“I’m telling you, I’m innoc — I didn’t do it!  You’ve got the wrong girl. Definitely the wrong girl!”

Caroline had broken countless laws in the last decade and bent probably twice that many — mostly variations in grift, fraud, and outright theft — and had never been caught.  A great many times, her victims were too embarrassed to report her. Sometimes, they didn’t even realize that they’d been ripped off until she was long gone. The rest of the time…

Well, she was very good at covering her tracks.

That was what made this so freaking frustrating.  

She banged on the bars again.  “Oy! You’re barking up the wrong tree.  I’m telling you, I didn’t kill him!”

“Pipe down in there.  You’ll get your chance to tell it to the ADA and we’ll see what she has to say.  But you were in his apartment…”

“He left the key for me!  Look, if you give me my phone, I can show you the e-mail chain.”

“No phones for prisoners.  Besides,” the officer sneered, “why would someone like him give you his keys?”

He was wealthy, in a grunge sort of way, Caroline had to admit.  “He’s my cousin… distant cousin on my mother’s side.”

The thing was, that was even true.  The whole thing was the truth.

“I’ve heard that before.”  The officer snorted at her.  “Look, save it for the DA.”

She was going about this all wrong.  Caroline looked at the officer. The officer looked at her.  With a long sigh, Caroline “gave in.”

She wasn’t good at truth.  On the other hand, lies…

“Look, I probably shouldn’t tell you this.  I could get in a lot of trouble. But that guy, Ted Mariner.  There’s a reason I was in his apartment…”

As the officer leaned forward, Caroline knew her hours in the jail cell were numbered.  Now, to get rid of those fingerprints….

👮

Written to Inspector Caracal‘s prompt. Loosely based on a Changeling: the Dreaming character I never really got to play…