by Lisa Gardner
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, honestly 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 s
tarted 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 bravado 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.”
“How you gonna do that?”
I smiled, grimly this time. “Let’s just say, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts invested a lot of resources into my training, and they’re about to get their money’s worth. Vehicle, Dad. I don’t have much time, and neither does Sophie.”
He didn’t move, just crossed his arms and peered down at me. “You lying to me?”
I didn’t feel like arguing anymore. Instead, I stepped forward, wrapped my arms around his waist, and leaned my head against the bulk of his chest. He smelled of cigarettes, motor oil, and whiskey. He smelled of my childhood, and the home and mother I still missed.
“Love you, Dad. Always have. Always will.”
His frame shook. A slight tremor. I chose to believe that was his way of saying he loved me, too. Mostly because the alternative hurt too much.
I stepped back. He unfolded his arms, crossed to the Peg-Board, and handed me a single key.
“Blue Ford truck, out back. Gotta lotta miles, but its heart’s good. Four-wheel drive. You’re gonna need that.”
For navigating the snowy road. Perfect.
“Gas cans are against the outside wall. Help yourself.”
“Thank you.”
“Bring her,” he said suddenly. “When you find her, when you … get her back. I want … I want to meet my granddaughter.”
“Maybe,” I said.
He startled at my hesitation, glared at me.
I took the key, returning his look calmly. “From one alcoholic to another—gotta stop drinking, Dad. Then we’ll see.”
“Hard-ass,” he muttered.
I smiled one last time, then kissed him on his leathery cheek. “Get it from you,” I whispered.
I palmed the key, picked up my duffel bag, then I was gone.
35
“Why was the scene in the woods so horrific?” D.D. was saying fifteen minutes later. She answered her own question: “Because what kind of mom would kill her own child, then blow up the body? What kind of woman could do such a thing?”
Bobby, standing beside her on Juliana Howe’s front porch, nodded. “Diversion. She needed to buy time to escape.”
D.D. shrugged. “Except not really. She was already alone with Officer Fiske and they were a quarter of a mile away from the search team. She could’ve easily jumped Fiske without the diversion, and still had a solid thirty minutes head start. Which is why exploding the child’s remains seems so horrifying—it’s gratuitous. Why do such a terrible thing?”
“Okay, I’ll bite: Why do such a thing?”
“Because she needed the bones fragmented. She couldn’t afford for us to find the remains in situ. Then it would’ve been obvious the body didn’t belong to a child.”
Bobby stared at her. “Excuse me? The pink bits of clothing, blue jeans, rib bone, tooth …”
“Clothing was planted with the body. Rib bone is approximately the right size for a six-year-old—or a large breed of dog. Ben just finished spending some quality time studying bone fragments in the lab. Those bones aren’t human. They’re canine. Right size. Wrong species.”
Bobby did a little double-take. “Fuck me,” he said, a man who hardly ever swore. “The German shepherd. Brian Darby’s old dog that passed away. Tessa buried that body?”
“Apparently. Hence the strong scent of decomp in the white Denali. Again, according to Ben, the size and length of many bones in a large dog would match a six-year-old human. Of course, the skull would be all wrong, as well as minor details like tail and paws. An intact canine skeleton, therefore, would never get confused for a human one. Scrambled pieces of bone fragments, however … Ben apologizes for his error. He’s a bit embarrassed to tell you the truth. It’s been a while since he’s had a crime scene mess this much with his head.”
“Wait a second.” Bobby held up a cautioning hand. “The cadaver dogs, remember? They wouldn’t hit on nonhuman remains. Their noses and training are better than that.”
D.D. suddenly smiled. “Fucking clever,” she muttered. “Isn’t that what Juliana said? Tessa Leoni is very clever, gotta give her that.
“Two front teeth,” she filled in for Bobby. “Also three bloody tampons, recovered from the scene after we left. Ben supplies some of the training materials used by the SAR teams. According to him, dog handlers are fairly creative at finding sources of ‘cadaver,’ since owning actual dead people is illegal. Turns out, teeth are like bone. So search handlers get teeth from a local dentist’s office, and use them to train the dogs. Same with used tampons. Tessa hid a dog body, but scattered the site with ‘human cadaver’—her daughter’s baby teeth topped with a dash of feminine hygiene.”
“That’s disgusting,” Bobby said.
“That’s ingenious,” D.D. countered.
&nbs
p; “But why?”
D.D. had to think about it. “Because she knew we’d blame her. That’s been her experience, right? She didn’t shoot Tommy Howe, but the cops assumed she did. Meaning we were right before—the first experience ten years ago has informed her experience now. Another terrible thing happened in Tessa Leoni’s world. Her first instinct is that she will be blamed. Except this time she’ll probably be arrested. So she stages an elaborate scheme to get out of jail.”
“But why?” Bobby repeated. “If she didn’t do anything, why not tell us the truth? Why … such a complicated ruse? She’s a cop now. Shouldn’t she have more faith in the system?”
D.D. arched a brow.
He sighed. “You’re right. We’re born cynics.”
“But why not talk to us?” D.D. was continuing. “Let’s think about that. We assumed Tessa shot Tommy Howe ten years ago. We were wrong. We assumed she shot her husband, Brian, Saturday morning. Well, maybe we’re wrong about that, too. Meaning, someone else did it. That person shot Brian, took Sophie.”
“Why kill the husband, but kidnap the child?” Bobby asked.
“Leverage,” D.D. supplied immediately. “This does go back to gambling. Brian owed too much. Instead of shaking him down, however—the weak link—they’re going after Tessa instead. They shoot Brian to show they mean business, then grab Sophie. Tessa can have her daughter back if she pays up. So Tessa heads to the bank, takes out fifty grand—”
“Clearly not enough,” Bobby commented.
“Exactly. She needs more money, but also has to deal with the fact that her husband’s dead, shot by her gun, as ballistics was a match.”
Bobby’s eyes widened. “She was home,” he said suddenly. “Only way they could’ve shot Brian with her gun. Tessa was home. Maybe even walked into the situation. Someone’s already holding her child. What can she do? Man demands that she turn over her Sig Sauer, then …”
“Shoots Brian,” D.D. said softly.
“She’s screwed,” Bobby continued quietly. “She knows she’s screwed. Her husband is dead by her service weapon, her child has been kidnapped, and she already has a previous history of shooting to kill. What are the odds of anyone believing her? Even if she said, Hey, some mobster offed my gambling-addicted husband with my state sidearm, and now I need your help to rescue my kid …”
