Love You More: A Novel (29 page)

“That’s my guess. Meaning, he could’ve run up more debt. And the gunman came to collect.”

D.D. frowned at him. “But he killed Brian. Last I knew, killing the mark made it difficult for him to pay up.”

“I think Brian was past that point. Sounds to me like he pissed off the wrong people. They didn’t want his money, they wanted him dead. But he’s the husband of a state police officer. Those kinds of murders can cause unwanted attention. So they came up with a scenario where Tessa herself became the suspect. Keeps all eyes off them, while getting the job done.”

“Brian’s a bad boy,” D.D. repeated slowly. “Brian is killed. Sophie is kidnapped, to keep Tessa in line.”

“Yeah.”

“This is what Tessa told you.”

“I already explained—”

D.D. held up a silencing hand. She’d already heard the story, she just didn’t believe it. And the fact it came from a fellow police officer who’d already lied to them once wasn’t helping.

“So,” D.D. reviewed, “Tessa is in a panic. Her husband has been shot with her gun, her daughter kidnapped, and her only hope of seeing her daughter alive is to plead guilty to her husband’s murder.”

“Yes.” Lyons nodded enthusiastically.

“Tessa hatches a master plan: You’ll beat the shit out of her. Then she’ll claim Brian did it, and she shot him in self-defense. That way she can plead guilty—meeting the terms of her daughter’s kidnappers—while keeping out of prison.” This part actually made some sense to D.D. Given past experience, Tessa Leoni had played to her strengths. Smart woman.

Bobby, however, had a question for Lyons. “But you really, I mean
really
beat the shit out of her. Why?”

The trooper flushed, stared down at his mangled fist. “I couldn’t hit her,” he said in a muffled voice.

“Then how do you explain the fractured cheek?” D.D. asked.

“She’s a girl. I don’t hit girls. And she knew it. So she started … At the Academy, we had to pound one another. It was part of the self-defense training. And big guys like me struggled. We’re interested in becoming cops because we have a sense of fair play—we don’t hit women or pick on the little guy.” He eyed Bobby. “Except at the Academy, where all of a sudden you had to.”

Bobby nodded, as if he understood.

“So, we trash-talked each other, right? Goaded each other into action, because the big guys had to start seriously hitting, if the little guys were going to seriously learn to defend.”

Bobby nodded again.

“Let’s just say, Tessa was really good at goading. It had to be convincing, she said. Spousal abuse is an affirmative defense, meaning the burden of proof would be on her. I had to hit her
hard
. I had to make her … 
fear
. So she started goading, and kept needling and needling and by the time she was done … Damn …” Lyons looked off at something only he could see. “I had a moment. I really did want her dead.”

“But you stopped yourself,” Bobby said quietly.

He drew himself upright. “Yes.”

“Bully for you,” D.D. said dryly, and the state trooper flushed again.

“You did this on Sunday morning?” Bobby inquired.

“Nine a.m. You’ll find a record of her call on my cell. I ran over, we did our thing.… I don’t know. It must’ve been ten-thirty. I returned home. She made the official call in, and the rest is what you already know. Other troopers arriving, the lieutenant colonel. That’s all true. I think Tessa and I were both hoping the Amber Alert might shake things loose. Whole state’s looking for Sophie. Brian’s dead, Tessa’s arrested. So the man can let Sophie go now, right? Just leave her at a bus stop or something. Tessa did what they asked of her. Sophie should be all right.”

Lyons sounded a little desperate. D.D. didn’t blame him. The story
didn’t make much sense, and as hour passed into hour, she was guessing Lyons was also coming to that realization.

“Hey, Lyons,” she said now. “If you came to Tessa’s house on Sunday morning, how come Brian’s body was frozen before that?”

“What?”

“Brian’s body. The ME ruled he was killed prior to Sunday morning, and put on ice.”

“I heard the DA … some comment …” Lyons’s voice trailed off. He gazed at them dully. “I don’t understand.”

“She played you.”

“No …”

“There wasn’t any mystery man at Tessa’s house Sunday morning, Shane. In fact, Brian was most likely killed Friday night or Saturday morning. And as for Sophie …”

The burly trooper closed his eyes, didn’t seem to be able to swallow. “But she said … For Sophie. We were doing this … Had to hit her … To save Sophie …”

“Do you know where Sophie is?” Bobby asked gently. “Have any idea where Tessa might’ve taken her?”

Lyons shook his head. “No. She wouldn’t harm Sophie. You don’t understand. There’s no way Tessa would harm Sophie. She loves her. It’s just … not possible.”

D.D. regarded him gravely. “Then you’re an even bigger fool than we thought. Sophie’s gone, and given that you’re now an accomplice to murder, looks to me like Tessa Leoni screwed you over good.”

25

B
obby and D.D. didn’t arrest Lyons. Bobby felt it was more appropriate to let internal affairs kick into gear as state investigators could squeeze Lyons more effectively than the Boston police could. Plus internal affairs was in a better position to identify any links between Lyons’s actions and their other major investigation—the missing funds from the troopers’ union.

Instead, Bobby and D.D. returned to BPD headquarters, for the eleven p.m. debrief with the taskforce.

The falafel had done D.D. a world of good. She had that gleam in her eye and hitch in her step as they pounded up the stairs to the homicide unit.

They were closing in now. Bobby could feel the case building momentum, rolling them toward an inevitable conclusion: Tessa Leoni had murdered her husband and child.

All that remained was putting a few last pieces of the case in place—including locating Sophie’s body.

The other taskforce officers were already seated by the time D.D.
and Bobby walked through the door. Phil looked as jazzed as D.D., and sure enough, he went first.

“You were right,” he burst out as D.D. strode to the front of the room. “They don’t have fifty grand in savings—the entire sum was withdrawn Saturday morning. The transaction hadn’t been posted when I got the initial report. And get this—the money had also been withdrawn twelve days prior, then returned six days after that. That’s a lot of activity on fifty grand.”

“How was it finally taken out?” D.D. asked.

“Bank check, made out to cash.”

Bobby whistled low. “Couple of pennies, available as hard currency.”

“Male or female closed the account?” D.D. asked.

“Tessa Leoni,” Phil supplied. “Teller recognized her. She was still in uniform when she made the transaction.”

“Setting up her new life,” D.D. said immediately. “If she ends up under investigation for killing her husband, joint assets might be frozen. So she got out the big money first, squirreled it away. Now, how much do you want to bet that if we find that fifty grand, there will be another quarter million sitting with it?”

Phil was intrigued, so Bobby related the state police’s current investigation into embezzled funds. Best lead—the account had been closed out by a female wearing a red baseball cap and dark sunglasses.

“They needed the money,” Phil stated. “Did a little more digging, and while Brian Darby and Tessa Leoni look good on paper, you won’t believe the credit card debt six-year-old Sophie has run up.”

“What?” D.D. asked.

“Exactly. It would appear Brian Darby opened half a dozen credit cards in Sophie’s name, using a separate PO box. I found over forty-two grand in consumer debt, run up over the past nine months. Some evidence of lump sum payments, but inevitably followed by significant cash advances, most of which were at Foxwoods.”

“So Brian Darby does have a gambling problem. Putz.”

Phil grinned. “Just to amuse myself, I correlated the dates of the cash advances with Brian’s work schedule, and sure enough, Sophie
only withdrew large sums of money when Brian was in port. So yeah, I’m guessing Brian Darby was gambling away his stepdaughter’s future.”

“Last transaction?” Bobby asked.

“Six days ago. He made a payment before that—maybe the first time the fifty grand was taken out of savings. He paid off the credit cards, then he returned to the tables and either won big, or borrowed big, because he was able to replace the entire fifty grand to savings in six days. Wait a minute …” Phil frowned.

“No,” the detective corrected himself. “He borrowed big, because the latest credit card statements show significant cash advances, meaning in the past six days, Brian went deeper into debt, yet was able to replace fifty grand to his savings. Gotta be he took out a personal loan. Maybe to cover his tracks with his wife.”

Bobby looked at D.D. “You know, if Darby was into it big with loan sharks, it’s possible an enforcer might have been sent to the house.”

D.D. shrugged. She filled the taskforce in on Trooper Lyons’s revised statement—that Tessa Leoni had called him Sunday morning, claiming a mysterious hit man had kidnapped her child and killed her husband. She was to take the blame in order to get her child back. Shane Lyons had then agreed to assist her efforts by beating her to a pulp.

When she finished, most of her fellow investigators wore similar frowns.

“Wait a minute,” Neil spoke up. “She called Lyons on Sunday? But Brian was dead at least twenty-four hours before then.”

“Something she neglected to tell him, and yet more evidence she’s a compulsive liar.”

“I traced Darby’s Friday night call,” Detective Jake Owens spoke up. “Unfortunately, it went to a prepaid cellphone. No way to determine the caller, though a prepaid cellphone suggests someone who doesn’t want his calls monitored—such as a loan shark.”

“And it turns out Brian suffered two recent ‘accidents,’ ” Neil offered. “In August, he received treatment for multiple contusions to his face, which he attributed to a hiking mishap. Let’s see …” Neil
flipped through his notes. “Worked with Phil on this one—yep, Brian shipped out September through October. Returned November three and November sixteen was in the ER again, this time with cracked ribs, which he said he received after falling from a ladder while patching a leak on his roof.”

“For the record,” Phil spoke up, “Sophie Leoni’s credit cards were all maxed out in November, meaning if Brian had accrued debt, he couldn’t use her lines of credit to pay it off.”

“Any withdrawals from the personal accounts?” D.D. asked.

“I found a major one in July—forty-two grand. But that money was replaced right before Brian shipped out in September, and after that, I don’t see any more significant lump sum transactions until the past two weeks.”

“The intervention,” Bobby commented. “Six months ago, Tessa and Shane confronted Brian about his gambling, which Tessa had figured out due to the sudden loss of thirty grand. He replaced the money—”

“Winning big, or borrowing large?” D.D. muttered.

Bobby shrugged. “Then he moved his habit underground, using a bunch of phony credit cards, with the statements mailed to a separate PO box, so Tessa would never see them. Until two weeks ago, when apparently Brian Darby fell off the wagon, this time withdrawing fifty grand. Which maybe Tessa found out about, which would explain its rapid replacement six days later.”

“And why she might have withdrawn it Saturday morning,” Phil pointed out. “Forget starting a new life; seems to me Tessa Leoni was working pretty hard to save the old one.”

“All the more reason to kill her spouse,” D.D. declared. She moved to the whiteboard. “All right. Who thinks Brian Darby had a gambling problem?”

Her entire taskforce raised their hands. She agreed, added the detail to their murder board.

“Okay. Brian Darby gambled. Apparently, not successfully. He was in deep enough to run up debt, commit credit card fraud, and perhaps receive some poundings from the local goons. Then what?”

Her investigators stared at her. She stared back at them.

“Hey, don’t let me have all the fun. We assumed Tessa Leoni’s lover beat the crap out of her. Instead, it turns out it was a fellow police officer, who felt he was doing her a favor. Now we can corroborate half that story—Brian Darby did gamble. Brian Darby may have had debt worth an enforcer paying him a visit. So where does that leave us?”

D.D. wrote a fresh header:
Motive
.

“If I were Tessa Leoni,” she stated, “and I discovered my husband was not only still gambling, but that the sorry son of a bitch had run up tens of thousands in credit card debt in my daughter’s name, I’d kill him for that alone. Interestingly enough, my-husband-is-a-worthless-asshole is not an affirmative defense, meaning Tessa’s still better off arguing battery and getting Lyons to beat the shit out of her.”

Several officers nodded agreeably. Bobby, of course, poked the first hole in the argument.

“So she loves her daughter enough to be offended by the credit card scam, but then kills her anyway?”

D.D. pursed her lips. “Point taken.” She looked at the room. “Anyone?”