Love You More: A Novel

by Lisa Gardner

  She’d agreed to keep his secret, except after that he’d raped her again and again. Until it’d been half a dozen times, and he was no longer drunk and he no longer apologized. He told her it was her fault. If she didn’t wear those kind of clothes, if she wouldn’t flaunt herself right under his nose …

  So she started to wear baggier clothes and stopped doing her hair and makeup. And maybe that helped, or maybe it was just because he went away to college, where it turned out he’d found lots of other girls to rape. Mostly, however, he left her alone. Except for the weekends.

  She lost her ability to concentrate at school, always had dark shadows under her eyes, because if it was Friday, then Tommy might come home so she had to be vigilant. She added a lock to her room. Two weeks later, she came home to find her entire bedroom door splintered into bits.

  “Terribly sorry,” Tommy had said over dinner. “Shouldn’t have been running in the hall like that.” And her parents had beamed at him because he was their oldest son and they adored him.

  One Monday morning Juliana broke. Went to school, started to cry, couldn’t stop. Tessa tugged her into the end stall of the girl’s restroom, then stood there until Juliana stopped weeping and started talking.

  Together, the two girls had devised a plan. Tessa’s father had a gun. She would get it.

  “Not like he’s ever paying attention,” Tessa had said with a shrug. “How hard can it be?”

  So Tessa would get the gun and bring it over on Friday night. They would have a sleepover. Tessa would stand guard. When Tommy showed up, Juliana would produce the weapon. She’d point the gun at him and tell him if he ever touched her again, she would shoot off his balls.

  The girls practiced the phrase several times. They liked it.

  It had made sense, huddled in a bathroom stall. Tommy, like any bully, needed to be confronted. Then he would back down, and Juliana would be safe again.

  It had all made perfect sense.

  By Thursday, Tessa had the gun. Friday night, she came over to the house and gave it to Juliana.

  Then they sat together on the sofa and, a bit nervously, started their movie marathon.

  Tessa had fallen asleep on the floor. Juliana on the couch. But both had woken up when Tommy came home.

  For a change, he didn’t look at his sister. Instead, he’d kept his eyes glued on Tessa’s chest.

  “Like ripe apples,” he’d said, already lurching for her when Juliana triumphantly whipped out the handgun.

  She pointed it at her brother. Screamed at him to go away. Leave her and Tessa alone, or else.

  Except Tommy had looked right at her and started laughing. “Or else what? Do you even know how to shoot that thing? I’d check the safety if I were you.”

  Juliana had immediately raised the gun to check the safety. At that moment Tommy had lunged for her, going after the weapon.

  Tessa was screaming. Juliana was screaming. Tommy was snarling and pulling Juliana’s hair and making grabby grabby.

  The gun, squished between them. The gun, going off.

  Tommy staggering back, gaping at his leg.

  “You bitch,” her brother had said. Those were the last words he’d spoken to her. “You bitch,” he’d said again, then he’d fallen down and, slowly but surely, died.

  Juliana had panicked. She hadn’t meant … Her parents, dear God her parents …

  She’d thrust the gun at Tessa. Tessa had to take it. Tessa had to … run … just get out. Get out get out get out.

  So Tessa did. And those words were the last Juliana had spoken to her best friend. Get out get out get out.

  By the time Tessa had arrived at her house, the police were arriving at Juliana’s. Juliana could’ve admitted what she’d done. She could’ve confessed what her brother was really like. But her mother was screaming hysterically and her father was shell-shocked and she couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t do it.

  Juliana had whispered Tessa’s name to the police and, that quickly, fiction became fact. Tessa had shot her brother.

  And Tessa never said otherwise.

  “I would have confessed,” Juliana said now. “If it had gone to trial, if it looked like Tessa was really going to get into trouble … I would’ve confessed. Except the other women started coming forward and it became clear that Tessa would never face charges. The DA himself said he felt it was justifiable use of force.

  “I figured she’d be okay. And my father … by then, he was a wreck. If he couldn’t accept Tommy had ever assaulted other women, how could he believe what Tommy had done to me? It seemed better to just keep my mouth shut. Except … the longer you go without speaking, the harder it becomes. I wanted to see Tessa, but I didn’t know what to say. I wanted my parents to know what happened, but I didn’t know how to tell them.

  “I stopped speaking. Literally. For an entire year. And my parents never even noticed. They were too busy with their own nervous breakdowns to bother with mine. Then Tessa disappeared—I heard her father had kicked her out. She never told me. Never stopped by to say goodbye. Maybe she couldn’t speak either. I never knew. Until you showed up yesterday morning, I didn’t know she’d become a cop, I didn’t know she’d gotten married, and I didn’t know she had a little girl named Sophie. That’s my middle name, you know. She named her daughter for me. After everything I did to her, she still named her daughter for me.…”

  “The daughter who’s now dead,” D.D. said bluntly.

  “You’re wrong!” Juliana shook her head.

  “You’re wrong, Juliana: We saw the body. Or at least the pieces after she blew it up.”

  Juliana paled, then shook her head again. “You’re wrong,” the young woman insisted stubbornly.

  “Once again, from the woman whose family could give lessons in denial …”

  “You don’t know Tessa.”

  “For the past ten years, neither have you.”

  “She’s clever. Self-sufficient. But she wouldn’t harm a child, not after what happened to her brother.”

  Bobby and D.D. exchanged glances. “Brother?” D.D. said.

  “Stillborn baby. That’s what tore her family apart, years before I knew her. Her mother fell into a deep depression, probably should’ve been institutionalized, except what did people know back then? Her mom lived in the bedroom. Never came out, certainly never cared for Tessa. Her father did the best he could, but he was not exactly nurturing. But Tessa loved them. She tried to take care of them, in her own way. And she loved her baby brother, too. One day, we had a funeral for him, just she and I. And she cried, she truly cried, because that’s the one thing in her house you were never allowed to do.”

  D.D. stared at Juliana. “You know, you could’ve told me this sooner.”

  “Well, you could’ve figured it out sooner. Cops. Must the victims do all the work for you?”

  D.D. bristled. Bobby promptly placed a settling hand on her arm.

  “Where did you take her?” he asked quietly.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Juliana said primly.

  “You picked Tessa up. You already admitted that.”

  “No. I did not. Your partner stated I picked her up. I never said any such thing.”

  D.D. ground her teeth. “So that’s the way you want to play it?” She swept her arm across the toy-strewn floor. “We can take you down to HQ. Seize your car. We’ll tear it apart while you rot behind bars. How old’s your kid again? Because I don’t know if babies are even allowed to visit prison.”

  “Tessa called me Monday evening shortly after nine p.m.,” Juliana stated defiantly. “She said, what are friends for? I said, Tessa? Because I was surprised to hear her voice after all these years. She said she wanted to call me again. Then she hung up. That’s what we said, and the only interaction I have had in the past ten years with Tessa Leoni. If you want to know why she called, what she meant, or if she intended any further contact, you’ll have to ask her.”

  D.D. was flabbergasted, hones
tly flabbergasted. Who knew Tessa’s suburbanite playmate had it in her?

  “One hair in your car, and you’re screwed,” D.D. said.

  Juliana made a show of slapping her cheeks. “OhmyGod, so sorry. Did I mention that I vacuumed? Oh, and just the other day, I read the best trick for washing your car. It involves ammonia.…”

  D.D. stared at the housewife. “I’m going to arrest you for that alone,” she said finally.

  “Then do it.”

  “Tessa shot her husband. She dragged his body down into the garage, and she buried it in snow,” D.D. snapped angrily. “Tessa killed her daughter, drove her body out to the woods, and rigged it with enough explosives to take out the recovery team. This is the woman you’re trying to protect.”

  “This is the woman you thought killed my brother,” Juliana corrected. “You were wrong about that. Not so hard to believe you’re wrong about the rest of it, too.”

  “We are not wrong—” D.D. started, but then she stopped. She frowned. Something occurred to her, the niggling doubt from earlier in the woods. Oh, crap.

  “I’ve gotta make a phone call,” she said abruptly. “You. Sit. Take even one step from that sofa and I’ll arrest your sorry ass.”

  Then she nodded at Bobby and led him to the front porch, where she whipped out her cellphone.

  “What—” he started, but she held up a silencing hand.

  “Medical examiner’s office?” she spoke into the receiver. “Get Ben. I know he’s working. What the hell do you think I’m calling about? Tell him it’s Sergeant Warren, because I bet you a hundred bucks he’s standing over a microscope right now, thinking Oh shit.”

  34

  My father’s garage had never been very impressive, and ten years hadn’t improved it any. A squat, cinder-block building, the exterior paint was the color of nicotine and peeling off in giant flakes. Heating had always been unreliable; in the winter, my father would work under cars in full snow gear. Plumbing wasn’t any better. Once upon a time, there’d been a working toilet. Mostly, my father and his male friends peed on the fence line—men, marking turf.

  Two advantages of my father’s shop, however: first, a bullpen of used cars awaiting repair and resell; second, an acetylene torch, perfect for cutting through metal and, coincidentally, melting cellphones.

  The heavy front door was locked. Ditto with the garage bay. Back door, however, was open. I followed the glow of the bare bulb to the rear of the garage, where my father sat on a stool, smoking a cigarette and watching my approach.

  A half-empty bottle of Jack sat on the workbench behind him. It’d taken me years to realize the full extent of my father’s drinking. That we didn’t go to bed by nine p.m. just because my father got up so early in the morning, but because he was too drunk to continue on with his day.

  When I gave birth to Sophie, I’d hoped it would help me understand my parents and their endless grief. But it didn’t. Even mourning the loss of an infant, how could they fail to feel the love of their remaining child? How could they simply stop seeing me?

  My father inhaled one last time, then stubbed out his cigarette. He didn’t use an ashtray; his scarred workbench got the job done.

  “Knew you’d come,” he said, speaking with the rasp of a lifetime smoker. “News just announced your escape. Figured you’d head here.”

  So Sergeant Warren had copped to her mistake. Good for her.

  I ignored my father, heading for the acetylene torch.

  My father was still dressed in his oil-stained coveralls. Even from this distance I could tell his shoulders remained broad, his chest thickly muscled. Spending all day with your arms working above your head will do that to a man.

  If he wanted to stop me, he had brute strength on his side.

  The realization made my hands tremble as I arrived at the twin tanks of the acetylene torch. I took the safety goggles down from their nearby hook and set about prepping for business. I wore the dark gloves Juliana had supplied for me. I had to take them off long enough to dismantle the cellphone—slide off the cover, remove the battery.

  Then I slipped the black gloves back on, topping them with a heavy-duty pair of work gloves. I set the duffel bag next to the wall, then placed the cellphone in the middle of the cement floor, the best surface when working with a torch that can cut through steel like a knife through butter.

  When I was fourteen, I’d spent an entire summer working at my father’s shop. Helped change oil, replace spark plugs, rotate tires. One of my misguided notions, that if my father wouldn’t take an interest in my world, maybe I should take an interest in his.

  We worked side by side all summer, him barking out orders in his deep, rumbling voice. Then, come break time, he’d retreat to his dust-covered office, leaving me alone in the garage to eat. No random moments of comfortable silence between father and daughter, no spare words of praise. He told me what to do. I did what he said. That was it.

  By the end of the summer, I’d realized my father wasn’t a talker and probably never would love me.

  Good thing I had Juliana instead.

  My father remained on the stool. Cigarette done, he’d moved on to the Jack Daniel’s, sipping from an ancient-looking plastic cup.

  I lowered my safety goggles, lit the torch, and melted Officer Fiske’s cellphone into a small, black lump of useless plastic.

  Hated to see the thing go—never knew when the ability to make a call might come in handy. But I couldn’t trust it. Some phones had GPS, meaning it could be used to track me. Or if I did make a call, they could triangulate the signal. On the other hand, I couldn’t risk just tossing it either—if the police recovered it, they would trace my call to Juliana.

  Hence, the acetylene torch, which, I have to say, got the job done.

  I turned it off. Closed the tanks, rewrapped the hose, and hung up the work gloves and safety goggles.

  I tossed the melted cellphone, now cooled, inside my duffel bag to reduce my evidence trail. Police would be here soon enough. When chasing fugitives you always visited all past haunts and known acquaintances, which would include my father.

  I straightened and, my first order of business completed, finally faced my dad.

  The years were catching up with him. I could see that now. His cheeks were turning into jowls, heavy lines creasing his forehead. He looked defeated. A formerly strong young man, deflated by life and all the dreams that never came true.

  I wanted to hate him, but couldn’t. This was the pattern of my life: to love men who didn’t deserve me, and, knowing that, to yearn for their love anyway.

  My father spoke. “They say you killed your husband.” He started to cough, and it immediately turned phlegmy.

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “And my granddaughter.” He said this accusingly.

  That made me smile. “You have a granddaughter? That’s funny, because I don’t remember my daughter ever receiving a visit from her grandfather. Or a gift on her birthday, or a stocking stuffer at Christmas. So don’t talk to me about grandchildren, old man. You reap what you sow.”

  “Hard-ass,” he said.

  “I get it from you.”

  He slammed down his cup. Amber liquid sloshed. I caught a whiff of whiskey and my mouth watered. Forget a circular argument that would get us nowhere. I could pull up a chair and drink with my father instead. Maybe that’s what he’d been waiting for the summer I’d been fourteen. He hadn’t needed a child to work for him, he’d needed a daughter to drink with him.

  Two alcoholics, side by side in the dim lighting of a run-down garage.

  Then we would’ve both failed our children.

  “I’m taking a car,” I said now.

  “I’ll turn you in.”

  “Do what you need to do.”

  I turned toward the Peg-Board on the left side of the workbench, dotted with little hooks bearing keys. My father climbed off his stool, standing to his full height before me.

  Tough guy, filled with the false br
avado of his liquid buddy Jack. My father had never hit me. As I waited for him to start now, I wasn’t afraid, just tired. I knew this man, not just as my dad, but as half a dozen jerks I confronted and talked down five nights a week.

  “Dad,” I heard myself say softly. “I’m not a little girl anymore. I’m a trained police officer, and if you want to stop me, you’re going to have to do better than this.”

  “I didn’t raise no baby killer,” he growled.

  “No. You didn’t.”

  His brow furrowed. In his fuzzy state, he was having problems working this out.

  “Do you want me to plead my innocence?” I continued. “I tried that once before. It didn’t work.”

  “You killed that Howe boy.”

  “No.”

  “Police said so.”

  “Police make mistakes, as much as it pains me to say that.”

  “Then why’d you become a cop, if they’re no good?”

  “Because.” I shrugged. “I want to serve. And I’m good at my job.”

  “Till you killed your husband and little girl.”

  “No.”

  “Police said so.”

  “And round and round we go.”

  His brow furrowed again.

  “I’m going to take a car,” I repeated. “I’m going to use it to hunt down the man who has my daughter. You can argue with me, or you can tell me which of these clunkers is most prepared to log a few miles. Oh, and fuel would help. Stopping at a gas station isn’t gonna work for me right now.”

  “I got a granddaughter,” he said roughly.

  “Yes. She’s six years old, her name is Sophie and she’s counting on me to rescue her. So help me, Dad. Help me save her.”

  “She as tough as her mom?”

  “God, I hope so.”

  “Who took her?”

  “First thing I have to figure out.”