Walk Into Silence

by Susan McBride

  She held up her shield toward the red-vested pair behind the desk and said, “I’m looking for Owen Ross.”

  A Hispanic woman nodded toward a twentysomething white guy with thinning hair and pale eyes who stammered, “I’m Owen.” He reached for her ID with nail-bitten fingers and peered at it closely.

  “Can we talk?” She put her badge away and stuck her hands in her pockets.

  “Sure.” He turned to the woman, told her he’d be back in a few, and motioned Jo to follow him around the counter and through a back door into a small room with a messy desk, a couple of chairs, and a bulletin board covered in promotional flyers touting vacuums on sale and specials in the butcher shop.

  “I’m hoping you can help me pinpoint the time this woman shopped in your store yesterday,” Jo said once Ross had settled behind his desk, and she’d perched on a metal folding chair. She passed the photograph over. “Her name is Jennifer Dielman. She was likely here between five o’clock and five thirty.”

  “Oh, yeah, Dielman.” He sighed. “The husband came by last night, and he’s already called, like, three times today. So his wife hasn’t turned up?”

  “No.” Jo tapped the photograph. “Do you recognize her?”

  “Is she dead?”

  She kept her voice level. “We hope not.”

  His bug eyes took in the photo for another moment before he pushed it back. “I don’t remember seeing her personally. We’ve got some regulars who come weekly, so I know them by sight. But we can get a hundred customers an hour on most days. I can’t recall everyone who comes in, not by a long shot.”

  Jo was tempted to remark that bigger wasn’t always better, but instead she leaned forward on the metal seat. “You’ve got surveillance cameras at the doors and in the parking lot, right? And a picture’s worth a thousand words, as they say.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that once or twice.” Ross smirked. “Except only the cameras at the doors actually work.”

  Jo winced. “Your surveillance cameras in the parking lot are broken?”

  “Nope, not broken,” he said and scratched his nose. “They just don’t work. They’re more for show.”

  Terrific.

  “We’ve got a guard in a golf cart that patrols the lot, but it’s been pretty cold out there,” Ross explained when Jo shook her head. “Besides, this is Plainfield. Nothing big ever happens here.”

  “You must keep records of purchases, right? So you’d have a receipt with a time stamp if Mrs. Dielman bought anything.”

  “Let me get this straight.” He squinted like his brain hurt. “You want a copy of the front-door security footage from yesterday, and I’m supposed to go through all of the receipts, too?”

  “That would be very helpful.”

  His scowl said he wasn’t enthusiastic at the prospect. “The guest pass is gonna make it harder to track. If she had a customer card, I could access her account. But with a paper pass, I dunno.” He thumbed his chin where he’d sprouted a tiny soul patch. “Give me until tomorrow morning. I’ll pull receipts that don’t have Warehouse Club customer numbers attached. You said she was here after five?”

  “Yes.”

  He picked up a pencil with visible bite marks and scribbled on a sheet of paper. “All right, I’ll do my best.”

  “Any chance I could get the surveillance video now?”

  Ross put the pencil down. “It could take a few minutes. You want to wait?”

  Jo tried to rein in her irritation. “Whatever you can do would be appreciated, Mr. Ross, both by the police department and by Patrick Dielman. If something did happen to his wife while in your parking lot, if she was carjacked, for instance”—he blinked double time at the suggestion—“it would be best for us to have all the information we can as soon as possible.”

  Ross nodded. “Okay, yeah, sure, since you put it that way. If you hang around, I can burn a DVD with the footage, but it’ll take until tomorrow morning to put together those receipts.”

  “Great.” Jo twiddled her thumbs for another fifteen minutes before Ross delivered the shiny DVD in a clear box marked with yesterday’s date.

  “If you want the original, I’ll need a warrant,” he told her. “Company policy.”

  “Let me know when you have the receipts,” she said and gave him her card.

  Jo walked outside and stood in the wind, taking in the row after row of cars and the faces of the people who passed without even glancing at her. They hung on to their carts, their hoods drawn against the cold. She could’ve been invisible for all the attention they paid.

  If Patrick Dielman was right, if his wife had come here after she’d phoned him, dusk would have settled by the time she’d left the store. The light would have faded, shadows lurking. There were plenty of places for a person to lie in wait, unnoticed.

  Had someone approached Jenny as she walked to her car? Someone who asked for help with an armload of groceries, perhaps? Would Jenny have let her guard down, enough to give her assailant time to shove her inside her car, take the wheel, and drive away?

  It could’ve happened in seconds, quickly enough to have gone unobserved.

  Jo turned around again.

  There were so many cars—so much space—and everyone scurrying like ants at a picnic as they prepared for the Thanksgiving holiday next week.

  Would anyone have even realized it if Jenny had been taken?

  “Jennifer is very vulnerable. I’d hate to think someone took advantage of that.”

  Maybe no one had.

  What if she’d driven off by herself?

  What if Jenny Dielman was right where she wanted to be?

  Jo headed back to the Mustang, her cell tweeting as she settled behind the wheel. “Larsen,” she said, hoping for good news.

  “I think it’s her.” A woman’s voice. “It has to be.”

  “Her? Who? Is this Lisa Barton?” Jo ventured to guess, putting the throaty drawl together with the earlier message on her voice mail. “Are you home?”

  “Yes, it’s Lisa. One of my windows has been broken, and I . . .”

  Jo heard a gulp of indrawn air.

  “I think it was Jenny.”

  Ten minutes later, Jo turned onto Ella Drive within the Woodstream Estates subdivision.

  Hank’s tank of a Ford was there already, parked behind a squad car with its light bar throwing flashes of blue and red through the evening air. Across the street, Jo spotted a uniformed officer speaking to a man in a down coat and hat who hung on to a leash with a jumpy dog.

  She pulled against the curb, glancing at the numbers on the mailboxes. The Dielmans’ place was dark except for a single porch light. Patrick Dielman must have taken her advice and gone to work. She wondered if he’d been able to concentrate on anything but Jenny.

  Jo got out of her car and waved at her partner, who was planted in the next driveway over, talking to a tall woman in a long beige coat.

  The front door of the whitewashed-brick residence was partially open, a sliver of light spilling onto the welcome mat. Jo took a direct path across the grass to where a uniformed officer was photographing a shattered pane of glass. He turned his head as she approached, and she motioned for him to resume what he was doing.

  Jo watched for a moment, taking a long look at the area outside the window, tiny holly bushes below, the leaves glinting with moisture and flecks of glass. The affected pane, a rectangle about eight inches high and six wide, had slivers protruding from the metal frame, like a set of broken teeth.

  She glanced back at the driveway and the street beyond.

  “Larsen, this way,” her partner called, gesturing her around the corner. Jo followed, crossing the cobbled drive to where a woman with spiral blonde curls stood near the front door. “This here’s Mrs. Barton,” he said by way of introduction.

  “It’s Ms., and you can call me Lisa,” the woman corrected. “Sorry for pushing the panic button, but I freaked.” She attempted a smile, but it never reached her eyes.

&nbs
p; Jo noted the creases etched around her mouth, the lines of a smoker or reformed smoker. There were no signs of Botox or a face-lift, only a pinched expression that betrayed her frayed nerves.

  “What happened?” Jo asked.

  “I got home from work, had just gone in with the mail, when I heard a crash in the kitchen.” Lisa wrung her hands, and Jo saw pale scars below the knuckles. From an old accident or burns? “That’s when I noticed the brick. It smashed through the glass and landed in the sink.”

  Jo thought of the window with the gash in it, the glitter on the bushes below. “You said you thought Jenny had been here. You think she’s responsible?”

  “I know it sounds weird, what with her being missing and all.” The words tumbled out in a nervous drawl. “I wouldn’t have made the connection except that I found something of hers after, when I got the nerve to look around. It was caught in the holly.”

  “What was caught?”

  “Jenny’s scarf,” the woman enunciated, like Jo was hard of hearing.

  Hank lifted his arm and showed off an evidence bag that contained a crumpled square of bright blue silk. “Kinda loud for my taste,” he remarked.

  Jo looked at Lisa. “That belongs to Jenny Dielman?”

  “Yes.” Face set sternly, sure as all get-out.

  Jo remembered something Patrick Dielman had said when he’d plunked himself down at her desk: “She complained that things weren’t where she’d left them . . . that stuff was missing . . . her keys, a photograph . . . the scarf I gave her for her birthday.”

  “You’re certain it’s Jenny’s?” she asked again.

  “One hundred percent, Detective.” Lisa Barton raised her pointed chin. “Patrick should be home soon. Ask him. He’ll tell you. I helped him pick that scarf out for Jenny’s birthday. It’s Hermes, hand-rolled silk tweed. Cost three hundred twenty bucks.”

  Hank whistled.

  Jo chewed the inside of her cheek.

  She was supposed to just buy that the slender, brown-haired woman in the photo with the cat, described by all who knew her as quiet and grieving, would pound a brick through her neighbor’s window and drop her scarf as she took off?

  If Lisa Barton hadn’t been so damned serious, Jo would have laughed.

  She gestured at the evidence bag. “Mr. Dielman said his wife lost that scarf a while back. Someone else might have found it,” she suggested, “like, a neighborhood troublemaker.”

  “Bored teenagers.” Hank snorted. “They like causing a stink, then get boners when the squad car shows up.” Jo gave him a look, and he ducked his chin, murmuring, “If you’ll pardon the expression, ma’am.”

  Lisa Barton seemed unfazed by his remarks. She glanced over at the Dielmans’ house. “I wonder what’s keeping Patrick. He’s usually home by now.” Her voice cracked. “Do y’all think you could have a patrol car keep an eye on things tonight?”

  “If that’ll make you feel safer, we’ll arrange it, ma’am,” Jo said, squinting into the gloom at the shrubs that ran around the house, feeling the itch to move, to look around. “Will you excuse me a minute?”

  She edged away from her partner, crossing the pebbled drive to the grass and the clipped bushes, following their sharp angles around the side of Lisa Barton’s house, hearing her own rushed breaths.

  A motion-activated spotlight flashed on, nearly blinding her with its beam, and she blinked away the dots that danced against her eyelids before she entered the Dielmans’ yard.

  Her gut kept pushing at her, because nothing about this felt right.

  Through the shadows, she saw the rustle in the deep red of a burning bush set at the corner of the house.

  “Larsen!”

  She ignored her partner’s summons.

  “Jenny?” She approached slowly, palms damp enough to wipe on her pants. “Mrs. Dielman, are you there?”

  As she leaned forward and touched a trembling branch of crimson, a dark shape flung itself straight at her chest.

  A feral cry rang out as it hit her in the shoulder, and she fell back onto her butt. Her eyes barely made out the black shadow that darted off and disappeared into the night.

  She sat on the damp grass and caught her breath. Her heart sprinted against her ribs, the rush of adrenaline making her light-headed.

  “Jesus, Jo, what the hell’s up with you?”

  Hank’s hand came down and caught hold of her arm, hauling her to her feet. He still had the bagged scarf clutched in one hand.

  She brushed off the seat of her jeans, willing her pulse to slow. “I thought I saw something,” she got out.

  He shook his head. “You’re chasing ghosts, partner. Ain’t nobody here but us chickens.”

  “And a cat,” she said softly.

  “Boys already walked the perimeter of both houses and beat the bushes before you even got here. I knocked on a few doors myself. None of the neighbors saw squat.”

  She walked beside him, back to the driveway where Lisa Barton stood. The woman turned up her coat collar, tucking hands in her pockets. She looked a bit like an actress from one of those Hitchcock movies Hank liked to talk about with her blonde hair, calf-length coat, and high heels. Though she was a little rough around the edges to be Grace Kelly.

  “Did you find her?” she asked as they approached.

  “Naw,” Hank said, “just a cat.”

  He gave Jo a glance that made her cheeks warm. She touched her shoulder where the animal had hit her, feeling stupid.

  “Poor Jenny. She should’ve gotten help,” Lisa murmured, brow cinched. “If she’d done what was best for her, this wouldn’t be happening.”

  “Back to the scarf,” Jo said. “Mrs. Dielman told her husband she’d lost it.”

  Lisa sighed. “Jenny seemed to have problems remembering a lot of things lately. The other day, she locked herself out. Thank goodness, I had a spare key.”

  “So maybe she was flaky,” Jo replied. “But that doesn’t explain why she’d disappear for twenty-four hours without calling her husband, then show up here and vandalize your property, Ms. Barton.”

  “Who else could it be?” Lisa crossed her arms tightly. “Who else would want to send me a message?”

  “What message?” Jo felt like she was missing something. “You think Jenny had a grudge against you?”

  “I’d say so, yeah.” The woman shook tousled bangs from her eyes and looked dead-on at Jo. “I’m pretty sure she imagined I was having an affair with Patrick.”

  Jo and Hank exchanged glances.

  “Were you?” Jo asked. “Having an affair with Mr. Dielman?”

  “No, Detective Larsen, I wasn’t.” Her mouth pinched. “Patrick wouldn’t break his vows, not so long as Jenny was around. He’s a decent man. He believes in that whole till-death-do-us-part thing.” The way she said it made Jo think she wasn’t exactly a true believer herself.

  “You ever been married, ma’am?” Hank inquired.

  She shook her head.

  He grunted.

  “Did Jenny accuse you of sleeping with her husband?” Jo asked, wondering why the woman would assume to know what Jenny thought about anything. “Why would she think the two of you were involved if you weren’t?”

  Lisa Barton glanced down at the buffed black leather of her boots. “Jenny had a lot going on in her head. Some of it was real, and some was pure fiction. Maybe that’s what happens when you hurt as much as she did.”

  “Losing her son,” Jo said.

  “Losing him and having her first marriage fall to pieces.”

  “Did she talk about her ex-husband?”

  Slim shoulders shrugged. “One time when I went over for coffee, she saw the newspaper, and Kevin Harrison’s photo was there, on the society pages with his wife at some swanky function. Her eyes got really wide, and she made a snarky comment.”

  “Do you recall what she said?”

  Lisa smiled a vague smile. “If I remember correctly, it had something to do with seeing him rot in hell.”


  “As so many men should,” Hank remarked. “That’s the punch line, right? I can tell there’s girl talk coming, so excuse me.” He ducked out, ambling toward the Ford.

  The woman gnawed on her cheek, looking over to the street as Hank popped the trunk and set the evidence bag inside. “Jennifer always seemed on edge, like she was ready to crack. I told her to sign up for yoga or somethin’, but she hated to leave the house any more than she had to. It couldn’t have been much of a life for her or for Patrick.”

  “Where do you figure she is?” Jo asked. “You think she ran out on her husband because she thought he was cheating, then came back to hurl a brick through your kitchen window?”

  Lisa Barton stared at the house next door. “I really don’t have a clue what Jenny would do. But maybe it’s a positive sign.”

  Jo didn’t see it. “Positive?”

  “If Jenny was here, if she did drop the scarf, it would mean she’s okay, right? That she’s out there alive, just not wanting to be found.”

  Jo didn’t respond, having wondered the same thing herself.

  Only her gut said something different.

  I saw a picture of K in the society pages of the Dallas Morning News. I must have made a face because Patrick asked if I had the flu. I shook my head, folding the page so I didn’t have to look a minute longer. I didn’t want to talk to Patrick about K. But I had a game I played in my head. It was called “Liar.”

  Do you promise to love, honor, and cherish?

  I do.

  Liar.

  Will you be a good daddy to this baby?

  I will.

  Liar.

  Will you watch Finn while I go hit a couple of Black Friday sales? Will you make sure he gets his bath and takes his meds? Can you get him into bed on time?

  For God’s sake, Jenny, I will!

  Liar.

  I was on the phone with the hospital. I didn’t realize he’d gone outside.

  Liar.

  I saw her name and number on your phone. Were you talking to her the whole time? Did she hear what really happened? I touched Finn’s feet, held his hands. They were clean. Where was the dirt? Was he really outside? Did he even fall?