Before He Finds Her (34 page)

The detective led her to a small room with a desk and a few mismatched chairs. She shut the door and motioned for Melanie to sit. The detective sat beside her and opened the file folder. “I had your statements from this morning transcribed off the tape. I’d like you to read them and let me know if you have any corrections. Then sign them.”

Melanie glanced at the papers; it was odd seeing her own words in print.

“You were right, by the way, about the man who assaulted you. Bill Suddoth has had trouble with the law before. Misdemeanors: a couple of drunk and disorderlies. He was very cooperative with me when I went to his apartment this afternoon and told him I was investigating an assault committed by a man of exactly his size, wearing the same shoes he was currently wearing. And you were also right about his shoes. I kind of wish he’d polish mine. Anyway, he immediately blamed Magruder, said his boss wanted you dead and threatened to fire him unless he took care of it.”

Melanie looked up from the papers she was holding. Despite her bruises and aches, she had trouble believing this. “David wanted to kill me?”

“That’s what Bill Suddoth claims. He also claims he decided all on his own to convince you to leave town—you know, talk to you instead of doing something a lot worse. He claims he never meant to hurt you.” Detective Isaacson held Melanie’s gaze. “I think it’s complete bullshit.”

“Which part?”

“All of it. Magruder, with all his money and connections, would never rely on a man like Bill Suddoth to commit a murder for him. He’d pay top dollar for a professional hit man. So here’s what I think. I think that driving Magruder’s fancy cars is the best job Bill Suddoth has ever had, and he’d do a lot to keep it. Not murder, but a lot. Now, if Magruder was surprised to see you alive yesterday—I think you even used the word ‘happy’—then I doubt very much he’d want you dead today. But after sobering up last night he must have become very anxious about something, and decided it was best if you left town and never came back.”

“Anxious about what?”

“Well, we don’t know for sure. But I’m going to try like hell to find out when I interview him. That’s why I want to make sure your statement is totally accurate.”

“When are you going to interview him?”

“Now.”

“You mean he’s
here
?”

“Yes, but he doesn’t know he’s a person of interest. We told him we’ve arrested Bill Suddoth for an assault, made it sound like an open-and-shut case. The moment he feels threatened, he’s going to demand his lawyer. So I figure we have one good shot at catching him off guard.”

Melanie glanced at her statement. All the facts were there, but something didn’t add up. “You’re doing all this—messing with a famous person—because his driver shoved me?”

The detective sighed. “David Magruder committed a serious crime today, orchestrating your assault, and he did it stupidly, getting Bill Suddoth involved. Why do you think he would take a risk like that?”

“I guess he panicked,” Melanie said.

“Exactly. And why did he panic? Because of you.” Then the detective did the most surprising thing. She took Melanie’s hand. “Honey, I think it’s possible—actually, more than possible—that David Magruder is responsible for your mother’s death.”

“My father killed my mother,” Melanie said automatically, pulling her hand away. It was true because it had to be true. It was the one true thing left.

“Melanie, I went back and read the file from 1991. You were right. Magruder had no alibi for the time of the murder. And he lied to us on tape about having a relationship with the victim.”

“So what?”

“So in my opinion, the police went far too easy on him back in ninety-one. The lead investigator at the time, Esposito—our careers overlapped by a few years. He was a sweet man who threw great holiday parties. But as a detective?” She shook her head. “All I’m saying is, the fact that he interviewed Magruder more than once is actually pretty astonishing. But he never would have pursued Magruder as a suspect. Not without hard evidence screaming at him. Not when Magruder was already a local celebrity who denied knowing the victim, and especially not with an obvious suspect in your father, whom a dozen people had witnessed acting angry and unbalanced—unhinged—on the night of the murder.”

“He’s the obvious suspect because he did it,” Melanie said. Needing this to be true, she repeated it like a mantra. “My father killed my mother.”

“Honey—”

“Please don’t call me that.” After a full day of being bossed around by doctors and cops, everyone believing they knew best, it felt good, even pleasurable, to stand up to the detective. “I’m not a child. And no matter what David might have done, or why he did it, I know that my father killed my mother. I know it.” She stood up.

“Melanie, I agree that your father’s disappearance is a mystery. But not everyone who vanishes is a murderer. And I think it’s possible that David Magruder killed your mother and fled, and sometime later that night or early the next morning Wayne Denison came upon the crime scene, panicked, and took you away where he thought you’d be safe.”

“That’s not right.”

“It makes sense, your uncle jumping to the same conclusion as everybody else. He thought he was protecting you from your father. I mean, it was a reasonable thought to have. But holding you for all those years.” She exhaled. “I can’t begin to imagine.”

Melanie had been working hard this afternoon to hate her uncle—
he isn’t even your uncle!
she kept reminding herself—but she couldn’t make herself do it. “He wasn’t ‘holding me,’ detective. He was raising me. He did what he thought he had to.”

“But he
didn’t
have to. He never should have taken the matter into his own hands.” The detective softened her voice. “We’ll be coordinating with authorities in West Virginia to pick up Mr. and Mrs. Denison. I hope you understand we have no choice.”

Melanie’s legs were weak. She sat back down. In her head, she was trying out a new sentence:
David Magruder killed my mother.

“Given all of this,” Detective Isaacson said, “I’d like you to remain at the station while I interview Mr. Magruder. Like I said, I’ll have one shot at this before he sees what we’re up to and he starts spreading his money around on lawyers, at which point he’ll become a far more difficult suspect. So in case he says something I need to verify, or that contradicts something you’ve said, I need to be able to ask you right away. He’ll never know you’re here.”

My father did not kill my mother.

“We don’t have nearly enough evidence for a murder charge yet,” Isaacson was saying. “I’m hoping this interview will let me start building a case.”

Evidence. Building a case. Meaningless words. My father killed my mother. My father did not kill my mother. Her vision became swirly. She wasn’t listening to the detective. She was thinking about every mysterious sound she’d ever heard over the years, all the times she felt as if she were being watched or followed. None of it was real. The tens of thousands of hours fearing that the smallest mistake would mean her death. Being terrified that her father was always just beyond the hedges, always around the next corner.

“Melanie?”

Her attention returned to the police station, to this detective who in a single day had shaken every belief she’d ever had. It wasn’t the detective’s fault, yet Melanie knew she would never forgive her.

“I want to hear all of it,” Melanie said.

“Hear what—the interview? No, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

But Melanie was done enduring everyone else’s explanations and theories and justifications. She was done learning about every-thing after the fact. If Magruder was guilty, she wanted to hear it firsthand. If he wasn’t, she wanted to hear that, too, from his own lips.

“Sure, you can,” Melanie said. “Through one of those one-way mirrors or whatever.”

“We don’t have any of those.”

“Then a microphone. Or a video camera. You’ve got to have some way of—”

“We use a webcam—but Melanie, I’m afraid the answer is no. We have a way of doing things to preserve the integrity of the evidence.”

“Is that so?” Melanie was infuriated by her own powerlessness, and she felt the childish urge to hit something. “Then I’m leaving.”

“Melanie...”

“I take back my whole story. I won’t sign this.” She shut the file folder and slammed it on the table. “My father killed my mother. You can’t change that. And my boyfriend will be coming soon, and as soon as he gets here I want to go.”

“We simply can’t do what you’re asking,” the detective said, struggling not very successfully to control her own frustration. “I wish I could.”

“You wish you could?”

“Of course I do.”

Melanie looked right into the detective’s eyes and said, “I fell down the stairs. I hit my head at the bottom of it. And my stomach.”

“Melanie, don’t do this.”

“It was stupid of me,” she continued, “but that’s what happened. I fell down the stairs and that’s the last thing I’ll ever say about it, and I refuse to sign this statement. I don’t know why I ever said those lies. Probably because of the concussion. But you can charge me with stuff if you want—for wasting your time or telling lies or whatever. But I want to make a new statement that I fell down the stairs. I’ll swear to it and sign it.”

In the ensuing silence, the detective looked at the closed file folder, and Melanie could see her weighing the risks.

“You can watch one of the computer terminals.” The detective sounded displeased, but she was saying the right words. “Officer Bauer will sit with you. But I’m telling you now, you can’t utter one word about what you hear to anyone. You could jeopardize your own case. You could jeopardize your mother’s. Am I being clear?”

Melanie was so stunned, having gotten what she’d demanded, that all she could do was nod.

24

If David Magruder had been taken to a formal interview room—which was as inviting as a jail cell and meant to arouse a person’s anxiety—he would have known instantly that he was under suspicion, and that Detective Isaacson’s request that he “help them deal quietly with a delicate situation regarding his employee” was at best a half-truth. This was why, Officer Bauer explained to Melanie, the detective had arranged to speak with Magruder in the station’s “swing room”—typically the site of brief officer meetings and coffee breaks.

There were two vending machines, soda and snacks, humming against one wall, and four chairs surrounding a circular table on which sat a small vase of plastic flowers. There was also a small webcam, its lens one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter and nearly invisible, taped to the top of the door frame, recording everything in the room. A cork board was attached to the wall, and pinned to it were news-paper comic strips of police officers. Magruder, wearing a suit with the tie loosened, sat beside a uniformed officer, chatting. At one point, the officer laid a hand on David’s arm and they both smiled about something. Either the setup was having the intended effect or Magruder faked being relaxed amazingly well, especially for a man who’d just worked a long day after drinking too much the night before.

“This won’t work,” Melanie said to Officer Bauer, suddenly certain of it. Bauer sat in a creaky chair in front of the monitor. Melanie sat beside him. Watching David on the monitor was like watching him on TV, where he was in total control, always. “David does interviews for a living,” she said. “He’s a master at this.”

Bauer raised the volume on the monitor. “So is the detective,” he said.

Together they watched Detective Isaacson enter the swing room and shake Magruder’s hand. She was intentionally short of breath and acting distracted, sitting down and flipping through a file folder.

“Thanks again for coming in, Mr. Magruder,” she said.

“You can call me David.”

She smiled. “I will, David.” She turned to the other officer. “We’re all good here. Thanks for keeping David company.”

He smiled, and shook Magruder’s hand. “A real pleasure, sir. I like your show.”

Magruder nodded.

When the officer left, he swung the door casually behind him so that it closed most, but not all, of the way. Nobody was being held here against his will. It was all strictly voluntary, a matter of mutual respect.

Detective Isaacson sat on the chair beside Magruder. “Like I said in the car, you have no idea how helpful this is, wrapping every-thing up quickly. I’m afraid that Bill Suddoth—” She frowned. “Do you want coffee? Soda? Anything? I should’ve asked.”

“Nothing, please.” He crossed his legs.

“All right.” Another friendly smile. “But if you change your mind. So Bill Suddoth assaulted a young woman this morning. I told you that in the car. Forgive me. Anyway, she got pretty banged up—bruises, contusions, concussion.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“Thank you. Well, fortunately, she—Alice Adams is her name—she was able to identify Mr. Suddoth shortly after the attack. When I spoke with her this morning, she could only figure that Mr. Suddoth must have become obsessed with her yesterday while driving her around. She said she’d found him a little odd at the time. I think she used the word creepy. And this morning—well, like I said, he beat her up. We don’t believe it was an attempted sexual assault, but we’re looking into the possibility.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Have you ever known Mr. Suddoth to be unstable?”

“I wouldn’t hire someone who I thought—”

“No, of course not. I’m not suggesting you could have known he might do something like this. But he has a prior record.”

“He does?”

“No felonies, but he’s no boy scout, either. I’m sure you didn’t know that when you hired him.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“In the future, you can always check with us.” Detective Isaacson got out her wallet and removed a business card. Slid it across the table. “Check with me—I’ll personally run the search.” She smiled. “One of the benefits of living in a small town.”

“Thank you.” Magruder glanced at the card and put it in his shirt pocket.

“Oh, I’m happy to. We’re living in really litigious times, and you want to be extremely careful.”