by LS Hawker
Nessa composed her face, her facade starting to crack under the strain, but she maintained her smile. “Do you?”
Her motto when it came to cops was Avoid at all costs, and when that failed, Don’t make eye contact. And finally, Offer no information. Wait to be asked, and answer as succinctly, plainly, and respectfully as possible. But the number one rule was Don’t be a smartass. Never a good idea to antagonize a cop, but his brusque, disrespectful manner was bringing out the biker chick in her.
He just looked at her.
She pulled down her sleeves. She knew her rights and she knew she didn’t have to answer any questions. If he’d asked nicely, the way Detective Treloar had, he would have gotten his answer.
“I need to get my son home,” she said. “It’s his nap time.”
“Why won’t you answer the question?” He leaned toward her, giving her a hard stare.
She still stood her ground, but she began to shake. “Did you—did you find my husband? Is that what this is about?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Then you’re not at liberty to interrogate me either,” she said. “Unless I’m under arrest. Am I under arrest?”
“It’s a simple question, Mrs. Donati.”
“So is mine.” She spoke slowly, no doubt antagonizing him further. “Am I under arrest?”
There was another knock at the door, and Detective Dirksen cracked it open so Nessa couldn’t see or hear who was outside it. That person whispered something and the detective hissed something back, obviously not pleased with the interruption. “Fine.” He turned his frown toward Nessa and said, “I’ll be right back.” He slipped out the door and closed it behind himself.
He’d left his folder on the counter.
Before she could think about it too hard, she opened the folder and saw the police report about the abandoned truck in the front. There were photos beneath more paper. After a split second of indecision, she pulled out her phone and started snapping photos of every page, turning each quickly, glancing at the door between snaps, trying to hear the terse conversation outside the door, but she couldn’t do both.
She wasn’t even seeing what she was photographing, so concentrated was she on the sounds outside, until the doorknob started to turn. She slammed the folder shut, reached for the faucet and turned on the water to give the appearance of being at the counter to wash her hands. As the door whooshed open, one of the papers slid from the folder and drifted to the floor.
“Guess I bumped it,” Nessa said breathlessly. “Sorry about that.”
Detective Dirksen watched the paper land at his feet, then looked at Nessa, suspicion etched into every feature of his face.
Nessa turned off the water and saw who the detective was trading tense words with. It was Rob Treloar.
“Well, hello, Detective,” she said with her warmest smile.
He smiled back while Dirksen continued to glower.
“Hi,” he said. “How are you doing?”
“Holding on,” she said. “Can you answer a simple question for me?”
“I can try,” Treloar said.
“Why is this homicide detective interrogating me about whether or not I own a gun? Was my husband murdered?”
Treloar’s eyes shifted away from her for a microsecond. “We’re keeping all possibilities open.”
A roaring filled Nessa’s ears. Was it possible that John hadn’t killed himself? That someone else had?
She cleared her throat. “Is that why you need a sample of DNA?”
Treloar nodded. “For comparison purposes.”
“Comparison to what?”
Dirksen said, “Mrs. Donati—”
“Why won’t you answer my questions?”
“Because this is an open investigation.”
She stared at Dirksen, then addressed Treloar.
“Did you find John?”
“No,” he said.
Dirksen shot him a grimace.
“May I leave?” Nessa asked him.
“Of course you can,” Treloar said. “Just one thing though. Would you have enough time to give us a fingerprint sample before you go?”
Everything froze. Nessa couldn’t seem to move her mouth for a moment. “A what?”
“We’re processing your husband’s truck, and we need to eliminate your and your husband’s fingerprints. His are on file, is that correct?”
“Um, yes,” Nessa said, trying to think clearly, but it wasn’t working. She looked at her watch. “We’ll have to do that another day. I really have to go. Daltrey’s got a . . .”
A what?
“A birthday party to go to, so . . .”
“A minute ago, you said it was his nap time,” Dirksen said.
Of course she did. She nearly smacked herself in the forehead.
She walked to the door. “I’ll give you a call and set up an appointment to come back. All right, Detective?”
The detectives exchanged a glance.
“Sure,” Treloar said. “Give me a call.”
She opened the door and walked through it, having to restrain herself from holding her middle fingers in the air as she walked away.
A rural housewife didn’t act that way, even if she was a person of interest.
But if they took her fingerprints, they’d really be interested, but for an entirely different reason. Because her fingerprints belonged to a dead person.
Chapter Twelve
AT DALTREY’S BEDTIME, Nessa read him five books before helping him brush his teeth and put on his pajamas. When she tucked him in, he stared up into her eyes stoically and signed “Daddy” with one hand, the red toy car still clutched in the other.
What was she supposed to tell him? Your father loved cocaine more than he loved you. He was willing to give up everything to be with drugs. And one way or another, they’re what killed him.
It would be years before Daltrey would be able to understand any of this, and the emotional and psychological fallout would last years beyond that. For now though, he was a nonverbal almost-four-year-old who needed to go to sleep.
“I love you,” Nessa said, then kissed and hugged him, his pudgy arms around her neck, the puppy smell of him tugging hard on her bruised heart. She turned on his night-light and rain sound machine, then closed the door most of the way.
She went downstairs and found Isabeau sprawled on the couch in the living room watching TV, remote in hand. She muted the sound with it.
Daltrey had been around them all day, so Nessa hadn’t had a chance to tell Isabeau what happened at the police station. She snapped off the television and sat in the wingback chair. Before she could tell the story though, she said, “I’m going to cry now.”
She did, for a good ninety seconds, and then dry-sobbed her way through the story, at one point allowing Isabeau to get a glass of water for her.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Mr. Donati? About the crack and all that?”
“I’m a very private person,” Nessa said.
“I get that, but it kind of seems like crucial information to give an employee who works in your house.”
Nessa’s head thundered and her eyes stung. Isabeau was right, especially since the information in question might have prevented her from taking the job in the first place. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think it would be an issue.”
“I guess I thought you were a single mother or something,” Isabeau said. “Marlon didn’t tell me any of this.”
“It’s not his story to tell.”
Marlon’s recommendation of Isabeau was further AA rule-breaking, but nothing about their relationship was conventional AA. Marlon did what he wanted.
“I’m really sorry,” Isabeau said. “About all of this. You must be devastated.”
“I don�
��t know what I’m . . . going . . . to tell . . .” And she was sobbing again. How were you supposed to explain this sort of thing to a nonverbal three-year-old? John’s best trait by far was that he was one of the most engaged fathers she’d ever seen, and his permanent absence might lead to Daltrey’s permanent muteness. Her precious son, fatherless. But what had she thought? That she’d allow visitation with a crack addict? Never.
“Is there anyone I can call for you?” Isabeau said. “Family or friends or something? Somebody who can come and be with you?”
“No,” Nessa said.
“What about your parents?”
Nessa shook her head.
“Mr. Donati’s family?”
This hadn’t occurred to Nessa. She was going to have to tell John’s brother and sister, not to mention his parents, who were scheduled to pick Daltrey up later in the month and take him to Kansas City for a few days. Sadly, they would not be that surprised. They’d suffered through his mental illness and addictions even longer than she had.
“You know what,” Isabeau said. “I think maybe you ought to wait to tell them anything. If they’re anything like my parents, they’ll freak and be all in your face, and you probably don’t want that right now, am I right?”
Nessa nodded.
“Besides, there really isn’t anything to tell them, until after the police drag the river and the lake and maybe . . . find . . . something. You know what I’m saying?”
Nessa did know what she was saying.
Isabeau pressed a finger to her lips. “But . . . what if they don’t find anything?” she said. “What if he’s, like, dead, but they never find his body? What happens then?”
She slid to the floor, opened up her laptop, and began typing furiously. Nessa watched as Isabeau’s eyes tracked back and forth, reading, her eyebrows drawn together, her lips moving a little.
“Oh, wow,” she said. “It takes seven years after a person goes missing to have him declared dead, unless you go through the courts with a petition and apparently it’s a big old hassle.” She typed some more and read some more. “Did—does Mr. Donati have a life insurance policy?”
“Yes,” Nessa said.
“You’re not going to see any of that for seven years either.”
Daltrey would be ten by then, almost eleven, with very little memory of his father.
“Boy,” Isabeau said. “It’s a good thing you’re the main bread winner, huh?”
It was a good thing. This tactless statement actually surprised Nessa so much that an equally inappropriate laugh escaped Nessa. She covered her mouth with her hand to quell it.
“So you never did tell me what the vet said yesterday,” Isabeau said.
The vet. That seemed a lifetime ago. It was only yesterday? She felt like she’d aged five years. “The vet said it was antifreeze. That’s what killed him.”
Isabeau looked confused. “Antifreeze?”
“Yeah. I guess it’s lethal to pets. It causes their . . .”
Isabeau’s face had gone white.
“What is it?” Nessa said.
“Is antifreeze green?”
“I’m not sure,” Nessa said. “Maybe.”
Isabeau pulled out her phone, thumb-typed on the tiny keyboard, and waited. She focused on the screen, then her head dropped back on the couch and she closed her eyes.
Nessa took the phone out of her hand and saw an image of antifreeze. Green.
“I found a plant water-catcher next to the boathouse with, like, this acid green liquid in it. I didn’t know what it was so I tossed it out—didn’t want Daltrey to get into it.” She opened her eyes and lifted her head, then covered her mouth with both hands. “I didn’t even think about poor old Declan MacManus.”
By the boathouse.
“Was that before or after the break-in?” Nessa said.
Isabeau’s eyes tracked upward as she thought. “It was after,” she said in a flat voice.
Did John deliberately leave antifreeze out to kill the dog and punish Nessa? There was no way. John loved their family pet. But crack had made him do horrible things. It was certainly possible.
It was after ten when Isabeau finally went to bed, and Nessa still needed to work on her personal inventory. But first, she wanted to go through the snaps she took of Detective Dirksen’s file folder. While she waited for the photos to download to her laptop, she made a pot of tea and got out her vapor pen. She was so exhausted she thought about waiting until tomorrow, but dread and curiosity got the better of her.
She sat on the couch, poured a cup of jasmine tea, and opened the first image.
Disappointment washed over her as she tried to read the blurry, off-center typewritten report pages. She clicked through the all-but-unreadable text pages until she got to the first photo.
It was a side view of the copper-colored pickup truck. She couldn’t immediately discern what the next one was, until she’d looked at it for a moment. It was a close-up of one of the interior sides of the truck bed. She puzzled over this, looked at every inch, but couldn’t figure out what she was supposed to see. The next image seemed to be the same thing but must have been the opposite interior side of the bed, along with drawn circles, arrows, and handwriting. The next photo was a close-up of the same area with what looked like two metal rivets in it surrounded by irregular patterns of splintering, again circled.
She clicked over to the next image. An overhead shot of the truck bed with dark streaks running parallel to the contours. She brought the computer close to her face. Was that mud?
She gasped, her sharp intake of breath sending her into a coughing fit, and let go of the laptop as if it were electrified.
That was blood.
Blood that would need to be compared to a DNA sample of a close relative.
Nessa clicked back a few to the photo of the interior truck sides. She now realized what she was looking at.
Two bullets.
Next to the arrow pointing to the slugs someone had handwritten .38 cal.
That was why Detective Dirksen asked if she owned a gun.
Monday, June 13
NESSA HARDLY SLEPT the next few nights, trying to come up with a plan to keep the police from fingerprinting her. As she flopped around in bed, she reasoned that the police would have no impetus to run her prints through NCIC. Why would they do that? They were just trying to eliminate any fingerprints they found on the boat as hers and therefore not a problem.
But then she thought . . . what if they lifted one of her fingerprints from the truck and ran that through NCIC accidentally? That. Would be. So. Bad.
She had to hope that there would be no usable prints of hers, and she tried to remember the last time she was in the truck. Her head felt like it would explode, her blood pressure was so high.
It was seven forty-five A.M. when she finally gave up and got out of bed. Since she’d only been asleep a few hours, Nessa tried to go back to sleep, but at eight on the dot, her default ringtone played. The Riley County Sheriff’s Department was calling.
She contemplated letting it go to voicemail, but she was only postponing the inevitable.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Donati? This is Detective Rob Treloar. How are you today?”
“Yes?” Her brains were so scrambled she couldn’t seem to answer appropriately.
“Good,” he said, as if she’d said, “Fine.” “I mean—I wondered if I could come by this morning and talk to you about some things. I just have a few more questions.”
She was wary. “What is it?” she said, breathless.
“We’ll discuss it when I get there.” He cleared his throat. “So would about an hour from now be convenient? Would that work for you?”
“That’s fine,” she said. “See you then.” She was reminded of reality TV, where informat
ion couldn’t be revealed until after the commercial break. Dread filled her.
She went downstairs and found Isabeau and Daltrey in the kitchen. Her son sat on the floor, playing drums with wooden spoons on some old Tupperware bowls. He set down the spoons and gave her a big smile. He held his arms out, and she picked him up.
“Daltrey,” Nessa said. “Would you like to go to the park this morning?”
He signed “Yes” over and over again, squirming with joy in her arms.
“Can you go upstairs and put on your shoes?”
He nodded and ran for the stairs.
“Can you take him and come back by about eleven?” Nessa asked Isabeau.
“Sure,” Isabeau said. “You’re not coming with us?”
Nessa poured herself a cup of coffee, and tried to make her voice sound unconcerned. “Detective Treloar is coming out here to ask me some questions.”
“You sure you don’t want me here just in case?”
“Just in case what?”
“You know,” Isabeau said. “Police brutality.”
This comment made Nessa smile. “I think I’ll be all right. I’d prefer that Daltrey wasn’t here.”
“Got it,” Isabeau said.
The two of them drove away ten minutes later, and Nessa took a shower, got dressed, and sat in the living room.
At nine, the doorbell rang and she ran to it like she was anticipating a homecoming date. She opened the door, and there he stood, wearing a royal blue shirt and clashing tie. He must not be married, she figured. And then she saw that Detective Dirksen was with him.
“You’ve met Detective Dirksen, Mrs. Donati,” Detective Treloar said. She couldn’t read his expression, but he must have known Dirksen would be coming with him.
She felt betrayed, but put on her gracious hostess face and treated Dirksen with respect. No antagonizing him this time. She would be on her best behavior, cooperative and charming. Even though she was pretty sure she was now a “person of interest” in a possible homicide.
“How have you been?” she asked. “Come on in.” She ushered them inside.
“Thanks,” Treloar said, stepping over the threshold. Dirksen followed him, his eyes never leaving her. Dirksen was looking for a fight. He was probably always looking for a fight.
