Love You More: A Novel (30 page)

“Maybe she didn’t kill Sophie on purpose,” Phil suggested. “Maybe, it was an accident. She and Brian were having a fight, Sophie got in the way. Maybe, Sophie’s death became one more reason to kill Brian. Except now her family’s dead, her husband shot by her service weapon—automatic investigation right there,” Phil added, “so Tessa panics. Gotta figure out a plausible scenario—”

“Self-defense worked for her once before,” Bobby commented. “The Tommy Howe shooting.”

“She freezes her husband’s body to buy her time, takes Sophie’s body for a drive, and the next morning concocts a story to manipulate both Shane Lyons and us into believing what she needs us to believe,” D.D. finished. “Sunday morning becomes showtime.”

“What if she withdrew the fifty grand Saturday morning because she discovered Brian was gambling again?” another officer spoke up. “Brian found out, or she confronted him. Events escalated from there.”

D.D. nodded, wrote a new note on the board:
Where’s the $$$?

“Gonna be hard to trace,” Phil warned. “Check’s made out to
cash, meaning it can be deposited at any bank under any name, or taken to a dealer and cashed.”

“Big check for most dealers,” Bobby said.

“Guaranteed percentage,” Phil countered. “Especially if she called ahead, there are several check cashers who’d make that deal. Bank checks are good as gold and it’s a tight financial market out there.”

“What if Tessa needed the money?” D.D. asked abruptly. “What if she had a payment to make?”

Thirty pairs of eyes looked at her.

“It’s another possibility,” she thought out loud. “Brian Darby had a gambling problem. He couldn’t control it, and like a sinking ship was taking Tessa and Sophie down with him. Now, Tessa is a woman who’s already hit bottom once before. She knows better. In fact, she’s worked doubly hard to rebuild a life, particularly for her daughter’s sake. So what can she do? Divorce takes time, and God knows how much Brian will destroy their financials until it goes through.

“Maybe,” D.D. mused, “maybe there was an enforcer. Maybe, Tessa Leoni
hired
him—a hit man to finally put her husband out of his misery. Except the man in black took out his own insurance policy—Sophie Leoni—so Tessa couldn’t turn around and arrest him.”

Bobby looked at her. “I thought you were convinced she’d killed her own daughter?”

D.D.’s hand was resting unconsciously across her stomach. “What can I tell you? I’m getting soft in my old age. Besides, a jury will buy a wife killing her gambling-addicted husband. A mother killing her child, however, is a tougher sell.”

She glanced at Phil. “We need to follow the money. Nail down that Tessa definitely took it out. See what else you can find in the financials. And tomorrow, we’ll give Tessa’s lawyer a call, see if we can arrange for a fresh chat. Twenty-four hours in jail has a tendency to make most people more talkative.

“Any other news from the hotline?” she asked.

Nothing, her taskforce agreed.

“Final drive of the white Denali?” she tried hopefully.

“Based on fuel mileage, it remained within a hundred miles of Boston,” the lead detective reported.

“Excellent. So we’ve narrowed it to, what, a quarter of the state?”

“Pretty much.”

D.D. rolled her eyes, set down the marker. “Anything else we should know?”

“Gun,” spoke up a voice from the back of the room. Detective John Little.

“What about it?” D.D. asked. “Last I knew, the firearms discharge investigation team had turned it over for processing.”

“Not Tessa’s gun,” Little said. “Brian’s gun.”

“Brian had a gun?” D.D. asked in surprise.

“Took out a permit two weeks ago. Glock forty. I couldn’t find it on the evidence logs as seized from either the house or his car.”

The detective gazed at her expectantly. D.D. returned his stare.

“You’re telling me Brian Darby had a gun,” she said.

“Yes. Applied for the permit two weeks ago.”

“Maybe bulking up wasn’t getting the job done anymore,” Bobby murmured.

D.D. waved her hand at him. “Hello. Bigger picture here. Brian Darby had a Glock forty,
and we have no idea where it is
. Detective, that’s not a small thing.”

“Gun permit just went through,” Detective Little countered defensively. “We’re a little backed up these days. Haven’t you been reading the papers? Armageddon is coming and, apparently, half the city intends to be armed for it.”

“We need that gun,” D.D. said in a clipped voice. “For starters, what if that’s the weapon that killed Sophie Leoni?”

The room went silent.

“Yeah,” she said. “No more talk. No more theories. We have a dead husband of a state police officer, and a missing six-year-old. I want Sophie Leoni. I want Brian Darby’s gun. And if that evidence leads us where we think it’s probably going to lead us, then I want us to build a case so fucking airtight, Tessa Leoni goes away for the rest of her miserable life. Get out. Get it done.”

Eleven o’clock Monday night, the detectives scrambled.

26

E
very woman has a moment in her life when she realizes she genuinely loves a guy, and he’s just not worth it. It took me nearly three years to reach that point with Brian. Maybe there were signs along the way. Maybe, in the beginning, I was just so happy to have a man love me and my daughter as much as Brian seemed to love me and Sophie, I ignored them. Yes, he could be moody. After the initial six-month honeymoon, the house became his anal-retentive domain, Sophie and I receiving daily lectures if we left a dish on the counter, a toothbrush out of its holder, a crayon on the table.

Brian liked precision, needed it.

“I’m an engineer,” he’d remind me. “Trust me, you don’t want a dam built by a sloppy engineer.”

Sophie and I did our best. Compromise, I told myself. The price of family; you gave up some of your individual preferences for the greater good. Plus, Brian would leave again and Sophie and I would spend a giddy eight weeks dumping our junk all over the place. Coats draped over the back of kitchen chairs. Art projects piled on the corner of
the counter. Yes, we were regular Girls Gone Wild when Brian shipped out.

Then, one day I went to pay the plumber and discovered our life savings was gone.

It’s a tough moment when you have to confront the level of your own complacency. I knew Brian had been going to Foxwoods. More to the point, I knew the evenings he came home reeking of booze and cigarettes, but claimed he’d been hiking. He’d lied to me, on several occasions, and I’d let it go. To pry would involve being told an answer I didn’t want to hear. So I didn’t pry.

While my husband, apparently, gave in to his inner demons and gambled away our savings account.

Shane and I confronted him. He denied it. Not very plausibly. But at a certain point, there wasn’t much more I could do or say. The money magically returned, and again, I didn’t ask many questions, not wanting to know what I didn’t want to know.

I thought of my husband as two people after that. There was Good Brian, the man I fell in love with, who picked up Sophie after school and took her sledding until they were both pink-cheeked from laughter. Good Brian fixed me pancakes and maple syrup when I got home from graveyard shift. He would rub my back, strained from the weight of carrying body armor. He would hold me while I slept.

Then there was Bad Brian. Bad Brian yelled at me when I forgot to wipe down the counter after doing the dishes. Bad Brian was curt and distant, not only turning the TV to whatever testosterone-bound show he could find, but turning up the volume if Sophie or I tried to protest.

Bad Brian smelled like cigarettes, booze, and sweat. He worked out compulsively, with the demons of a man with something to fear. Then he’d disappear for a couple of days at a time—time with
the guys
, Bad Brian would say, when we both knew he was going off alone, his friends having long since given up on him.

But that was Bad Brian for you. He could look his state police officer wife in the eye, and tell a lie.

It always made me wonder: Would he be a different kind of husband if I were a different kind of wife?

Bad Brian broke my heart. Then Good Brian would reappear long enough to patch it back together again. And around and around we would go, plummeting through the roller coaster ride of our lives.

Except all rides have to end.

Good Brian and Bad Brian’s ride ended at exactly the same moment, on our kitchen’s spotlessly clean floor.

Bad Brian can’t hurt me or Sophie anymore.

Good Brian is going to take me a while to let go.

T
uesday morning, seven a.m.

The female CO started head count and the unit officially stirred to life. My roommate, Erica, had already been awake for an hour, curled up in the fetal position, rocking back and forth, eyes pinned on something only she could see, while muttering beneath her breath.

I would guess she’d retired to her bunk shortly after midnight. No watch on my wrist, no clock in the cell, so I had to gauge the time in my head. It gave me something to do all night long—I think it’s … two a.m., three a.m., four twenty-one a.m.

I fell asleep once. I dreamt of Sophie. She and I were in a vast, churning ocean, paddling for all we were worth against steadily climbing waves.

“Stay with me,” I screamed at her. “Stay with me, I’ll keep you safe!”

But her head disappeared beneath the black water, and I dove and I dove and I dove, but I couldn’t find my daughter again.

I woke up, tasting salt on my lips. I didn’t sleep again.

The tower made noises in the night. Nameless women, goading nameless groaning men. The rattle of pipes. The hum of a huge facility, trying to settle its bones. It felt as if I were inside some giant beast, swallowed up whole. I kept touching the walls, as if the rough feel of cinder blocks would keep me grounded. Then I would get up and pee, as the cover of night was the closest to privacy I could get.

The female CO had reached our cell. She glanced at rocking Erica, then at me, and our eyes met, a flicker of recognition, before she turned away.

Kim Watters. Dated one of the guys in the barracks, had attended a couple of the group dinners. ’Course. CO at the Suffolk County Jail. Now I remembered.

She moved to the next cell. Erica rocked harder. I peered out the barred window and tried to convince myself that personally knowing my own prison guard didn’t make things worse.

Seven-thirty. Breakfast.

Erica was up. Still muttering, not looking at me. Agitated. Meth had fried her brain. She needed rehab, and mental health services more than a jail sentence. Then again, welcome to most of the prison population.

We got limp pancakes, applesauce, and milk. Erica put the applesauce on her pancakes, rolled it all together, and ate it in three giant mouthfuls. Four gulps took care of the milk. Then she eyed my tray.

I had no appetite. The pancakes tasted like wet tissue on my tongue. I stared at her and slowly ate them anyway.

Erica sat on the toilet. I turned around to give her privacy.

She laughed.

Later, I used my hooter bag to brush my teeth and apply deodorant. Then … Then I didn’t really know what to do. Welcome to my first full day in prison.

Rec time arrived. The CO opened our cell. Some women drifted out, some stayed inside. I couldn’t take it anymore. The ten foot ceilings and yawning windows gave the illusion of space, but a jail cell was a jail cell. I already felt overflouresced, pining for natural sunlight.

I paced over to the sitting area at one end of the commons, where six ladies had gathered to watch
GMA
. The show was too happy for me. Next, I tried the tables, four silver rounds where two women currently played hearts, while one more sat and cackled at something only she understood.

A shower went on. I didn’t look. I didn’t want to know.

Then I heard a funny sound, like a shivery gasp, someone trying to inhale and exhale at the same time.

I turned around. The CO, Kim Watters, looked like she was doing a funny dance. Her body was up in the air, her feet twitching as if
reaching for the floor, except they couldn’t find it. A giant black female with long dark hair stood directly behind her, heavily muscled arm cocked around Kim’s windpipe, squeezing tight even as Kim’s fingers scraped frantically at the massive forearm.

I stepped forward and in the next instant, my roommate, Erica, screamed, “Get the fucking pig!” and half a dozen detainees rushed toward me.

I took the first blow in the stomach. I tightened my abs reflexively, rocked left and drove my fist into a soft, oomphing middle. Another careening blow. Ducking low, moving on instinct now, because that’s why recruits trained. Do the impossible over and over and it becomes the possible. Better yet, it becomes routine, meaning one day, when you least expect it, months and years of training can suddenly save your life.

Another hard crack to my shoulder. They were aiming for my face, my swollen eye and shattered cheek. I brought up both hands in the classic pugilist stance, blocking my head, while driving myself toward the closest attacker. I caught her around the waist and flung her back at the rushing stampede, toppling two in a tangle of limbs.