why was she on his mind today? “Hasn’t she been coming?”
“I haven’t seen her since the first three months.” He studied his nails, which were neatly clipped, as always. “I don’t want her here if they’re going to hassle her.”
David decided to play along, let him talk. “Why would they hassle her?”
He pursed his lips. “You know the rules. She can’t wear any denim-colored clothing so she won’t get mistaken for an inmate. No shorts that show more than two inches of her thigh, no shirts that reveal her figure—no underwire bra, for Pete’s sake. What woman doesn’t wear an underwire bra these days? Jane’s busty—like Skye.”
Like Skye? The allusion bothered David, but he fought the impulse to clench his teeth.
“She needs the extra lift it gives her,” Oliver continued. “But she doesn’t want to explain that to a dirty old prison guard.”
“Your wife can’t make a few minor clothing adjustments?” David asked.
Staring morosely at his feet, Burke didn’t answer.
David rested his elbows on the narrow ledge in front of him. “Or is there more to the story?”
“Being together but not being able to be together is more painful than not seeing her,” he said after a long pause. “You want to touch but you can’t. Not really.” His chest rose as he took a deep breath. “Anyway, they subjected her to a degrading search every time she came. And they purposely frightened her by warning her that if she was taken hostage while she was here they wouldn’t bargain for her release.” He propped the phone against one shoulder and threaded his thin, milk-white fingers around one knee. “Of course, after that, a woman wouldn’t want to come back. How do you think that would make the mother of a young child feel, to hear she could be taken hostage by one of the animals in this place and no one would care?”
He consistently separated himself from regular criminals, which confirmed what David had known all along—he saw a skewed version of reality, one so tainted by his own perspective he couldn’t recognize the truth. “Any other policy would put visitors in even more danger.”
Growing restless, Burke shifted in his seat. “But if something were to happen to her, who’d take care of our daughter?”
“Jane’s waiting for you, then? You’re still together?”
A small furrow formed in his wide forehead, and it occurred to David that he looked every bit as unlikely a killer as Scott Peterson. “Of course. I told you, she doesn’t come because it’s too hard. And too embarrassing. She’s never even known a convict before. And now her husband’s in prison?”
“There’s only one person to blame for that.”
A muscle twitched in Burke’s cheek. “It’s not who you think.”
“You brought this on yourself.”
“I don’t want to talk about the past.” Burke cleared his throat. “My wife knows Skye’s a liar. Jane believes in me.”
It was all David could do not to shake his head at the tremendous denial that kind of faith would require. Didn’t Jane Burke realize how dangerous living with someone like Oliver could be? Didn’t she want to do all she could to protect their daughter from future heartache if not physical harm?
“You’d be crazy to abuse that trust,” he muttered.
“I’m not going to abuse it.” He sounded so resolute that David almost believed him. It was that harmless-looking face, that “I’m no different from you” attitude. It convinced practically everyone he was harmless. But David was finished with The Oliver Burke Show. This interview wasn’t getting him anywhere.
Bringing an abrupt end to the meeting, he told Oliver he’d be watching him and hung up. But Oliver got him to grab the phone again by tapping on the glass.
“How is Skye, by the way?” he asked, as if truly concerned. “Has she recovered?”
“She’s fine. Completely over it,” David replied, but he knew it was a lie. If she was over it, she’d quit chasing ghosts, quit running herself ragged trying to help every victim in Sacramento.
“Good. And how does she like her new home?”
David’s nerves tingled with heightened alert. Skye had only relocated a year ago. “What gives you the idea she moved?”
“I can’t imagine she’d stay where she was.”
That was no answer. Some people did stay, for whatever reason. “Skye has nothing to do with you. If you’re as smart as you think you are, you’ll leave her entirely alone.”