by Lisa Gardner
“Sophie?” I asked. My voice came out strained. Detective Warren appeared too harsh to be approaching a mother with bad news. But then again …
“No word,” she said curtly.
“What time is it?”
“Seven thirty-two.”
“After dark,” I murmured.
The blonde detective stared at me. No compassion, no sympathy. I wasn’t surprised. There were so few women in blue, you’d think we’d help each other out. But women were funny that way. So willing to turn on one of their own, especially a female perceived as weak, such as one who served as her husband’s personal punching bag.
I couldn’t imagine Detective Warren ever tolerating domestic abuse. If a man hit her, I bet she’d hit back twice as hard. Or taser him in the balls.
Detective Dodge was on the move. He’d commandeered two low-slung chairs and positioned them next to the bed. He gestured for D.D. to take a seat, both of them pulling up close. Cargill took the hint and perched on the edge of his own chair, still looking uncomfortable.
“My client isn’t up to answering a lot of questions, just yet,” he said. “Of course, she wants to do anything she can to assist in the search for her daughter. Is there information you need relevant to that investigation?”
“Who is Sophie’s biological father?” Detective Warren asked. “And where is he?”
I shook my head, a motion that immediately caused me to wince.
“I need a name,” Warren said impatiently.
I licked my dry lips, tried again. “She doesn’t have a father.”
“Impossible.”
“Not if you’re a slut and an alcoholic,” I said.
Cargill shot me a startled glance. The detectives, however, appeared intrigued.
“You’re an alcoholic?” Bobby Dodge asked evenly.
“Yes.”
“Who knows?”
“Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton, some of the guys.” I shrugged, trying not to move my bruised cheek. “I sobered up seven years ago, before I joined the force. It hasn’t been an issue.”
“Seven years ago?” D.D. repeated. “When you were pregnant with your daughter?”
“That’s right.”
“How old were you when you got pregnant with Sophie?”
“Twenty-one. Young and stupid. I drank too much, partied too hard. Then one day, I was pregnant and it turned out the people I thought were my friends only hung out with me because I was part of the circus. Minute I left the show, I never saw any of them again.”
“Male associates?” D.D. asked.
“Won’t help you. I didn’t sleep with men I knew. I slept with men I didn’t know. Generally older men who were interested in buying a young stupid girl plenty of alcohol. I got drunk. They got laid. Then we each went our own way.”
“Tessa,” my lawyer began.
I held up a hand. “It’s old news, and nothing that matters. I don’t know Sophie’s dad. I couldn’t have worked it out if I tried, and I didn’t want to try. I got pregnant. Then I grew up, wised up, and sobered up. That’s what matters.”
“Sophie ever ask?” Bobby asked.
“No. She was three when I met Brian. She started calling him Daddy within a matter of weeks. I don’t think she remembers anymore that we ever lived without him.”
“When did he first hit you?” D.D. asked. “One month into the marriage? Six? Maybe a whole year?”
I didn’t say anything, just stared up at the ceiling. I had my right hand under the thin green hospital blanket, gripping the blue button a nurse had retrieved for me.
“We’re going to need to see your medical records,” D.D. stated. She was staring at my lawyer, challenging him.
“I fell down the stairs,” I said, my lips twisting into a funny smile, because it was actually the truth, but they, of course, would interpret it as the appropriate lie. Irony. God save me from irony.
“Excuse me?”
“The bruise on my ribs … Should’ve de-iced the outdoor steps. Oops.”
Detective Warren gave me an incredulous look. “Sure. You fell. What, three, four times?”
“I think it was only twice.”
She didn’t appreciate my sense of humor. “Ever report your husband for battery?” she pressed.
I shook my head. Made the back of my skull ping-pong with pain while filling my good eye with tears.
“What about to a fellow trooper? Say, Trooper Lyons. Sounds like he’s good at helping out around the house.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Female friend?” Bobby spoke up. “What about a minister, or a call to a hotline? We are asking these things to help you, Tessa.”
The tears built up more. I blinked them away.
“Wasn’t that bad,” I said finally, staring up at the white ceiling tiles. “Not in the beginning. I thought … I thought I could control him. Get things back on track.”
“When did your husband start lifting weights?” Bobby asked.
“Nine months ago.”
“Looks like he packed on some pounds. Thirty pounds over nine months. Was he using supplements?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“But he was bulking up. Actively working on increasing muscle mass?”
Miserably, I nodded my head. All the times I told him he didn’t need to work out that hard. That he already looked good, was plenty strong. I should’ve known better, his obsessive need for tidiness, his compulsive drive to organize even the soup cans. I should’ve read the signs. But I hadn’t. As the saying goes, the wife is always the last to know.
“When did he first hit Sophie?” D.D. asked.
“He did not!” I fired to life.
“Really? You’re seriously gonna tell me, with your bashed-up skull and shattered cheek, that your brute of a dead husband hit you and only you, for as long as you both shall live?”
“He loved Sophie!”
“But he didn’t love you. That was the problem.”
“Maybe he was on steroids.” It was something. I looked at Bobby.
“ ’Roid rage doesn’t discriminate,” D.D. drawled. “Then he’d definitely whack both of you.”
“I’m just saying … He’d only been home from his last tour a couple of weeks, and this time … this time something had definitely changed.” That much wasn’t a lie. In fact, I hoped they would trace that thread. I could use a couple of crack detectives on my side. Certainly, Sophie deserved investigators smarter than me coming to the rescue.
“He was more violent,” Bobby stated carefully.
“Angry. All the time. I was trying to understand, hoping he’d settle back in. But it wasn’t working.” I twisted the top blanket with one hand, squeezed the button beneath the blanket with the other. “I just … I don’t know how it got to this. And that’s the truth. We loved each other. He was a good husband and a good father. Then …” More tears. Honest ones this time. I let a single drop trace down my cheek. “I don’t know how it got to this.”
The detectives fell quiet. My lawyer had relaxed beside me. I think he liked the tears, and probably the mention of possible steroid abuse, as well. That was a good angle.
“Where’s Sophie?” D.D. asked, less hostile now, more intent.
“Don’t know.” Another honest answer.
“Her boots are gone. Coat, too. Like someone bundled her up, took her away.”
“Mrs. Ennis?” I spoke up hopefully. “She’s Sophie’s caretaker—”
“We know who she is,” D.D. interjected. “She doesn’t have your child.”
“Oh.”
“Does Brian have a second home? Old ski lodge, fishing shack, anything like that?” Bobby this time.
I shook my head. I was getting tired, feeling my fatigue in spite of myself. I needed to get my endurance up. Build up my strength for the days and nights to come.
“Who else might know Sophie, remove her from your home?” D.D. insistent, not letting it go.
“I don’t know—”
<
br /> “Brian’s family?” she persisted.
“He has a mother, four sisters. The sisters are scattered, his mother lives in New Hampshire. You’d have to ask, but we never saw them that much. His schedule, mine.”
“Your family?”
“I don’t have a family,” I said automatically.
“That’s not what the police file said.”
“What?”
“What?” my lawyer echoed.
Neither detective looked at him. “Ten years ago. When you were questioned by the police for the death of nineteen-year-old Thomas Howe. According to the paperwork, it was your own father who supplied the gun.”
I stared at D. D. Warren. Just stared and stared and stared.
“Those records are sealed,” I said softly.
“Tessa …” my lawyer began again, not sounding happy.
“But I told Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton about the incident when I first started on the force,” I stated levelly. “I didn’t want there to be any misunderstandings.”
“You mean, like one of your fellow officers discovering you’d shot and killed a kid?”
“Shot and killed a kid?” I mimicked. “I was sixteen. I was the kid! Why the hell do you think they sealed the records? Anyway, the DA never brought charges, ruling it justifiable homicide. Thomas assaulted me. I was just trying to get away.”
“Shot him with a twenty-two,” Detective Warren continued as if I’d never spoken. “Which you just so happened to have on you. Also, no signs of physical assault—”
“You have been speaking to my father,” I said bitterly. I couldn’t help myself.
D.D. tilted her head, eyeing me coolly. “He never believed you.”
I didn’t say anything. Which was answer enough.
“What happened that night, Tessa? Help us understand, because this really doesn’t look good for you.”
I clutched the button tighter. Ten years was a long time. And yet, not long enough.
“I was spending the night at my best friend’s house,” I said at last. “Juliana Howe. Thomas was her older brother. The last few times I’d been over, he’d made some comments. If we were alone in a room together, he stood too close, made me feel uncomfortable. But I was sixteen. Boys, particularly older boys, made me uncomfortable.”
“Then why’d you spend the night?” D.D. wanted to know.
“Juliana was my best friend,” I said quietly, and in that moment I felt it all again. The terror. Her tears. My loss.
“You brought a gun,” the detective continued.
“My father gave me the gun,” I corrected. “I’d gotten a job in the food court at the mall. I often worked till eleven, then had to walk out to my car in the dark. He wanted me to have some protection.”
“So he gave you a gun?” D.D. sounded incredulous.
I smiled. “You’d have to know my father. Picking me up in person would have meant getting involved. Handing me a twenty-two semiauto I had no idea how to use, on the other hand, got him off the hook. So that’s what he did.”
“Describe that night.” Bobby spoke up quietly.
“I went to Juliana’s house. Her brother was out; I was happy. We made popcorn and had a Molly Ringwald movie marathon—Sixteen Candles, followed by Breakfast Club. I fell asleep on the sofa. When I woke up all the lights were off and someone had put a blanket over me. I assumed Juliana had headed up to bed. I was just going to follow when her brother walked through the front door. Thomas was drunk. He spotted me. He …”
Both detectives and my lawyer waited.
“I tried to get around him,” I said finally. “He cornered me against the sofa, pressed me down into it. He was bigger, stronger. I was sixteen. He was nineteen. What could I do?”
My voice trailed off again. I swallowed.
“May I have some water?” I asked.
My lawyer found the pitcher bedside, poured me a glass. My hand was shaking when I raised the plastic cup. I figured they couldn’t blame me for the show of nerves. I drank the whole cup, then set it down again. Given how long it had been since I’d last given a statement, I had to think this through. Consistency was everything, and I couldn’t afford a mistake this late in the game.
Three pairs of eyes waited for me.
I took another deep breath. Gripped the blue button and thought about life, the patterns we made, the cycles we couldn’t escape.
Sacrifice judiciously.
“Just about when … Thomas was going to do what he was going to do, I felt my purse, against my hip. He had me pinned with the weight of his body while he worked on the zipper of his jeans. So I reached down with my right hand. I found my purse. I got the gun. And when he wouldn’t get off me, I pulled the trigger.”
“In the living room of your best friend’s house?” Detective Warren said.
“Yes.”
“Must’ve made a helluva mess.”
“Twenty-two’s not that big of a gun,” I said.
“What about your best friend? How’d she take all this?”
I kept my gaze on the ceiling. “He was her brother. Of course she loved him.”
“So … DA clears you. Court seals the records. But your father, your best friend. They never forgave you, did they.”
She made it a statement, not a question, so I didn’t answer.
“Is that when you started drinking?” Detective Dodge asked.
I nodded wordlessly.
“Left home, dropped out of school …” he continued.
“I’m hardly the first officer with a misspent youth,” I retorted stiffly.
“You got pregnant,” Detective Warren said. “Grew up, wised up, and sobered up. That’s a lotta sacrifice for a kid,” she commented.
“No. That’s love for my daughter.”
“Best thing that ever happened to you. Only family you have left.”
D.D. still sounded skeptical, which I guess was warning enough.
“You ever hear of decomposition odor analysis?” the detective continued, her voice picking up. “Arpad Vass, a research chemist and forensic anthropologist, has developed a technique for identifying the more than four hundred body vapors that emanate from decaying flesh. Turns out, these vapors get trapped in soil, fabrics—even, say, the carpet in the back of a vehicle. With the use of an electronic body sniffer, Dr. Vass can identify the molecular signature of body decomp left behind. For example, he can scan carpet that has been removed from a vehicle and actually see the vapors formed into the shape of a child’s dead body.”
I made a noise. Might have been a gasp. Might have been a moan. Beneath the sheet, my hand tightened.
“We just sent Dr. Vass the carpet from your husband’s SUV. What’s he gonna find, Tessa? Is this going to be your last glimpse of your daughter’s body?”
“Stop. That is insensitive and inappropriate!” My lawyer was already on his feet.
I didn’t really hear him. I was remembering pulling back the covers, gazing, horrified, at Sophie’s empty bed.
All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.…
“What happened to your daughter!” Detective Warren demanded to know.
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
“You came home? She was already gone?”
“I searched the house,” I whispered. “The garage, sunroom, attic, yard. I searched and searched and searched. I demanded that he tell me what he did.”
“What happened, Tessa? What did your husband do to Sophie?”
“I don’t know! She was gone. Gone! I went to work and when I came home …” I stared at D.D. and Bobby, feeling my heart beat wildly again. Sophie. Vanished. Just like that.
All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth.…
“What did he do, Trooper Leoni? Tell us what Brian did.”
“He ruined our family. He lied to me. He betrayed us. He destroyed … everything.”
Another deep breath. I looked both detectives in the eye: “And that’s when I knew he ha
d to die.”
13
What do you think of Tessa Leoni?” Bobby asked five minutes later, as they headed back to HQ.
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” D.D. said crossly.
“She seems deliberate with her replies.”
“Please. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she doesn’t trust cops.”
“Well, advanced rates of alcoholism, suicide, and domestic violence aside, what’s not to love?”
D.D. grimaced, but got his point. Law enforcement officers weren’t exactly walking advertisements for well-adjusted human beings. Lotta cops graduated from the school of hard knocks. And most of them swore that’s what it took to work these streets.
“She changed her story,” D.D. said.
“Noticed that myself.”
“We’ve gone from her shooting her husband first, then discovering that her daughter was missing, to she discovered Sophie was missing first, then ended up killing her husband.”
“Different timelines, same results. Either way Trooper Leoni was beaten to a pulp, and either way, six-year-old Sophie is gone.”
D.D. shook her head. “Inconsistency about one detail makes you have to question all details. If she lied about the timeline, what other pieces of her story are false?”
“A liar is a liar is a liar,” Bobby said softly.
She glanced over at him, then tightened her hands on the wheel. Tessa’s sob story had gotten to him. Bobby had always had a weakness for damsels in distress. Whereas D.D. had been spot-on with her first impression of Tessa Leoni: pretty and vulnerable, which was trying D.D.’s nerves.
D.D. was tired. It was after eleven and her new, high maintenance body was begging for sleep. Instead, she and Bobby were returning to Roxbury for the first taskforce meeting. Clock was still ticking. Media needed a statement. DA demanded an update. Brass just wanted the homicide case closed and the missing child found, right now.
In the old days, D.D. would be brewing six pots of coffee and eating half a dozen donuts to get through the night. Now, instead, she was armed with a fresh bottle of water and a package of saltines. They weren’t getting the job done.
She’d texted Alex as they were leaving the hospital: Won’t see you tonight, sorry bout tomorrow. He’d texted back: Saw the news. Good luck.
