“How awful.” Jo felt a pang.
“She never really got over it.”
“What was his name?”
“Finn.” He blinked rapidly. “Finnegan Harrison.”
Jo scribbled on her notepad.
“She got divorced after the boy’s death. I’d been alone for a while when we met at a church group in Prestonwood. We both were pretty rusty on dating.” He smiled awkwardly. “I liked her from the get-go. She was reserved, not a talker like some women I’d met. I got the sense she just wanted to be taken care of, and I knew I could do that. We fit together well.”
Divorced. Lost her son. Remarried. Quiet, Jo wrote.
“Still waters run deep,” she said, because it was so often the case.
His hands rubbed his knees, and he seemed to be staring down at his polished black oxfords. “We look out for each other. We’re each other’s best friend.”
He stood suddenly, reaching beneath his coat for his wallet. “Here,” he said, pushing a piece of paper at her and sitting down again.
It was a photograph, soft from being handled and creased from the bend in his billfold. The ceiling light reflected off the shiny coating as Jo examined the woman in the shot.
She was slender, with dark hair to her shoulders, a guarded smile on her face. Her wide eyes gazed off somewhere else, not directly at the camera, like someone who didn’t enjoy having her picture taken. She held a black cat in her arms, its head tucked beneath her chin.
Jo shifted in her chair, unsettled by the image.
There was something in Jenny Dielman’s expression, a self-imposed distance that Jo had seen in her own eyes often enough, as if she were hiding a wound that wouldn’t heal. Maybe Jenny didn’t mind a husband who watched her so carefully, who controlled the money she spent, because he protected her. He kept her safe from the boogeyman. Jo knew a little something about the boogeyman. She’d grown up with one, and he still visited her now and then in her nightmares.
“That’s Ernie,” Dielman said and poked a finger at the photo. “He’s her cat.”
“Ernie?” Jo didn’t know what he was getting at. “Like on Sesame Street?”
“No. Ernest Hemingway. All the cats that live at his house on Key West have six toes. So does Ernie. Jennifer got him from the pound.” His hands rubbed his thighs. “She didn’t even want to go on vacation because it meant leaving him. Don’t you get it?”
“Yes.” She had the bad vibes to prove it. “I get it.”
Where are you, Jenny? Do you even want to be found? Or did you run away from being held too tightly?
Jo forced her eyes back to the photograph. “She’s very pretty.”
Dielman let out a dry laugh. “She never believes me when I tell her she’s beautiful. Harrison did a number on her. They were together for something like seven years. She didn’t talk too much about it, but from what she did say, I know it got bad after Finn died.”
“You said that Dr. Harrison was her first husband?”
“Yes.” He pursed his lips. “She’d been to hell and back before we met, but things were good with us. Jenny would never just take off, not like this.”
To hell and back.
Unless the runaway wife had realized her second marriage wasn’t turning out any better than her first.
Had Mrs. Dielman decided to take a break?
Was Patrick Dielman being less than candid about the state of their relationship? It wouldn’t be the first time a husband had fed her a white lie or two. When women went missing, or worse, it was more often than not the spouse or the boyfriend behind it.
“Did you notice if any of her things were gone, like suitcases, clothing, or toiletries?”
“No, nothing’s gone. I went through the house already. Her bags are in the hall closet where they’ve always been. Her toothbrush is still next to mine.” He blew out a breath. “Her pills are there, too.”
“Her pills?”
“Zoloft,” he told her. “That’s why I know she wasn’t out drinking. She can’t mix the drug and alcohol, and she wouldn’t.”
Jo’s antennae went up. “Is she clinically depressed?”
“She doesn’t see a shrink, if that’s what you mean.” Dielman sounded defensive. He seemed to weigh his words carefully. “Our internist, Dr. Patil, wrote the prescription. He said she had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Jenny wasn’t nuts.”
His opinion, Jo wondered, or the doctor’s?
“I can tell what you’re thinking, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
Jo thought it might. “She’s never tried to kill herself?”
“Not since I’ve known her.”
“Had she ever talked about it?”
“Not to me.” He fidgeted. “Jenny had problems dealing with Finn’s death. It was hard for her to accept, especially since she couldn’t have any more children.”
“Why’s that?”
“They did a hysterectomy after Finn was born because of bleeding. She said it didn’t matter because no child could replace her son.” He squirmed. “Sometimes she acted like she’d lost—” He stopped himself.
“Lost what?”
“Everything,” he said and shook his head. “I don’t know. She’d been acting upset and confused lately. She complained that things weren’t where she’d left them, that stuff was missing.”
“Like what?”
“Her keys, a photograph, even the scarf I gave her for her birthday. Sometimes she’d swear she’d locked the door, but it was left open.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I told her she was being paranoid.”
“Did you tell her doctor?”
“No.” Dielman frowned. “Do you think it’s important?”
Jo fought the urge to shake him. “Why don’t you tell me what you remember her wearing when you last saw her?”
He perked up. “When I left for work yesterday, she had on a turtleneck under a gray fleece top and blue jeans. She probably wore her boots ’cause it’s cold out. When I saw her, she was still in her socks. She must’ve worn her black coat. It wasn’t in the hall closet.”
“Does she have any identifiable marks?”
“Like scars?”
“Scars,” Jo told him, “or moles, tattoos.”
He blushed and fiddled with the crease in his pants. “She has a tiny butterfly on her left hip.” His Adam’s apple rippled. “She got it after her divorce from Harrison.”
“Anything else?”
“She has a locket she wears all the time. It’s silver with the initial F, for Finn. She keeps his picture in it. She rarely takes it off.”
Jo made a note.
“What else do you need from me?” He buttoned his coat, like he was ready to go.
“Just one more thing.” She hesitated, hating to ask. “Could your wife have been seeing someone?”
He snorted. “If I suspected she was cheating on me, I would’ve told you from the start.”
“What about you?” she asked. Just because Dielman wore a wedding band didn’t mean squat.
“Why would you ask such a thing? Just find her, for God’s sake,” he snapped. “That is your job, isn’t it? Now, are we done?”
Jo glanced down at the photo on her desk, then up at him. “Yes, we’re done, Mr. Dielman,” she told him, thinking if she were his wife, she might have run away, too.
This is my second stab at starting this journal. I tried yesterday, sitting in the car in the library parking lot. I had the notebook in my lap, and I began scribbling down my feelings, thinking of Finn, how much I missed him. But I hit the steering wheel with my hand as I tried to sip some coffee, and I spilled onto the page.
Is that a bad omen?
This time, I’ll think instead of what Dr. P told me at my last appointment.
“Use the notebook to sort out your emotions and make sense of things. You don’t have to forget what happened,” he said in that kind way of his that always makes me want to cry. “But you have to figu
re out how to start moving forward instead of looking back.”
It’s a lovely thought. It sounds really practical and a lot less trouble than gardening. I don’t know how it will help. It won’t make me stop thinking about Finn and missing him. It won’t change the fact that I can never have another child. I had one, and I lost him.
All I know for sure is that I can’t move forward until I understand what happened, and I’ve promised Finn—I’ve crossed my heart and sworn to God—that I will do exactly that. The day after Thanksgiving will be three years since his accident. Three years of living in a fog of grief when I should have been asking questions.
Now it’s time to do something about it. I need to know the God’s honest truth. Even if the only one I convince in the end is me.
CHAPTER TWO
Before Dielman left the station, Jo proffered her card, assuring him she’d contact him after she did a bit of poking around. She urged him to go about his business and to get in touch if he heard from his wife, which she hoped would be the case.
Jenny Dielman could very well be a straight arrow who never deviated from the norm, but even the most predictable of creatures had to blow off steam. Maybe Jenny had things to take care of that she couldn’t talk about with her husband. Maybe she wanted to stretch her leash. Once she’d done that, she’d turn up as suddenly as she disappeared.
It sounded good in theory. A part of Jo almost believed it.
She called the Plainfield Public Library, where Jenny volunteered, and talked to the director, a woman named Sally Nesbo, who echoed Dielman’s sentiments about Jenny being highly responsible. She noted Jenny was often the first to arrive each morning, waiting outside until a staffer appeared with a key. Nesbo denied noticing any odd behavior in the past few weeks. “Jenny’s a quiet girl. She does her job and keeps to herself,” the library director had remarked, which sounded right in line with Dielman’s description of his wife. Nesbo promised to phone Jo should Jenny get in touch.
Next, Jo tried Dr. Naveen Patil’s office and then the next-door neighbor, Lisa Barton, leaving messages for each. She looked up the number for Kevin Harrison, MD, at Presbyterian Hospital and dialed his office, figuring she’d have a better shot at catching him there than at home. His secretary said he had surgeries booked until midafternoon, but Jo could use the voice mail on his private line.
The typical hurry up and wait.
Something she wasn’t particularly good at.
Mama had always said she had ants in her pants, couldn’t sit still for longer than five minutes to save her life. Maybe she’d been afraid to stay put for fear of who’d catch her.
“Go outside and play in the yard, Jo Anna, please.” She could hear Mama’s slurred drawl, the ice rattling in her glass as a slim, white hand banished her outdoors. “You make me nervous with your restlessness.”
When Jo was at her desk for too long, she got twitchy, like a flea-bitten dog. She was particularly twitchy at the moment, her head filled with suppositions about Jenny Dielman—who she was, her state of mind—thinking that, if she were depressed and without her medication, that couldn’t be anything but bad news.
Post-traumatic stress.
She stared at the photograph of Mrs. Dielman and focused on the faraway look in her eyes, knowing how it must have hurt to bury a son who’d never had the chance to grow up. She thought of her own mother and of the problems they’d had even before the dementia had ravaged Verna Larsen Kaufman’s brain.
Jo had plenty of experience with post-traumatic stress herself, and she had the trust issues to prove it. Making a clean break from the past was a whole lot harder than it sounded.
“Hey, Larsen.”
She glanced up at the firm touch on her shoulder to see Hank Phelps hovering above her like a big damn shadow.
“Y’all ready for lunch?” he asked, his sun-worn features squinting as if the fluorescent light hurt his eyes. “My treat.”
“From the vending machine?” she said. Hardly an appetizing thought.
“I figure we’d go out.” He hooked his fingers in his belt so that the buckle, shaped like the state of Texas, half disappeared beneath the soft belly that strained the buttons on his shirt. “You up for a little ride?”
She knew what “going out” meant to him and started to shake her head. “I’m not doing McDonald’s again, Hank.”
“No fast food, I promise.” His grin was lopsided, like a slightly deranged Ward Cleaver. “How about we get pasta? There’s the place you like at that strip mall with the Mister Donut.”
“Ah, Mister Donut,” she said, and carefully slipped her notes, the unfinished report, and the photograph of Jennifer Dielman into a manila folder, then retrieved her shoulder bag from her bottom desk drawer. “He and Mr. Coffee are VIPs around here.”
“And rightly so.”
“Pasta sounds great.” She would call those numbers again after lunch, before her afternoon appointment with Terry Fitzhugh in Dallas.
Dallas.
She looked around the tiny room that served as their version of the detectives’ bay, tucked into the back of the hardly grand Plainfield PD station house. The city council kept promising something bigger and newer, but until that day came, they were stuck in a shoe box with skinny hallways, bad lighting, and a holding pen with twelve beds that emitted the vague and constant smell of urine.
Man, what a difference a few miles makes, she mused as she followed Hank out the back door after tugging on her wool peacoat.
Gray skies hovered above the parking lot, the clouds thick and menacing. If she didn’t know better, she might’ve thought they were in for snow. But it was probably closer to forty degrees than freezing.
She actually liked this kind of weather—changeable. The never-ending flat, blue sky and endless sunshine bored her with their monotony. She loved a good thunderstorm, even a little white stuff in the winter, though she was more likely to get the former than the latter.
“Hey, Jo, this way.” Hank jerked his chin to the right, toward the four-door Ford three spots down from the station’s rear exit.
Jo wondered how many times he’d circled the building before he’d found the space he wanted. Probably waited until the blue-and-whites had departed after roll call so he could snag it.
Her partner had an allergy to walking. “Bad knees” was his excuse. Old high school football injuries had accelerated his degenerative arthritis. “The cartilage is nearly gone,” he’d told her. “My docs say I’m a candidate for bilateral knee-replacement surgery one of these days. I might have to consider it next summer, if I can take the time off.”
He wasn’t even fifty. Jo had a hard time believing the warranty on his parts had already expired.
She popped open the door and caught a whiff of stale french fries. “Home, sweet home,” she murmured, too low for him to hear.
She belted herself in and leaned her head against the seat, listening to the ignition cough as Hank coaxed the car to life. When it caught, the police band crackled, and Jo heard a dispatcher talking to one of the patrols.
Turning down the radio and humming tunelessly, Hank flipped on the heat, which she knew would take eons to muster up a breath beyond lukewarm. One of these days, she figured, the old boat would need a tow to the scrap yard. Until then, it was their primary mode of transportation when they were on duty.
“So who was the guy bawling at your desk?” Hank asked as he steered toward the south side of town. “Did he lose his puppy?”
“His name’s Patrick Dielman,” she told him, glancing at his profile, noting the way his eyes crinkled even when he wasn’t grinning. “And it’s not a dog that’s missing. It’s his wife.”
A tangled eyebrow peaked. “How long’s she been gone?”
“Since last evening,” she said. “He’s pretty convinced something’s up. They’re the type that sticks to routine, and she’s on medication she didn’t take with her.”
“Is she sick?”
“Not physically.�
��
“Ah.” He took a hand off the wheel to twirl a finger round his ear.
Jo felt like they were playing charades. “Her husband said she suffers from post-traumatic stress.”
“Was she in the service?”
“She lost her only child three years ago, and her first marriage blew up after that.”
“That’s rough.”
“She never came home after a trip to the Warehouse Club, and he’s freaking out. He swears they were solid, that she wasn’t having an affair—”
Hank grunted.
“And he’s convinced she’s met with foul play.”
Her partner pursed his lips, and Jo waited for his comment, which could be anything from the sublime to the ridiculous.
“Maybe he’s got a hoochie mama on the side, so he got rid of the old ball and chain. You know, like in that Hitchcock movie with Jimmy Stewart . . .”
“Hitchcock?”
“Yeah, Perry Mason’s the bad guy, and he cuts up his wife and puts her in a steamer trunk, while ol’ Jimmy’s watching from his apartment across the way with binoculars.”
“Rear Window,” Jo said, playing along. “You think Patrick Dielman cut up his wife and put her in a steamer trunk? Cynical bastard,” she teased, eliciting a chuckle from Hank.
Look at the husband was always the first rule of thumb, but Jo figured Patrick Dielman would have to be a Class-A dumb shit if he murdered his wife and then made such a production of showing up at the Plainfield Police Department and not leaving until Jo heard him out.
“Plenty of idiots out there,” her partner remarked. “You know that better than anyone.”
Jo didn’t disagree, but she was thinking about Dielman’s upscale trench coat, the handkerchief, and the polished shoes. “The guy’s too anal.”
“Maybe she’s taking a break from wedded bliss. It’s the thing to do,” Hank said, dripping sarcasm. “Shrinks are even writing books about taking vacations from marriage.” He stole a look at her. “You ever hear of anything so stupid?”
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