The Silent Bride (30 page)

"In dme. We have a lot to talk about."

Wendy kept shaking her head. "What is it that you think you have?"

"Your thumbprint on one of the discharged shell casings, one of the bullets that killed Tovah Schoenfeld."

Wendy's eyes widened. They jerked to the mirror behind which she was sure other detectives were watching her, maybe even filming her. Then to the closed door. No exit.

"Jesus Christ. I'm being framed," she cried.

"You're framing me." Panic filled her for the first time.

"That's not the way it happens. Tell me what you know. I'm here to listen and to help. There's nothing that can't be explained and worked out," Woo said.

Okay, yeah. Of course, everything could be explained.
She calmed down. She knew how to spin her stories. Her stomach grumbled. She didn't know when she'd eaten last. She started thinking about food, then drink. She needed a drink. She'd explain fast so she could get that drink.

Thirty-nine

T
he recorder clicked. End side two, cassette three.

April reached over and popped it out, her face showing patience she didn't feel. She had six cassettes. She could get more and sit there for the next two days if she had to. The first three contained a lot of sighing.

"Did you turn the recorder off so no one can hear you torture me?" Wendy slouched in her chair, looking more and more like a surly teenager.

April nodded. She was going to zap the suspect with a stun gun. She almost wished she could, because she was not having much luck finding a way into this irritating woman, and liking her less and less as the hours passed. The pressure for something to break was crushing, and she couldn't help thinking of Jason Frank having fun thousands of miles away, leaving her with a psycho case she couldn't seem to handle. April knew exactly how Jason jumped into the sea of misery with his patients, leading them back into the past and forward into the future at the same time. She'd seen him do it. And now she'd tried being like him, nicer in every way. And it wasn't working.

Wendy responded by slouching and sneering like a big caged cat—or a guy. That was it, she was acting more guy than girl. Her coil of resistance was strengthening. She'd become one hundred percent yang, almost as if she knew for sure that nothing could touch her. The arrogance pissed April off. She felt ever more stressed by the ticking clock, by Bel-laqua's and Mike's depending on her, and the chief's personal command to get it done today. The story was right here in the room. April could feel it just out of reach. All she needed to do was push the right button.

"Can I have a Coke, please?"

"Sure." April stepped outside. "Get me another Coke, please."

Mike appeared. "Want me to take a crack at her?"

"Not yet. Let me keep it soft for a while. We can try that. There's always time to muscle her. Anything come up on Lori Wilson, the assistant?"

"Nothing yet. Her background looks clean, but let's find out where she is."

April nodded, glanced at her watch.

"You sure you don't want me to hammer her?"

"Uh-uh. Thanks," to the uniform for the Coke.

She went back in. "Here you go." It was Coke number five.

Wendy drank half of it in one gulp.

"Feeling better?"

"No."

"Look, don't push me away. I can help you out. Whatever happened I know you had a reason. You don't have to be a tough guy with me," April soothed. "I'm on your side here."

Wendy snorted. "Oh, come on, you're treating me as if I were a common crook, like that bum who was in here before. You said I was a thief, you implied I was fired from my last job. You told me you have my fingerprints on shell casings. Ha-ha." She made the explosive sound of air extruded through closed lips. "I understand what you're doing."

"I want to help you go home, that's all."

"That's what they always say on cop shows." Wendy snorted.

"We're not in a movie here. At least three young women died on your watch. You're the link, Wendy. I need your help."

"I don't care what you need. It's not my problem." Wendy tapped her foot.

"Let me repeat that. Two beautiful young women were murdered at your weddings. A third died the day before her wedding. I'm not forgetting Andrea. Three of your weddings make it your problem."

"Not my weddings." Wendy made a face.

April caught the sudden slice of pain through bravado. "Of course, your weddings," she said lightly.

"Turn that thing back on." Wendy pointed to the recorder.

April lifted a shoulder and complied with a new cassette and the routine of coding in the pertinent information. The mood was shot again. Wendy was an expert at pushing away.

"Tell me about Barry," April said softly, starting at square one again.

Wendy swiped at her nose with the back of her hand. "It was an accident. How many times do I have to say it?"

"No, no. I mean what was he like?"

"What was he like?" She shifted position and gazed up at the cracks in the ceiling.

"Yeah, what happened? What went wrong?"

"It won't help you. It has nothing to do with this." She glanced down at April, then clicked her tongue as if she thought April was stupid.

"It's part of your history. It's part of what makes you dck."

"Why do you want to know what makes me dck?"

"You're in a lot of trouble. I want to help you."

"Sure you do."

"What went wrong with Barry?" April could push right back.

"Oh, please. The usual, what else? It happens all the time. A girl thinks she has someone; the guy has a different idea." She rolled her eyes, drawing the pain upward like smoke up a chimney.

"I know what it feels like. Yeah, men suck, don't they?" April murmured.

For the first time Wendy's eyes flashed interest. "Yes, that's about it."

"You got engaged, he cheated on you," April guessed.

Wendy shrugged wide, bony shoulders. "It's no big thing. They all do it. They'll do it the day before their wedding. They'll do it the night of their wedding. Shit, some of them will go out for a shave the morning after and fuck someone else before lunch."

"And you're in a position to know about that," April murmured.

"Oh, I know a lot about that," Wendy agreed, checked her nails this time.

April did not doubt it. She nodded. "Barry was a big disappointment."

"Barry is an asshole." Wendy's burst of laughter was contemptuous. "The jerk's been married twice since then. Doesn't that say it all?" She drank up the rest of the Coke.

"You were, what, twenty at the time?"

"Twenty-three. Old enough to know better," she said bitterly.

"Not really. Twenty-three is a very hopeful age. How did you meet him?"

Wendy chewed the inside of her lip, bobbed her head. "You really want the story of my life?"

"Absolutely, we have all time in the world."

"We have the time until I call my lawyer." Wendy laughed again.

April froze. She and her camera became still as stone. Wendy knew exactly what she was doing. The minute she demanded a lawyer it would be over. It would be either arrest her on the spot or let her go home. A partial print was weak, nothing more than a muscle to flex. April had lied about one thing: Even fingerprints could be contested. A paid expert could easily contest a partial. How much minutiae could they have, how many matching swirls?
Please.
Even if there was enough minutiae to suggest a match alone, the print was only a suggestion of guilt, a possibility. Aware of watchers behind the mirror, April pressed on.

"You met him ... ?"

"Barry is my stepfather's son. He's my stepbrother."

"No kidding." A flag. Something new.

"Well, not at first. My mother didn't marry him until years later," Wendy amended. She glanced at her watch, at the ceiling, everywhere but at April.

"After you started going out, you mean?" April ignored an itch in an intimate place.

"Yes, I guess that's what I mean. They didn't get divorced right away." Wendy sucked in her lips and sighed as if bored.

"Right away when?"

"Oh, they knew each other a long time." Now she broke into a smile. Some little secret smile. The woman had swift mood changes.

Oh, this was a long game. April kept waiting.

"I knew Barry. My brothers liked his sister, Miff. It was all pretty friendly when we were growing up." Wendy paused; then her expression soured again. "They had a couple more kids. They're still together."

So Wendy shot a stepbrother and was now out in the cold, probably not so welcome at family reunions, at the very least. April wasn't a shrink, but psychologically speaking, it sounded as if alienation from her own family might be a component of Wendy's problem. April flashed to Jason again. Ha, she could do this.

"Where did the shooting incident occur?" she asked, feeling the excitement of a puzzle piece fitting.

"On Martha's Vineyard. We had a home there."

Click, Martha's Vineyard was also where Lori Wilson, Wendy's assistant, was on vacation. And she'd seen something else about Martha's Vineyard. What was it?

"Had?" she prompted.

"Oh, we lived in it when I was little. My mother got the house in the divorce," Wendy said, offhand.

"Does she live there now?"

Wendy shook her head. "No. They moved to Newport."

Rhode Island. Another resort area April knew nothing about. "Who owns the place now?"

"I don't know." Wendy gazed at the ceiling.

"What kind of shooting did you do?"

"Sport shooting." Hat.

"Oh, yeah, what exactly is that?"

Wendy gave her a look. "Sportsmen shoot bull's-eyes, either slow fire or rapid fire, but it's the opposite of what you do."

"Really. What do we do?"

"You just empty a magazine into the silhouette of a human as fast as you can. With a rifle or revolver. Combat shooting is pretty trashy. It's for the beer-drinking crowd. In sport shooting, the idea is to aim. You do any knockdowns?"

April shook her head. That was for the military.

"In sport shooting you go for silhouettes of game animals about twenty, thirty yards out. If you hit them, they fall over. Or we shoot clay, skeet. No humans." She said it with a nervous laugh. "Unlike you."

"What kind of rifles do you use?"

"It depends. A sporting clay, a skeet rifle. A trap gun. For competition you use a 308; that's a .30-caliber rifle."

"Shotguns." Now they were getting somewhere.

"Mm-hm. They have different chokes in them, seven-and-a-half-, eight-, or nine-size pellets, depending. You could cut somebody up pretty bad from twenty yards away but not kill them with that size shot, but as I said, we don't go out for humans like you do."

"How many guns do you have, Wendy?" April asked, unperturbed.

"I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"The house was burgled during the winter years ago. I don't even remember when. I had a few guns up there then; I don't remember how many." Wendy bobbed her foot.

April guessed that was where the murder weapon came from. She switched off the tape recorder and left the room without a word. She glanced at her watch. Jesus, nearly seven. She had to pee. And she had to go to Martha's Vineyard to find Lori Wilson and more about Wendy's missing guns.