Never Ask Me

by Jeff Abbott

  “I’ll feel better if you go home,” Iris said. “I got this.”

  None of us do, he thinks. No one has this. It has us.

  He puts his hands over his face, feels the nub of his wedding ring against his cheek. He can’t bear to look at his family for a moment.

  “Are you OK?” Iris asks.

  Kyle lowers his hands. He realizes it’s a normal question. They’ve known Danielle for years. “Yes. It’s just a shock,” he says. “No one expects this.”

  Her gaze meets his and then he glances away.

  A police officer comes over and Iris tells him they’re willing to go to the station now. The detective, the officer says, will join them there shortly.

  “Ned,” Iris says. “He shouldn’t stay alone at that house.”

  “Where is Mike?” Kyle asks, looking around. Mike is Danielle’s boyfriend, a big, brawny bear of a man. One of Kyle’s best friends.

  “I guess they haven’t found him yet or contacted him,” Iris says. Julia has calmed a bit, wiping the tears from her face.

  “I can give the police his number. If Ned isn’t up to it.”

  “I need to get out of this circus, Mom, please,” Julia says. A van from a local television station has just pulled up.

  Iris hurries her toward the car after telling the police officer they’re heading to the police station and will wait there for the detective.

  Kyle stands there, stuck. He feels like he should stay. But he has things he must do, right now, now. He may not get a second chance.

  6

  Excerpt of Transcript of TCSO and LPD Interview with Edward Frimpong (Minor)

  Conducted by: Travis County Sheriff’s Office detective Jamika Ponder, Lakehaven PD detective Carmen Ames, and TCSO juvenile counselor/advocate Juan Castillo.

  Present in observation room: Iris Pollitt, a family friend requested by the minor.

  Detective Ames: I know this is very difficult and I am so sorry. We just want to establish what happened this morning. Detective Ponder and the Sheriff’s Office will be the lead investigators on this, and you can tell them everything you know.

  Ned: Yes, ma’am.

  Detective Ames: Can you tell me your full name?

  Ned: Edward Roberts Frimpong. But…everyone calls me Ned.

  Detective Ames: OK, Ned. Your mother is Danielle Roberts.

  Ned: Yes.

  Detective Ames: Ned, where is your father and what is his name?

  Ned: Gordon Frimpong. He’s originally from Ghana, but he lives and works in London. In international banking. I haven’t seen him since last year, but I talked to him last week. His number is in my phone if you want to call him.

  Detective Ponder: Right now I just want to talk about what happened this morning. I know this is terrible, and I’m so sorry. Do you think we can do that?

  Ned: Yes.

  Detective Ponder: If you need to stop, you just tell me, OK?

  Ned: Yeah.

  Detective Ponder: Julia Pollitt met you at your house this morning to walk around playing this Critterscape phone game?

  Ned: Yes. We texted last night about it. We were both trying to up a level. So Julia said she would meet me at my house at seven and we’d walk around and play for an hour.

  Detective Ponder: And Julia got to your house at what time?

  Ned: Around seven.

  Detective Ames: Julia said in her statement you called back into your house to your mom as you were leaving.

  Ned: I thought Mom was home. In her bedroom. She often wakes up and reads in bed for a bit before she gets up.

  Detective Ponder: But you had not seen her that morning.

  Ned: No. The automatic coffee maker had made a pot, though. So she had loaded the coffee and the water at some point last night. She…she…

  Detective Ames: Are you OK, Ned?

  Detective Ponder: We can take a minute.

  Ned: I just don’t understand why this happened. Do I have to go live with my dad now? I’ll be eighteen in a few months. Can’t I stay here?

  Castillo: Ned, we’ll talk about that later. You’ll be taken care of, I promise you.

  Detective Ponder: When was the last time you saw your mother?

  Ned: Last night when I went upstairs to my room. She was down in the den. I told her good night. She had a look on her face like she was upset.

  Detective Ponder: What about, Ned?

  Ned: I don’t know. She was on a phone, texting, and I noticed it wasn’t her regular phone.

  Detective Ponder: Do you know who she was texting with?

  Ned: No.

  Detective Ponder: Did she normally carry extra phones?

  Ned: Yes. Well, no. I mean, she had before, just not in a while. She had a phone for her legal work and one for personal. But this one was neither. I thought maybe Mike got it for her.

  Detective Ames: Mike Horvath.

  Ned: He’s my mom’s boyfriend.

  Detective Ponder: Do you know where he is? We haven’t been able to reach him.

  Ned: He travels a lot, but I thought he was in town this weekend. He also lives in the neighborhood. Over on Compass Circle.

  Detective Ponder: Had Mr. Horvath and your mom had any problems lately?

  Ned: No. I don’t think so.

  Detective Ames: Here’s a tissue. You take your time.

  (Sounds of snuffling, crying)

  Ned: She hadn’t said anything bad to me about Mike. I thought they were fine, but maybe she wouldn’t tell me if they fought. I don’t know. Why was she in the park?

  Detective Ponder: We don’t know yet. And once you went to bed last night, you and your mom were in the house for the rest of the night?

  (Pause)

  Ned: Yes.

  Detective Ames: Are you sure? You seem a little hesitant.

  Castillo: Please don’t badger him.

  Detective Ames: I’m not badgering him.

  Detective Ponder: Thanks, Carmen. Let me take it.

  Ned: It’s OK. Yes. I was home for the rest of the night.

  Detective Ponder: Did you hear anyone arrive at your house? Or leave?

  Ned: No. I was there. But I had my headphones on. I was bingeing a show on my laptop. Then I turned off the lights at midnight and went to sleep. I have the ceiling fan running. The noise puts me to sleep. I didn’t hear anyone come or go.

  Detective Ponder: Did your mom normally go to Winding Creek Park? Like, go for walks there?

  Ned: I don’t think she’s ever there except for the neighborhood fall party and the Fourth of July party.

  (Sounds of sobbing)

  Castillo: Let’s take a short break.

  (Resumes)

  Detective Ponder: Did your mother go for walks around the neighborhood often? Like if she was upset?

  Ned: No.

  Detective Ponder: And you didn’t hear her leave?

  Ned: I said no. I didn’t.

  Detective Ponder: OK. What time did you wake up this morning?

  Ned: Like six thirty. I work a shift at Target later today… Oh, I’ve got to call them.

  Castillo: We’ll have Mrs. Pollitt call them for you.

  Ned: You get more Critters the earlier you go, in the park, and the game was offering bonus points before noon today, and so that was our plan. Play the game, go have a doughnut together at Donut Shack—it’s right by Target—then I’d go to my shift. I told Mom last night that was what we were doing. Oh, I forgot. I went into the garage this morning to get my charger out of my car. Her car was there. So that’s why I thought she was there, too, I guess. I for sure didn’t think she’d gone for a walk.

  (Sounds of crying)

  Castillo: Can he have a minute?

  (Break, interview resumes)

  Ned: I just don’t understand who could hurt my mom. She didn’t have any enemies. Everyone loved Mom. No one hated her. Ask Mrs. Pollitt. They’ve been friends forever.

  Detective Ponder: We found an inexpensive phone under the park bench. This is a photo
of it. I’m showing Ned Frimpong a picture I took of this phone.

  Ned: That looks like the phone she was using last night. Who was she calling?

  Detective Ponder: I can’t share any information about this with you right now.

  Ned: Tell me! Was she calling the person who killed her?

  Detective Ames: We don’t know yet.

  Ned: I’ll find out. I’ll find out who it is. She can’t…She can’t be dead. She’s my mom. My mom can’t be dead.

  (End of interview)

  7

  Kyle

  Kyle has, very quietly, destroyed the phone. He did it with a hammer, and on a towel, spread out on the master bathroom floor. Trying to make sure that Grant doesn’t hear. Dad, what are you doing? Why would you destroy your phone—wait, whose phone is that?—all questions he cannot bear to answer right now. Kyle wraps up the shattered screen and the SIM card and the other components and dumps them all in a plastic grocery trash bag, then puts them in another bag. Then he folds up the towel and puts it back in the bathroom closet and hurries out to the garage, putting the hammer back in its little outlined spot on a board where all his tools are mounted. He wonders if he should rinse the hammer or wipe it down, if there can be traces of phone components on it the way there could be traces of blood on a weapon. He decides not and leaves the hammer in its place. He cannot imagine his kids or Iris finding him, on this dark day, washing off a hammer, doing something so odd without a real explanation.

  You just have to get through today.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he puts the bag in the trash can. It sits next to a matching recycling bin. For a moment he wonders if it’s better to hide the broken phone in the recycling. Will the police be less likely to look there? No, of course not. He is overthinking this, overthinking everything, and that is its own danger. He’ll say or do something suspicious, and he can’t. He mustn’t.

  He would like to take the phone’s remains to a dumpster somewhere, but businesses have cameras in parking lots or in alleys now, and he doesn’t want to be captured on film getting rid of anything.

  That is something guilty people do.

  He goes back inside the house. Grant is sitting at the kitchen island, drinking orange juice, looking at his own phone. He glances up at his father. “Who died in the park, and why didn’t you tell me? Kids are talking about it on Nowpic.”

  “I didn’t want to upset you. It’s Danielle Roberts.”

  He sees the shock pass along his son’s face.

  Grant is not a crier. Kyle always thinks it’s because Grant learned as an infant at that dismal orphanage outside Saint Petersburg that crying got him no extra attention; it was never a solution. His mouth now, though, quivers and he starts to breathe in sharp huffing pains, and Kyle hurries to him, thinking, I’m losing my grip if I thought this was the right way to tell him, and folds his son in an embrace.

  “Did she have, like, a heart attack in the park?” Grant manages to ask.

  “No, son. No. Someone killed her.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I guess the police will find out.”

  Under his arm, he feels Grant suddenly stiffen. His son disengages from the hug, wanders over to the sink. Then he throws up the gulps of orange juice he’s downed. Kyle, uncertain, puts a reassuring hand on Grant’s back while Grant rinses his mouth with water and spits into the sink.

  “I know this is a shock.”

  “I wouldn’t be who I am without Danielle. I’d be someone else. Some Russian kid no one wanted. Or adopted by some other family.”

  It’s all true, but Kyle doesn’t know what to say to this. The ripples Danielle had set in motion in all their lives. “They’ll find whoever did it,” he repeats.

  “Where is Ned? And Mike?”

  “Ned is talking to the police. I don’t know about Mike. I should try to call him.” That’s a thing an innocent person does, try to help. He gets out his phone—his usual phone—from his pocket and calls Mike’s number. He stands at the window. He can see Danielle’s house; there are no police cars there yet. Surely they’ll be arriving to secure her home, to look for evidence. The thought chills him. What does she have in there?

  He gets Mike’s voicemail. “Mike, it’s Kyle. Call me as soon as you get this.” He imagines then that the police or Ned have already tried to reach Mike. “I’m so sorry.” He shouldn’t have said that, in case Mike’s listening to his voicemails in order and the police are probably not leaving him a message that his girlfriend is dead.

  Stop second-guessing. Act normal. Forge ahead.

  He adds: “Call me, Mike, please.” And hangs up.

  “Where’s Mom?”

  “At the police station with your sister and Ned.” Danielle’s house. What’s in her house that could point back to him? He goes to the large window in their living room. The house is two homes away from theirs. She moved into that house when Ned was in middle school, years after Grant had come from Russia as a squirming baby in their arms.

  You have to get in before the police do. Lakehaven is a small department. They don’t often deal with murder, and he guesses from the Travis County sheriff’s cars that arrived to secure the park that they’ll be the lead agency. And TCSO is big and capable. But he can’t go inside there, not now, with the police about to arrive. Nothing would make him look worse.

  You have time. You’re her friend and neighbor. Make up an excuse.

  He puts on his running shorts, shoes, and a pullover.

  “Are you going for a run?” Grant asks, disbelieving.

  “Yes. A short one.” Kyle heads out the back door, along the greenbelt. His phone chimes. He glances at the screen. Mike Horvath. He steels himself. “Mike,” he answers.

  “What’s going on?” Mike’s deep voice, booming.

  “Where are you?”

  “I got up early this morning and went fishing on Lake Travis with Peter.” Peter was Mike’s son, a senior at Lakehaven. “Why are the police looking for me? I got two voicemails before yours…”

  “I am so sorry. Danielle…” He can’t say the words, even as he’s hurrying toward her backyard.

  “What? What is happening?” Mike’s deep voice, lightly accented, rises in fear.

  “Danielle is dead. She was found dead in Winding Creek Park this morning.”

  Mike makes a noise of sheer shock and pain. It’s half gasp, half scream. “That can’t be right.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It cannot be. Where is Ned?”

  “He’s with the Lakehaven police. Iris is with him.”

  “Is Ned all right?”

  “Physically he’s fine.They’re talking to him about who might have wanted to hurt her.”

  “Hurt her. Wait. Are you saying she was murdered?” Mike’s accent, a weird mix of his childhood in his native Slovakia and then long years in Canada, thickens in a way Kyle has never heard before.

  This was not how he wanted to tell his friend. “Yes. I am so sorry, man.”

  Mike Horvath takes several long, gasping breaths. “Why was she in the park? She never goes there.”

  “We don’t know.”

  “I have to talk to the police.”

  “The station is off Old Travis. On Raymond Road.”

  “I’ll find it.” Then another long pause. “They don’t think Ned hurt her, do they?”

  Is that a possibility? Why would Mike think that of his girlfriend’s son? Ned Frimpong likes to play video games. He watches a lot of English soccer. His grades are average, not great. He had gotten drunk last year at a party with some older kids who’d been expelled from Lakehaven High and the Lakehaven police brought him home and Danielle took his car away for a month. That was his worst offense, at least that Kyle knows about. Kids like that don’t kill their mothers. Do they?

  Kyle uses the cover of the dense growth of trees along the winding greenbelt to move down to Danielle’s house. “No, I’m sure not,” he says.

  Mike, soun
ding now like he is crying, hangs up just as Kyle goes into Danielle’s backyard. He knocks on the door; he’s got a story ready in case someone is there, but no one is.

  He tries the knob, using the hem of his shirt. It’s unlocked. He listens for the ping or soft hum of an alarm system being activated, but there’s only silence. He walks across the den; he heads into her first-floor bedroom.

  If there is anything to tie them together in this house, it will be there, he thinks. He has to know. He is nearly drunk with fear at the idea of the police arriving at any second.

  He hurries into her closet. Organized on a shelf are boxes—ones for hats, more for sweaters, even though the weather has turned cool by Austin standards. He searches the boxes. Nothing. There are also photo albums there, placed in plastic storage bins. He takes them out, looks through them.

  Where would she keep anything that could hurt him? He puts them back on the shelf, thinking.

  He pushes aside a rack of coats—she had more coats than a woman in Austin might expect to, given her travel to cold climes such as China, Russia, and the Baltic states. And behind them, hidden simply by their bulk, are a couple of jewelry boxes. He opens one. Snakes of silver bracelets intertwine. He digs through them. Maybe she hid it in a safe-deposit box. He opens the second jewelry box. Rings, here, bracelets. A string bracelet, the kind children make in school. He recognizes the weave of colors—Grant made this for Danielle in art class, for helping his parents find him in Russia. A child’s THANK YOU, carefully written in red and purple crayon. His breath catches.

  And beneath it, a flash drive.

  This. Here.

  He pockets the flash drive—then hears what sounds like the slow crawl of tires on pavement. Her closet is near the front of the house. What if the police are arriving? He tucks the flash drive deep into his shoe, under his foot. Unlikely to be patted down there. He puts everything back where he found it. He tries to remember if the closet light was already on. He uses his shirt to wipe the light switch, the jewelry boxes. He heads out of the master bedroom and is halfway across the den when something heavy slams into the back of his head.

  Kyle staggers. Strong hands grab him and put a cloth bag over his head; he can’t see.