The Only Suspect

by Jonnie Jacobs

  “Off to bed now,” I told Molly. “I’ll come say good night when I’m finished here.”

  I waited until Molly was asleep before I called the cops. Part of me kept hoping if I waited long enough Maureen would come home. But I knew that was foolish. She hadn’t simply taken off. I was growing more certain of that. Finally, I called and spoke with an officer named Hannah Montgomery.

  “Have you checked with the highway patrol for accidents?” she asked.

  “My wife’s car is still in the garage.”

  “And her friends?”

  “None of them know where she might be.”

  “People take trips,” the detective said, “get held up in traffic, forget to call home, that kind of thing.”

  She paused, maybe waiting for me to jump in and agree. But I couldn’t. The innocent explanations didn’t ring true.

  “There’s a good chance everything will work out, but if you’d like I can come take a full statement and pick up a photo. That way we can be on the lookout for her.”

  “Thank you. I’d appreciate that.” I didn’t realize how tightly I’d been gripping the phone until I hung up. My fingers were white from the pressure.

  CHAPTER 3

  Hannah Montgomery pressed her fingertips to her throbbing temples. It didn’t ease the pain or the tension. What she needed was a cigarette, and for that she’d have to wait another two hours. She didn’t know if she’d make it.

  As part of her get-your-life-in-order campaign, Hannah had resolved to stop smoking. Again. This time she was going for the gradual approach. Everyone told her it was easier to go cold turkey, but she couldn’t swing that. She’d already tried several times and failed. Not that cutting back was so easy either.

  She glared accusingly at the phone, although she’d had the headache long before the call from Sam Russell. Since the guy had waited all day before reporting his wife missing, why couldn’t he have waited another forty minutes? Hannah would be off duty by then, and the next shift could have taken it. She wasn’t supposed to be on tonight anyway. She’d only agreed to fill in because she was still trying to establish herself as a team player within the department.

  Hannah had been with the Monte Vista Police Department only a little over a year, but she’d been a cop for thirteen years, seven of them in LAPD robbery-homicide. When it came to solving cases, she was sure of herself. In the realm of department politics, she was less so. Though politics was only a small part of why she’d left LA, she’d hoped a smaller department like Monte Vista’s might be an easier fit. She hadn’t decided yet if that was true.

  She’d handled her share of missing persons investigations too. If that’s what the Russell case actually was. More often than not, these things worked themselves out on their own. There’d been an argument. Sometimes, an accident. Or the missing party had gone to visit relatives. Eventually he or she showed up with no help from law enforcement.

  The cases where that didn’t happen were another matter altogether. They inevitably ended badly, if there was any resolution at all. Sometimes it was years later before the body even turned up.

  Hannah figured she’d have a better idea which way the Russell case might go after she’d taken the report.

  In LA, where she’d worked most of her career, Hannah would have told Sam Russell to come in to the station and file a report, or she would have taken the information over the phone. But this was Monte Vista, where law enforcement was as much community relations as by-the-book police work. It was a quiet town, far enough north of Sacramento to be somewhat insular, and fairly bursting with civic pride. The police were there to serve.

  Hannah took one last, longing look at the pack of Marlboros in her desk, then grabbed her keys and coat and went to meet Sam Russell.

  The Russell home was in one of the older residential neighborhoods, with tree-lined streets and manicured lawns. The houses there weren’t as large as in the new developments at the edge of town, but to Hannah’s mind they had infinitely more charm.

  Sam Russell opened the front door before Hannah had a chance to ring the bell. He hustled her into the kitchen, shutting the swinging door that separated the rest of the house behind him.

  “My daughter’s asleep,” he explained. “I don’t want to disturb her.”

  “I’m Detective Montgomery,” Hannah said. She realized she was whispering and felt foolish.

  “Sam Russell.” He smiled. “Molly won’t hear us with the door closed. It’s just that her bedroom is right off the hallway.”

  He was only a few inches taller than Hannah’s five-eight, and his dark, unruly hair was thinning slightly at the crown, but his hazel-brown eyes were warm and punctuated with a fan of laugh lines. She found him attractive in the way Robin Williams was. Not classically handsome, but comfortable. In fact, he reminded her a little of Malcolm, who was not someone she wanted to be thinking about right then. Malcolm was part of the life she was trying to put behind her.

  She noted a slight purplish swelling near Sam’s right eye. Birthmark or bruise? She mentally filed the information away for later.

  “How old is your daughter?” Hannah asked. An infant would suggest a different family structure and issues than a rebellious teenager. And family dynamics were always an issue when one of the members went missing.

  “She’s eleven,” Sam told her.

  “Does she know her mother is missing?”

  “Maureen is actually her stepmother, but Molly knows she hasn’t been home today. I tried not to make too much of it because I didn’t want to worry her, but I know she senses something is wrong.”

  Moving a vase of purple and pink tulips out of the way, he gestured for Hannah to have a seat at the kitchen table. It was a rectangular farm table made of pine, and took up most of the open space in the kitchen. Hannah noted the country motif, complete with gingham valance and ceramic cookie jar in the shape of a cow. Not her style at all, but it spoke of a hominess that she begrudgingly found appealing.

  “My first wife died when Molly was four,” Sam added.

  “I’m sorry. That must have been hard for both of you.”

  He nodded. “It was. Still is. But we’re moving on.”

  Hannah had walked that road herself. Not with a child, which she tried to convince herself was a blessing. Still, she couldn’t help feel a twinge of envy that Sam Russell had managed to find love again.

  She pulled out her notepad and pen. “What’s your wife’s full name?”

  “Maureen Judith Brown Russell.”

  “Brown was her maiden name?”

  Sam nodded.

  “How old is she?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  Close to ten years younger than her husband by Hannah’s estimate. She made a note of the fact, though she wasn’t sure it would prove relevant.

  “How about a physical description.”

  “She’s five foot six, about a hundred and thirty-five pounds. Light brown hair, a little longer than chin-length. I have a recent photograph for you.” He slid a color snapshot across the table in Hannah’s direction.

  It showed a woman sitting in an upholstered chair next to a fireplace, smiling at the camera. Maureen Russell wasn’t beautiful, but she was an attractive woman, and it was clear she worked at looking her best. Her hair was professionally streaked and stylishly cut. Her beige sweater and white slacks looked expensive, as did the diamond pendant at her neck.

  “It was taken last Thanksgiving,” Sam said.

  Hannah put the photo aside for the moment. “Tell me again why you think she’s missing.”

  “Her car’s in the garage, but she hasn’t been home all day.”

  “Could she be with a friend?”

  Sam frowned. “All day? Besides, I called them. No one’s seen her.”

  “What about hospitals, have you checked there?”

  He nodded, ran a hand through his hair, and took a deep breath.

  “When did you last see her?”

  “This mo
rning.” Sam seemed agitated. He pushed his chair back from the table and rose. “Can I get you some water or anything?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  He ran a glass for himself and drank it in one long gulp before answering. “Early this morning. She was still in bed when I left to check on a patient. I’m a doctor,” he added as if the reference to patient might not be clear. “My daughter was spending the night at a friend’s. When I picked her up and came home, Maureen was gone.”

  “What time was that?”

  Sam hesitated. “Actually, I dropped by the house first, very briefly, before picking up my daughter. That would have been a little after noon. We both returned home about half an hour later.”

  Hannah’s headache hadn’t subsided any. Neither had her craving for a cigarette. She took a moment to refocus her mind. “No sign of your wife either time?”

  “No. I didn’t think anything of it at first, and I was in a hurry to get Molly.”

  “Was the door locked? Any indication the house had been broken into?”

  “I came in through the garage,” Sam said. He seemed to be replaying the morning’s sequence in his mind. Then he shook his head. “I’m sure I’d have noticed if the front door wasn’t locked. And nothing appeared disturbed.”

  “How about your wife’s purse and wallet?”

  “They’re gone too. And she’s not answering her cell phone.”

  “Any of her clothing missing?”

  “The closet looks pretty full. I wouldn’t know if everything is there though.”

  “You sure she didn’t say anything to you about her plans for the day?” Hannah asked. There was a good chance the woman had ventured off voluntarily.

  Sam looked a little sheepish. “Not that I recall. But she might have and it slipped my mind.”

  Some men were that nonattentive. Hannah had no idea if Sam was one of them, but she would have guessed not. “Has your wife ever left without telling you?”

  He hesitated. “Once. But she knew how worried I was that time. I can’t believe she’d do it again.”

  All it took was the right provocation, Hannah thought. “When was that?”

  “About a year ago. We had an argument, and she left in a huff. She drove into Sacramento and got a hotel room for the night.”

  “Did you argue recently?” Hannah asked.

  Another hesitation, only this time his eyes avoided hers. Finally, he shook his head. “No, there was no argument.”

  There was something about Sam Russell’s response that gave her pause. “Do you and your wife argue a lot?” she asked.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “What’s ordinary?”

  He shrugged. “Household chores. Money. Living here.”

  “Living here?”

  “In Monte Vista. Maureen wanted to live somewhere more urban. San Francisco or the Bay Area, preferably, but she’d take Los Angeles too.”

  Hannah felt her pulse skip a beat. She looked at him. “Why did you use the past tense just now?”

  “Past tense?”

  “You said your wife ‘wanted’ to live somewhere else.”

  Sam started to smile then seemed to think better of it. He seemed unfazed by the question, however. “We’d more or less worked that one out. My practice is here, my family is here. Molly is settled here. I can’t move. Maureen knew that when she married me.”

  “When was that?”

  “Two years ago. Not long after I moved back. I grew up here, but I lived in Boston for a while.”

  Okay, so maybe his use of the past tense wasn’t a slip of the tongue. Still, there was the discoloration in his cheek that might be a bruise. She wondered if Sam and his wife had worked things out or if Sam had simply put his foot down. That might explain why Maureen had up and left. If that’s what had happened.

  Sometimes when a person went missing, Hannah knew there’d be no good outcome. It was a sixth sense of sorts, something she could feel in her bones. A woman leaves a bar with a man she’s just met and is never seen again. Or her car is found abandoned by the side of the road, her emptied wallet on the front seat. But that wasn’t the case here.

  “For what it’s worth,” she told Sam, “this isn’t the typical scenario of a disappearance under suspicious circumstances. At least not on the surface.”

  His brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “The doors were locked. Your wife’s purse is gone, as if she took it with her. It looks like she left the house voluntarily.”

  “But it’s almost ten o’clock at night,” Sam protested. “Wherever she went, she’d be back by now. Or she’d have called.”

  Unless she didn’t want to be found. “Have you checked your accounts to see if she withdrew money recently?”

  “I’ll call the bank in the morning.”

  “It would be helpful if you could get me a list of names and phone numbers. Family, friends, other people she might have regular contact with.”

  “Sure. She doesn’t have a lot of friends. She’s kind of a private person. And she hasn’t talked to her family in years.”

  A motorcycle roared past the front of the house, going much too fast for the neighborhood. Where was a cop when you needed one? Hannah thought wryly. “Does your wife work?”

  “Not any more. She used to work in my office. That’s how we met.”

  Maureen Russell, a decently attractive woman, younger than her husband, with no job and few friends. Was Monte Vista maybe a little too quiet for her? Or was it something much worse?

  Real crime was rare in the town, but that didn’t mean it never happened. Shortly after Hannah came to Monte Vista, a woman had been raped by a drifter who climbed into the house through an open window, and only a couple of months ago an elderly couple had been accosted in their own garage. Could something terrible have befallen Maureen Russell? Absolutely. But Hannah wasn’t convinced it had.

  “Do you want me to process this as a missing persons report,” she asked, “or would you rather wait a day or two?”

  Sam studied his hands. His mouth was grim. “I think you’d better go ahead.”

  “I’ll get her description out on the wire,” Hannah told him. “And I’ll contact the local paper. They’re usually pretty good about covering this type of thing. You might want to print up fliers too and get them distributed around town. The more people looking for her, the better.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

  “Here’s my direct line.” Hannah handed him a business card. “Give me a call if you hear from her or think of anything that might be useful.” She wanted to add something encouraging, like Try not to worry. But that was silly; anyone in his situation would worry. And whether his wife was in trouble or had simply left him, the news would not be welcome.

  When Hannah returned to the station, she completed the paperwork and faxed Maureen’s photo to key law enforcement personnel in the county. Then she checked with the local taxi service. No cars dispatched to the Russell residence.

  The sheriff’s department had dogs and a wonderful handler named Rick Thompson. Hannah would contact them in the morning. If the dogs could pick up Maureen’s scent, they’d at least have some idea if she’d left on foot or by vehicle.

  It was almost midnight by the time she finally made it home, if a sparsely furnished two-bedroom bungalow could be considered home. She opened a bottle of Anchor Steam then lovingly extracted the much-longed-for cigarette from its cellophane pack. She lit it, leaned back on the sofa, and inhaled deeply. It did wonders for her mood. Maybe she should forget about quitting. So what if smoking shortened your life? Hannah wasn’t so sure she cared about those extra years anyway.

  She had a second bottle of beer and half a cheese sandwich then crawled into bed and turned out the light, hoping that sleep would come easily for a change.

  She curled on her right side and then her left. She lay diagonally across the mattress just because she could, then kicked a leg out in front of her.r />
  Having a king-size bed to herself was not all bad. Hannah would admit to that much. But it made her feel an aching loneliness she couldn’t explain. Which was why she so often filled it in what she knew were unwise ways.

  Monday morning Hannah was still bleary-eyed when she sat down at her desk with her second cup of coffee. She hadn’t fully engaged her mind with the work at hand when her partner, Dallas Pryor, slapped a sheet of paper down in front of her.

  “What’s this?” he asked, leaning his palms on her desk. He was enveloped in a cloud of aftershave that made Hannah pull back.

  “Missing persons report. The call came in last night when I was filling in for Jack.”

  “Maureen Russell. Wife of Dr. Sam Russell?”

  Hannah nodded. She could tell from the tone of Dallas’s voice that she was missing something. Some petty high school grievance most likely. Dallas had grown up in town, gone to school with many of the folks who lived here now. It often worked to his advantage, but Hannah thought it sometimes clouded his judgment as well. Dallas seemed to forget that high school had been a long time ago.

  “You talked to Sam?” he asked.

  “First on the phone, and then I went out there and took a report. Why?”

  “How’d he seem?”

  “Worried. Perplexed.” Hannah wasn’t sure where Dallas was going with all the questions. “It doesn’t strike me as having the earmarks of a suspicious disappearance, but I figure it’s better to err on the side of doing too much than not enough.”

  Dallas ran a hand over his head of thinning blond hair. “Sam Russell’s story seem credible to you?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. He didn’t really have much of a story, just that his wife was missing. Do you know something I don’t?”

  “Did he happen to mention his first wife?”

  “He said she’d passed away.”

  “She was murdered,” Dallas said. He stood back and folded his long arms over his chest.

  “What?” Hannah was sure she’d misunderstood.

  “Sam Russell killed her. He’s a free man today only because of a hung jury.”