Where was Jenny? Where was her footprint? Or was she plain vanilla like the house?
What Jo could see told her nothing except the Dielmans’ decorating sense was unimaginative, though she had a feeling this was more a reflection of the husband than his wife.
She paid careful attention as well to the state of the rooms. Nothing disturbed or out of place. No tracks of yellow mud on the carpet.
“Can we call anyone for you, sir?” Hank was asking as he sat in a club chair close to the one Dielman had taken.
“Call someone?”
“A friend or neighbor? You might want someone with you.”
Dielman ignored the question, turning to Jo. She shifted on her feet, too anxious to sit. “So she’s dead?” he asked. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir, I’m sorry.” Jo didn’t know what else to say, how else to tell him when he obviously felt it in his bones.
“How?” he said next, a catch in his voice.
She glanced at Hank. He had slipped the evidence bag with Jenny Dielman’s wristwatch and rings from his coat pocket and set it on the coffee table between himself and Patrick Dielman.
“The apparent cause of death is a gunshot wound to the head,” Jo told him, swift and clean, wanting to make this go faster. “But we’re awaiting the autopsy to get all the facts.”
Dielman picked up the plastic bag and held it in his lap, fingering the contents. He sucked in a quick breath. “These are hers,” he said.
“She had a butterfly tattoo on her hip,” Jo informed him quietly, “and she was wearing the clothing you described.”
“My God,” he murmured, shaking his head. “My God, it’s real. You see it on news and in the movies, and you never imagine it will touch your own life. But it has, hasn’t it?”
Jo resented how helpless she felt. She watched Dielman’s face as he handled the baggie, pushing the wedding band into the corner. A strangled noise escaped his throat, and he pressed the bag against his wrinkled shirt.
“No, Jenny, no,” he choked out her name. “This can’t be real. How can it be true? I thought finding her scarf . . . that it meant she might be . . . somewhere.”
He shoved the baggie at Hank as he looked up. “This can’t be happening. I want her back,” he barked. “I want her safe and sound. I should have protected her.”
“Sir, please, can we call someone, a friend who might stay with you?” Hank suggested. He scooted forward in the chair and drew his cell phone from his coat.
Dielman rubbed his eyes. “Jenny isn’t coming home, is she?” he asked, as if it might be a bad dream and he’d wake up to find them gone and his wife beside him. “She’s really dead?”
“Yes,” Hank said, putting his phone away. “She’s not coming home, sir. I’m sorry.”
Dielman nodded jerkily.
Jo couldn’t keep still another moment. She walked away from Hank’s chair, pausing behind the sofa table with its display of silver-framed photographs. She fingered the largest one, a wedding picture with a grinning groom in tux and tails and a pretty bride in a calf-length ivory dress with a ring of flowers in her hair.
They never knew, did they? They never thought for a moment as they celebrated with champagne and cake that things could go so wrong, so fast.
“Where was she?” Dielman asked in a scratchy whisper. “Was she alone?”
“Her car was discovered by two hikers in an abandoned quarry north of town,” Hank said. “We found her”—he hesitated, and Jo knew that he was avoiding saying her body—“alone in the quarry pit. There was no one else.”
“Why?” Dielman asked. “Why Jenny?”
“We’ll try to sort that out, sir,” Hank assured him, without making any false promises.
Jo’s stomach pitched.
She distracted herself by studying the photographs, reaching for a smaller picture. Jenny had a young boy caught in her embrace: her slim arms wrapped around his skinny chest as if to keep him from squirming. Towheaded and freckled, the child grinned gleefully, showing two missing front teeth and round blue eyes behind a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. His mother’s expression was ethereal, her love for her son all too evident.
Jo set the frame down and saw her hand shake.
“You said she was shot?” Dielman asked them.
“Yes,” Hank said.
Dielman sat up straight. “Did you find her gun?”
“Her gun?” Hank turned to Jo, questioning. She shook her head, as clueless as he. “Your wife owned a handgun?”
“I gave it to her for protection.” Dielman got out of his chair and began to pace.
“Protection from what?” Jo asked.
He hesitated. “She was scared, okay? She flinched at things I couldn’t see, would jump when the phone rang.” He wiped his palms on his shirtfront. “So I got her a firearm.”
“Can you tell us the make and model of the weapon?”
“I don’t know. Let me think.” He tapped his forehead, tugged his hair. “It was a twenty-two caliber, small and easy to grip. There was nothing special about it.”
“Pistol or semiautomatic?”
“It was a semiautomatic. She kept it in her glove compartment.” He dropped his arms to his sides, plunked into the chair again, breathless. “Was it there? Did you find it? Did she try to defend herself?”
Jo cut a glance at Hank.
So Jenny Dielman had a .22-caliber handgun.
“Was the weapon registered to your wife?” Hank asked Dielman, keeping his voice remarkably even. “Was the serial number filed off? Did you consider that you might well have bought a stolen gun?”
“Stolen gun?” Dielman’s face went blank. “No, I don’t remember even looking for a serial number. That would’ve meant nothing to me. That’s not my area of expertise. Look, I got it at a gun show in Garland. Nobody even asked for an ID so long as I paid in cash. Something like a hundred bucks. They just dropped it into a shopping bag, threw in a box of cartridges for free. She kept it loaded.”
Jo groaned inwardly.
Hank didn’t hesitate. “Did she have a license to carry?” Jo could tell he was trying to keep his cool, but still, her partner’s voice edged up a bit.
“No.” Dielman stared at his lap. “I was told she didn’t need one. That if she left it in her car, it was like keeping in the house. At least, that’s what the guy said.”
And that was no lie. A license to carry wasn’t required in Texas when the gun was purportedly stored “on one’s own premises or under his control,” even while traveling.
“I didn’t do something wrong, did I?” Dielman blinked tear-damp lashes.
“You did nothing illegal, no,” she told him. Just completely asinine, she left unsaid. “We need to know more about the gun. Was it a Jennings six-shot?”
That was the make of the waterlogged weapon they’d identified at the scene. It wasn’t a type that turned up very often.
She waited for his answer, hardly believing this turn of events.
Did the gun belong to Jenny? Might the bullet that ricocheted merrily around her brain be a gift her dear hubby had purchased at the Garland gun show?
Dielman’s face crumpled further. “A Jennings what? I don’t know. I don’t know. It was just a gun.”
Just a gun.
“What about the guy you bought it from?” Hank suggested. “Do you remember his name? Did he give you a business card, a receipt?”
“I don’t think so. I’m sorry.”
Jo clenched her jaw tight, not wanting to say anything she’d regret. What good would it do to get on the man’s case now? His wife was dead. Besides, as she’d assured him, he hadn’t done anything illegal in buying the .22 at a gun show. Texas was one of a number of states where the Brady Bill did not apply to private dealers, making guns available to gun show customers with no questions asked.
Sort of like a big ol’ garage sale.
The fact that Dielman had bought his emotionally troubled wife an u
nregistered handgun—one stored in the glove box of her Nissan—threw a good-size wrench into the case, for sure. Even if she didn’t want to believe it, Jo realized if Jennifer Dielman’s own gun was involved, it made the possibility of suicide more likely.
Hank rubbed a hand over his face, which had turned a shade of pink teetering on magenta. He muttered something that she couldn’t make out. She hoped Dielman couldn’t either, because she knew for sure it wasn’t a compliment.
“Was she right-handed?” Jo asked, hoping to God his answer was no, despite the watch on Jenny’s left wrist that implied otherwise.
He blurted out, “Yes, yes, she was.”
Right-handed. Right temple.
Jo couldn’t look at Hank.
“You think she shot herself?” Dielman said, catching on. “You think she drove to the quarry and used the gun I bought her to kill herself?” When neither she nor Hank responded, he choked out, “No, you’re wrong. You have to be wrong. Jenny was trying to get better. She couldn’t have wanted to die.”
“The medical examiner will determine cause of death, Mr. Dielman, not us.” Jo hoped that would suffice, that he wouldn’t ask any more questions that they couldn’t answer.
“We need to look for a note,” Hank said. “It may be on a computer—”
“A suicide note?” Dielman cut him off.
“Yes,” Jo said simply.
“She didn’t—she wouldn’t,” Dielman stuttered, his breaths becoming more rapid. His shoulders started shaking, and a sob rushed from his throat. “I screwed up, didn’t I?” he cried. “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”
“Please, don’t do this, Mr. Dielman,” Jo said, sharper than she should have. “It doesn’t solve anything.”
“Can I call someone for you?” Hank asked again.
“No,” Dielman sobbed. “No, I don’t want anyone but Jenny.”
Hank looked the other way.
But Jo couldn’t ignore the man. She pushed aside her frustration and went to his side, crouched beside the chair, and patted his arm.
“I’m sorry,” Dielman cried. “I didn’t think that she might . . . I never imagined, even though I worried about her . . . Lisa told me she didn’t seem right.”
“It’s okay,” Jo said, when it wasn’t okay in the least. “Take it easy.” She reminded herself to stay calm when all the while, inside, she screamed.
“We’ll call her sister for you, if you’d like,” she offered, but he shook his head.
“Just leave. I need to be alone.”
Jo looked at Hank.
He seemed to know what she was thinking. “If it’s all right with you, sir,” he said, “we’d like to take a look around—”
“No.” Patrick Dielman lifted his face from his hands. “No, it’s not all right. My wife is dead, Detectives, and I want you to go.”
Jo didn’t push it.
Hank shrugged, giving up. Her partner pocketed the evidence baggie and told Dielman they’d let themselves out, but he didn’t seem to hear. Patrick Dielman sat in the chair, head down, saying his wife’s name again and again, completely beside himself.
Jo couldn’t move, not at first, wanting to stay, knowing they should search for a note, go through Jenny’s things. It was pro forma with a homicide. But what if this wasn’t that? Shouldn’t they let Dielman grieve in peace?
“C’mon,” Hank said and nudged her from the living room into the foyer, though she dragged her heels just the same.
Despite Dielman’s insistence that he didn’t want them to call anyone, when they were out of earshot, Jo borrowed Hank’s cell—hers was out of commission after her water landing in the quarry—and phoned Naveen Patil, asking if the doctor could drop by the house at his earliest convenience. Not only did she believe Patrick Dielman needed someone with him who’d known his wife, she figured he could use a little something from the doctor’s black bag as well: a sedative to calm him, numb him, and help him rest.
Gutting it out didn’t seem like an option. For a guy whose normal demeanor seemed guarded, if not prickly, he was a freaking mess.
She handed back her partner’s cell, which he stuck inside his coat pocket. He drew open the front door, the gray of light rain beyond the threshold perfectly reflecting her mood.
Rotten.
She started to take a step toward him when she caught a sudden motion in her peripheral vision, a splotch of dark against the light of the tile.
A cat.
Was it the one from the bushes?
It darted toward the door, and Jo lunged to grab the animal before it slipped outside. Though her aching bones and muscles protested, she got him. With a grunt, she scooped him up from the floor and into her arms.
“What are you doing?” Hank said, watching her as if she’d gone mad. “Put that thing down, and let’s scram.”
“He doesn’t even have a collar,” she told him. “He shouldn’t go outside. He could be roadkill in ten seconds flat.”
She held the cat against her chest and peered down at him. He didn’t seem to mind her precarious embrace. In return, he gave her a thorough once-over with a pair of amber eyes. Then he sighed and tucked his head beneath her chin, just as he’d done with Jenny in the photograph.
“Hey, Ernie,” she whispered. “How are you, baby? You okay?”
She stroked the short black fur, and the cat vibrated against her. He kneaded his six-toed paws against her jacket, catching tiny claws in the nylon. She nearly peeled him off and then thought, Oh, well. It was torn already. And she wasn’t about to put him down yet. She held him tighter, rubbed her nose between his ears. He smelled like dust and felt like down.
“What’s up with you?” Hank asked.
She barely lifted her head. “He misses his mother.”
His brows arched. “I never took you for an animal person.”
“It’s the two-legged ones I’m not so crazy about. I like the kind with four legs just fine.”
She smiled sadly as Ernie head-butted her, purring with abandon, lids rolling over half-closed eyes. Love-starved thing, she mused and found herself wondering if Patrick Dielman would keep Ernie when he got over the shock of losing his wife. He struck her as the type who groused about cat hairs on his suits or kitty litter on the carpet. What if Ernie got dumped at a shelter before the week was done?
Not your problem, she told herself.
It was something she didn’t like to think about, all the things that victims left behind. Not only the people in their lives, not only the furniture and once-treasured belongings that usually ended up tagged with bright stickers in yard sales or dropped off at the nearest Goodwill, but the pets they loved who loved them back and who grieved when the person who’d fed them, who’d held them, was no longer there.
“Larsen?”
She set Ernie down, realizing how maudlin her thoughts had turned. But then it was hardly surprising considering the way she’d spent the better part of the day.
The cat twined itself around her ankles.
“You be good, baby.” She gently shooed him away from her and stood up straight.
Pressing her lips hard together, she watched the blur of black fur disappear around the corner of the foyer.
Was he looking for Jenny?
“She got him from the pound . . . didn’t even want to go on trips because it meant leaving the cat. Don’t you get it?”
Jo got it. At least, she thought she did.
Would Jenny have left Ernie behind?
Would it have mattered to her? Would something like a cat have been a consideration?
Or had her grief blinded her to everything else in her life, even Ernie?
“Did you find her gun? I gave it to her for protection . . . a twenty-two caliber. She kept it in her glove compartment. Did she try to defend herself?”
Defend herself?
How about: Did she drive out to the boonies and off herself?
That was the $64,000 question.
“Hey, Jo?”
“Let’s go.” He motioned her out.
She nodded, glanced behind her in the direction of the living room, where they’d left Patrick Dielman sobbing into his hands.
She pulled up her hood and headed into the mist.
She took a slight detour, pausing beside the BMW, squatting first to check the tires. They looked brand new, with deep, zigzag grooves. She searched for the telltale yellow mud from the quarry but didn’t find any in the tires or the wheel wells. The rain beaded on slick, white paint.
“You see something?” Hank asked.
“Nope,” she said, making a pass around the sedan, alternately crouching and standing. The car looked as spotless as the house.
She wasn’t sure what she’d expected.
“You think he was involved?”
“Beyond providing Jenny with the handgun that killed her?” she said, coming out of a squat and wiping off her hands.
“You know what I mean.” He walked to the car, head down.
Neither of them spoke as Jo belted herself in and faced the window. Hank started the engine and veered around the white Beemer to exit the driveway.
Nosing the Ford into the street, he hit the brakes suddenly, cursing as a beige Acura sedan sailed in front of them and took a hard turn at the Dielmans’ driveway, pulling in with a squeal of tires on wet pavement.
“Idiot,” he let loose.
Jo peeled her palms from the dashboard and swiveled against the straps of the seat belt to watch as a tan door popped open.
“Maybe it’s the doctor,” she said and rubbed the back of her neck, already stiff from tension and her tumble into the pit. All she needed was whiplash.
Two long legs clad in charcoal pants emerged, attached to a woman in a beige coat that matched the car.
“Not unless he’s had a sex change.”
Lisa Barton held a clutch purse above her head to keep the drizzle off her short, tousled hair. She didn’t look behind her once, didn’t seem to notice they were watching as she dashed toward the front door. Without bothering to knock, she let herself in.
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