Helpless

by Daniel Palmer

  “Were you able to make it over to the medical examiner’s office to make the official identification?” Murphy asked.

  “Yeah. That’s all taken care of,” Tom said, though his voice didn’t reveal how much the experience had shaken him. He’d seen his fair share of dead bodies as a SEAL, but nothing could have prepared him for seeing the mother of his daughter lying lifeless on a steel table. His high school sweetheart dead, a thin green sheet hiding her nakedness.

  Tom had seen the two wounds to her head: the one to her right temple, where police believed she had hit a rock, and the other, more suspicious one on the left side, where something else had struck her. Kelly’s once lustrous blond hair was matted down and dark. Her lips were a disturbing shade of blue. The skin didn’t look like it fit her bones anymore.

  Death never looked pretty.

  Murphy opened the file in front of him. “Well then,” he began, “why don’t we start with the last time you saw Kelly?”

  Tom didn’t have to think hard to answer that one. He almost never saw Kelly. She never came to any of Jill’s practices or games and made it quite clear to his daughter that she stayed away intentionally to avoid seeing Tom.

  “Two weeks ago,” Tom said. “At Johnny Rockets.”

  “The place on one-forty?”

  “Yeah. That’s the place.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Having my twice-a-month dinner with Jill. Kelly would drive her there, drop her off, and then come back forty minutes later to pick her up.”

  “Does Jill ever go to your place in Westbrook?” Murphy didn’t bother referring to any notes. Troubling, thought Tom, that he was so well versed about his life.

  “She hasn’t been over to my house in about a year. There was some tension around that.”

  “Tension?”

  “Jill didn’t want to spend every other weekend with me, which was my court-ordered visitation right.”

  “You two don’t get along?”

  “I thought this was about Kelly,” said Tom.

  “Just compiling a complete picture here.”

  “It was interfering with her social life and extracurricular activities,” Tom explained. “So I made a compromise, and we agreed to once-a-month sleepovers and twice-a-month dinners. That had worked fine up until last year. Kids get older. They get busier. Divorce sucks. What can I say?”

  “Not married myself,” Murphy said, “but I can imagine.”

  Not this you can’t, Tom thought, but he didn’t feel like going into Kelly’s long-running campaign to discredit him in his daughter’s eyes.

  “So, the last time you saw Kelly was two weeks ago?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you know when Jill saw her last?”

  “I’m guessing this morning,” Tom said. “Jill’s got a job this summer working at Lull Farm. She’s there Monday through Friday, eight until four. Then she comes to soccer practice after that.”

  “First game of the season is coming up soon, huh?”

  “Two weeks from today.”

  “Going for what? Your third state title in a row?”

  “Fourth,” Tom said. “But I don’t think now is an appropriate time to be talking sports.”

  “No, of course not,” Murphy agreed. “Perhaps it would be more appropriate to discuss some of the conversations I’ve had with Kelly’s neighbors. They were pretty quick to point out to me that you two were not on the friendliest of terms.”

  Why were you talking about me at all? Tom wondered. “We had our differences.”

  “Would you characterize your relationship as hostile?”

  “Are you trying to imply that I had something to do with Kelly’s murder?”

  “I’m not implying anything, Tom,” Murphy said. “Just asking questions. But, since you’ve brought it up, where were you before soccer practice today?”

  “I was home. Working on my deck.”

  “Anybody with you? Anybody who could verify your whereabouts?”

  “No. I was alone.”

  “Girlfriend? Wife?”

  “No to both.”

  “And you say you were at home all day?”

  “No,” Tom said. “I went to Home Depot for some supplies. I ran out of nails.”

  “Do you have a receipt?”

  Tom didn’t bother looking through his wallet. He never saved them. “No.”

  “How’d you pay?”

  “Cash,” Tom said.

  Too bad for you, said Murphy’s face. “Do you remember what you were wearing?”

  “T-shirt and my Red Sox hat.”

  “Time?”

  “Must have been around three in the afternoon. I drove right to practice from there.”

  “About how far a drive is it to that Home Depot, would you say? From your place first, and then from Home Depot to Shilo.”

  “Forty minutes from my place,” Tom said. “Westbrook isn’t close to any shopping. Then it’s another hour and change to Shilo from there.”

  Tom could almost see Murphy running calculations in his head. “Did you and Kelly have any recent fights?” he asked.

  “No.”

  Murphy grimaced a little. “No fights over alimony? Jill? Past resentment because of that nasty custody battle you had?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Tom asked.

  “Relax. I’m just getting a complete picture, like I said. I had your court records pulled, and I’m curious if there was any lingering tension between you and Kelly. Seemed like it was a pretty contentious custody battle after the divorce.”

  “Brendan, this isn’t high school anymore,” Tom said. “I hope you’re not looking at me as a suspect because we didn’t get along back then.”

  “That wouldn’t be very professional of me,” Murphy said. “Besides, I never said you were a suspect.”

  “That’s because you didn’t have to,” Tom said. “But since you’ve brought up the past, I guess you should know that Kelly made a lot of unsubstantiated, unproven, and all untrue allegations about me. But that was a long time ago.”

  “Nine years,” Murphy was quick to say. “Kelly called you a drug user. Said you cheated on her. Abusive. Prone to violent outbursts.” Murphy had all that memorized as well.

  “None of it was true.”

  “But you stopped fighting her in court and agreed to give Kelly full custody of Jill,” Murphy said. “Why?”

  Tom felt his anger beginning to rise. He calmed himself. Better to be cooperative than obstinate. “I thought it was hurting Jill,” he said, coaxing his blood pressure back to normal. “I decided it was better to compromise for my daughter’s sake. Anyway, I got the visitation rights I wanted.”

  “Have you been harboring a lot of anger over this?”

  Tom reddened. “I’m starting to get angry now,” he said.

  “Do you know of anybody who might have wanted to hurt Kelly?”

  “Kelly worked as a cocktail waitress and hostess at the Pinewood Ale House,” Tom said. “Her friends weren’t subscribing to Good Housekeeping, if you know what I mean. Maybe it was a customer. Someone she worked with.”

  “Was she dating somebody?”

  “Kelly was always dating somebody, at least according to Jill. But I don’t think she was involved in a serious relationship. Like I said, we didn’t talk about our lives. In fact, we didn’t really talk at all. Again, her choice, not mine.”

  “Because she hated you.”

  “Because she had issues with me,” Tom said. “We had our differences.”

  “Why?”

  Tom gave it some thought. “Well, I guess you could say that I didn’t turn out to be the man she thought I was,” he said.

  “You guys began dating in high school, right?” Murphy asked.

  “Sure,” Tom said. “We went out.”

  “And then you were in the military with her?” Again, Murphy had brought up a fact about Tom’s life without needing a reference.


  Tom shook his head. “She was army. I was navy.”

  “But you two were stationed together, isn’t that right?”

  “We both enlisted after high school,” Tom confirmed. “But I didn’t see Kelly for years after I joined up. I trained to become a SEAL and got deployed to Kuwait for the First Gulf War.”

  “When’s the next time you saw her after high school?”

  Tom thought for a beat or two. “Kelly was about halfway through her second six-year, so almost ten years,” he eventually said. “She was part of the First Armored Division Support Command assigned to the Wiesbaden Army Airfield in Germany. My SEAL unit was deployed to the same airfield for a series of training exercises.”

  “And that’s where you two ... reconnected? Germany?” Murphy said the word reconnected in a way that implied a sexual relationship.

  “That’s when she became pregnant with Jill, if that’s what you’re asking. What the hell does this have to do with Kelly’s last twenty-four hours? I thought that’s what I came here to discuss. I feel like I’m being interrogated.”

  “You can always leave,” Murphy suggested. “Lawyer up.” Murphy had just showed Tom his hand and didn’t seem to mind.

  “The only lawyer I’m going to need is one who will help me regain custody of my daughter.”

  “Is that why you broke into the house and attacked Kelly?”

  “Hey, Murph. This interview is over,” Tom said. He stood up and put on his jacket.

  “Sure thing. Of course. But, Tom, before you go, I need you think about something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’d like you to look at this situation from where I’m sitting.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “I’ve got a woman who appears to be the victim of a homicide, an ex-husband with good reason to hold a grudge, and a weak alibi. The ME has put Kelly’s time of death at between noon and three. Now, if you made that late-day Home Depot run like you said you did, well then, maybe even I would have a hard time pursuing you as a suspect. But if I were you, Tom, I’d be looking real hard for that receipt.”

  Tom left without saying another word.

  Chapter 5

  Tom leaned up against the doorjamb to Jill’s bedroom and watched his daughter sift through a large box of photographs. In Tom’s mind, he saw it as the room of a six-year-old girl. That was the last time he’d been inside the house. It was nighttime, but Tom could see the pink painted walls were now faded. The framed picture of colorful fish and the one of a lush green field with a smiling sun and rainbow on the horizon were replaced with posters of the U.S. women’s national soccer team and half-dressed pop stars. The dollhouse he’d bought for Jill’s fifth birthday was still in the same corner of the room, but now it was buried beneath an avalanche of her clothes.

  Tall and long limbed, Jill looked like any teenager might, dressed in dark jeans, a low-cut white T-shirt underneath a partially zipped gray Abercrombie and Fitch hooded sweatshirt. Her long brown hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, flattering her slender neck and showing off ears that were both studded with two sets of sparkling earrings. Tom figured the boys would call her cute, when what they really meant (but were not yet mature enough to say) was beautiful.

  Jill closed one box of photographs and opened another. Jill’s eyes were red from crying, and Tom’s stomach was in knots. She needed a picture to display on a table beside her mother’s casket at the funeral and was having a hard time deciding.

  Tom had taken care of most of the funeral arrangements himself. Kelly’s parents were dead. Her friends, he knew, were bar rats and riffraff who might or might not bother to show and pay their respects.

  “What about this one?” Jill held up the picture, which Tom took to be her way of inviting him into the room.

  Tom sat on the edge of the bed. Jill handed Tom a picture of Kelly sitting on the living room couch. Sun pouring through the window behind lit Kelly’s hair in an angelic way.

  “When was that taken?” Tom asked, handing the picture back to Jill.

  “A couple years ago at Easter,” Jill said. “Mom liked the way she looked in that dress.”

  “Yeah, she looks great,” Tom agreed. “The older you get, the more of her I see in you. You’ve got her eyes.”

  Jill gave him a pained expression and began to cry.

  Every fiber of Tom’s being wanted to hug his daughter. Pull her into his arms and hold her tight. But he was afraid of how she’d react. Instead, he bent down, reached into the box, and pulled out Jill’s kindergarten class picture.

  “Hey, I remember this,” he said. “You lost your first tooth the morning this was taken.”

  “You remember that?”

  “Of course I do,” Tom said. “I even remember the tooth fairy gave you five dollars for that tooth.”

  Jill looked up at her father through reddened eyes. “You always get more for the first one,” she said, quoting to him the same explanation he had given her for that windfall payment. Jill’s lower lip quivered the way it always did whenever she fought back tears, but this was a battle she wasn’t about to win.

  “Do you think she’s here?” Jill asked, looking about the room. “Watching us?”

  Tom nodded and looked to an empty spot in the room where her spirit could be. “Yeah. I think she’s watching us.”

  “I can’t stop thinking about what happened,” Jill said. “How scared she must have been.”

  Tom had anticipated it would be difficult for Jill to return home. She had been grieving for only thirty-six hours, a blink of time’s eye. He had tried to undo any signs of struggle, clean up the disarray left in the wake of the police investigation. He put books back in their bookcase. Moved furniture that seemed out of place. Even fixed the screen door that Kelly had broken in her haste to get away. But he could feel Jill’s panic as she entered. She moved from room to room, making several cautious glances over her shoulder, as though afraid whoever had attacked her mother was still lurking somewhere in the house.

  “What do you think happened?” Jill asked.

  Reflexively, Tom gripped the edge of the bed, bracing himself. “I think your mom walked in on a robbery,” he said, hoping he sounded reassuring. “I think there was a struggle. Your mom managed to get away. She ran. What happened to her after that was a horrible accident. But I don’t think she was targeted. I don’t think whoever did this is coming back, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, honey. I’m sure.” Tom paused. He’d been curious about something from the moment he’d set foot in the house. “I noticed there’s some guy’s stuff around,” Tom said. “Clothes and such. Was your mother living with somebody?”

  Jill shook her head. “No. Not really. But this guy Alfonso from the bar was basically using our home like his personal storage unit.”

  “Did your mom and Alfonso ever fight?” Tom asked. That was another way of asking whether Alfonso could be a suspect.

  Again, Jill shook her head. “No. But I do know that Alfonso couldn’t have been the one who broke in.”

  “Why?”

  “Alfonso’s in jail. He got busted for his third DWI, like, a month ago.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. But we thought he was sober. He was going to AA and everything. He even got into mountain biking. His relapse really shook Mom up.”

  “I didn’t know,” Tom said.

  A long silence followed. Then Jill said, “Do you think they’ll catch whoever did this?”

  “I hope so,” Tom replied. “And I’ll do everything I can to make sure they do.”

  Tom could see that his daughter was dwelling on the terrifying possibility that the crime would go unsolved. He searched his mind and found a change of subject. “I took care of ordering the flowers,” he said. “Purple lilacs. Her favorite.”

  Jill looked surprised. “You know Mom’s favorite flower?” she asked.

  “There was a time,�
� Tom said, “even though we were divorced, that I loved your mother very much. Honey, I wish I could bring her back for you. I really do. It hurts me more than I can say to see you in so much pain.”

  “I miss her.”

  Jill’s tears came after that, whole body-shaking convulsions. It became hard for her to breathe.

  Tom didn’t hesitate. He got down on her bedroom floor and held her, and she let him. They embraced, kneeling on the blue carpet that he had laid down himself so many years ago.

  The moment passed. Tom got a box of Kleenex from the bathroom. Jill’s tears went from a river to a trickle. They returned their attention to the pictures. For a while, neither spoke. Jill left the room briefly and returned, carrying with her the laptop computer from the kitchen. She had some pictures in iPhoto to go through.

  Odd the computer wasn’t taken in the robbery, thought Tom.

  “Any of these?” Tom asked as Jill switched from picture to picture, as if changing channels on the TV. There were pictures of Jill and Kelly on a hike, apple picking in the fall, skating in winter, swimming in summer. None of the pictures included Tom. It was like watching vignettes from a life that he could have lived.

  “Some of them are okay,” said Jill. “But if she doesn’t have a cigarette in her hand, she’s got a drink, or she’s wearing something that isn’t really appropriate.” She grimaced and covered her mouth with her hands. “I can’t believe I just said something bad about Mom.”

  Tom rested a hand on his daughter’s shoulder and felt a lump in his throat. He fought back his own tears so that he could stay strong for her. “Honey, it’s all right to say whatever you feel. Your mom wasn’t perfect, but none of us are. Sure, I wish she didn’t smoke, but I’m glad you don’t. And I wish she didn’t drink as much as she did, either, but never for a moment, not a single moment, did I think she wasn’t taking good care of you. And as for her clothes, well, I think the picture on the couch looks great, if you like it, too.”

  Jill nodded. “That’s the picture we’ll use,” she said. She got quiet, and Tom gave her the time she needed to speak again. “Did you know that Mom and I got into a huge fight last year, when I told her I was going to try out for the soccer team?”