“Guess who,” Jo said.
“So Dielman phoned a friend after all.”
“Maybe she can help him.”
“I’m sure she can,” Hank remarked, giving her a look, and she shook her head.
“The doc should be here soon, so Dielman will get what he needs.”
“Knocked out?”
“Let’s hope so, for his sake.”
Hank put a foot on the gas, and Jo stopped him with a quick, “Hold on, okay?”
The car jerked to a halt. “Christ, what now?”
“Give me a minute.” She jerked her hood up again, grabbed the door handle and let herself out. She cut across the damp grass, heading straight for the beige sedan.
She bent beside it, as she had the BMW, blinking rain from her lashes as she gave the tires a thorough once-over. She touched fingers to treads, like reading Braille.
But there was no yellow mud.
If either Dielman or the blonde next door were involved, they’d done a great job cleaning up after themselves.
She retraced her steps back to the Ford through the drizzle, a vague cloud of heat enveloping her as she buckled herself in. She pushed her hood back and shook her head.
“Like it’d ever be that easy,” Hank grumbled as he took the car out of park and lurched into the street.
Something felt wrong when I got home from the library at lunchtime.
I heard laughter coming from the bedroom. But I know Patrick wasn’t home. His car was gone. I pulled my phone from my purse and held on to it, ready to dial 911, as I walked toward the noise, only to sigh with relief when I found the TV on.
But I hadn’t left it on when I’d gone to the library this morning.
Had I?
I kept my coat on as I began to walk through the house. There was a faint smell that ran through the place, and I wouldn’t have noticed except that it wasn’t the lily of the valley that Patrick liked to buy me. It wasn’t even his Irish Spring soap. It was more like ash or a stale cigarette. I didn’t smoke, and neither did Patrick.
I opened closet doors and looked beneath the beds, but no one was hiding. I told myself I was imagining things, getting myself worked up over nothing. Until I noticed something missing: the silver-framed photo of Finn and me that I keep on the sofa table.
If someone broke into the house, why would they take that?
I got on hands and knees to peer under the couch, wondering if Patrick had knocked it down or moved it. But I couldn’t find it on any other tables or shelves.
Pretty soon, I was beside myself and spent the next few hours scouring the house—digging in drawers, poking through cupboards—until I felt clammy with worry. My heart beat so fast, I thought I would pass out.
If I didn’t calm down, I would make myself sick.
I phoned Patrick and babbled like an idiot.
“You’re so tired, Jenny,” he said. “You’re probably worked up over nothing. Can you take a sleeping pill and lie down? I’ll help you look when I get home.”
So that’s what I did.
I awoke to find him gently shaking my shoulder. The sky outside the window was dark. I wasn’t sure what time it was.
Still groggy, I sat up and swung my feet over the edge of the bed. I hadn’t forgotten about Finn’s photo. I knew how Patrick felt about my son and all the things I kept. So when I found my voice, the first thing I asked was, “Did you take Finn’s picture?”
“No, Jenny,” he said, holding my arm as I stumbled. I wanted to show him it was gone.
“Then someone was here,” I murmured.
“Are you sure about that?”
When I got to the living room, when I stood at the sofa table, I couldn’t breathe.
“See?” Patrick said and gave my shoulder a pat. “It’s right where it always is.”
And it was true.
There was the photograph of me with my arms around Finn, him smiling with that gap-toothed grin. I shook my head, wondering how I could have missed it.
Wondering if something really is wrong with me.
CHAPTER NINE
The station house looked like a party was in progress.
Jo wasn’t surprised that the Dallas media had begun to gather. If she didn’t know that most of them relied on police scanners, she’d figure it was the scent of blood that drew them, rather like the black crows that clung to power lines above the road, waiting for a possum to meet its fate beneath the tires of an eighteen-wheeler. Several white vans decorated with the call letters of the major networks anchored themselves in the spaces in front of the building.
Though it was past time for change of shifts, Jo recognized night-shift officers at their lockers or hitting the coffee machine, looking bleary-eyed and less than clean-shaven. The phones beeped and blinked like raw nerve endings, each potentially bearing the one tip that might answer the question of why. Why had Jenny Dielman disappeared? Why was she dead?
Jo dumped her coat on the back of her chair and checked her message slips, ignoring all but one from Owen Ross, the Warehouse Club manager. He’d printed out copies of receipts from Monday night that coincided with Jenny Dielman’s trip to the store, according to the time stamp on the security video. Jo would have wanted to see them, too, if they hadn’t found Jenny’s receipt in her car.
She crumpled up the pink slip and tossed it in the trash.
She’d just started to wade through her voice mail when their boss summoned them into his office. She grabbed her file on Jenny Dielman and followed Hank inside, taking a seat beside him across from Waylon Morris’s desk.
The captain’s marine buzz cut only made squarer an already angular face. His broad shoulders and thick torso—and the rigid way he carried himself—had earned him the labels of “fireplug” and “bulldog.” But most everyone just called him “Cap.”
She spied a tweed jacket and tie on a hanger that dangled from a wall sconce. Jo knew he didn’t gussy up unless he had a date with the mayor or the press.
“We have work to do, people,” Cap said, rubbing big hands together. “Chief’s been up my ass already, and he’s being dogged by the mayor and the city council. Brief me on what we’ve got so far.” He jerked a chin at the jacket. “Mayor wants me to work a press conference as soon as I have all the facts.”
Jo was relieved he didn’t mention her or Hank participating. With the blooming bruises on her face and the dried mud on her clothes, she knew she wasn’t fit for television.
She cleared her throat. “They’re processing the victim’s car at the crime lab impound as we speak, and we’re pushing for an autopsy in the next twenty-four hours. We’re looking to the postmortem for a definitive cause of death.”
Hank jumped in. “We’ve got the Jennings twenty-two found at the scene, and we’re awaiting confirmation of a match from ballistics. We’ve got the list of personal effects of Mrs. Dielman and statements from the couple who found the victim’s car.”
“We need to trace that weapon, Detectives,” Cap said bluntly.
Hank glanced at Jo. “Actually, sir, there’s a strong possibility that the Jennings twenty-two belonged to the dead woman.”
Cap leaned his elbows on his desk. “Explain.”
Jo sat up straighter. “The husband said he bought a small-caliber semiautomatic, a twenty-two by his recollection, at a gun show in Garland not long ago. He said it was for his wife’s protection, and she kept it in the glove compartment of her car.”
“Did she have a license to carry?”
“No, sir.”
“And it wasn’t registered?”
“No, sir,” Jo said, feeling angry all over again. “The serial number’s been filed off. Maybe the crime lab can work their magic and get something we can use.”
“Let me get this straight.” Cap’s squint cut creases into his forehead. “We have a missing woman who turns up dead at the bottom of a quarry with a bullet in her head, and the gun used in that shooting may well have been her own?”
�
�It wouldn’t be the first time a victim’s been killed with her own gun,” Jo said.
“She was being treated for depression,” Hank added.
Jo gave her partner a look. “Not depression exactly. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Her only son died tragically three years ago, and her first marriage broke up because of it. That anniversary’s next week, just after Thanksgiving.”
“So you’re thinking it’s a suicide?” Cap put up his hands. “If that’s the case, why aren’t y’all closing the book on this one ASAP?”
Hank inclined his head toward Jo: This one’s on you.
“It’s complicated, sir,” she said and drew in a deep breath.
“How’s that, Detective?”
She’d been waiting on this moment, trying to figure out how she’d explain. She wasn’t sure where to start. She understood that it looked cut-and-dry on the surface. But she wasn’t as convinced by the suicide scenario as Hank. Something about it didn’t feel right, and she wasn’t going to settle on suicide as the cause of death without all the evidence.
“I realize it muddies the waters, knowing the handgun might be Jenny Dielman’s,” she said, “especially with what we’ve learned about her state of mind.”
“Which is what?”
“According to her doctor, she was taking a prescription antidepressant. He intimated that she may have attempted suicide in the past, but we can’t be sure. We’d have to subpoena her old medical records.”
Cap shook his head. “That hardly sounds like muddy water to me.”
Jo wasn’t finished. “Dr. Patil doesn’t believe she wanted to kill herself. She was having trouble adjusting to the loss of her son, yes, but she was working through it. Why would she have gone shopping if she planned to kill herself?” she asked. “She bought enough cat food for a month and a twelve-pack of Kleenex. If I aimed to shoot myself, I sure as hell wouldn’t waste time in a Warehouse Club stocking up.”
“So there wasn’t a note?” Cap studied the pages in his hands. “I don’t see anything listed.”
“No, sir.” Jo squirmed. “Nothing’s turned up yet.”
“Is that it?” Captain Morris didn’t sound convinced.
“No. Something’s missing,” Jo murmured, getting that nagging feeling again that she’d overlooked a piece of evidence. She opened the folder in her lap, skimming through her report and her notes. She glanced through the list of items found at the quarry: the contents of Jenny’s purse, the purchases from the Warehouse Club, the cell phone, the wristwatch, and the wedding rings.
Where was the locket? The one with Finn’s photo that Patrick Dielman said Jenny never took off?
Jo’s heart thumped. “Her husband said she always wore a locket in her son’s memory. It’s silver and engraved with an F for Finn. If she was so grief-stricken that she’d take her own life, why wasn’t it with her?”
Cap raised an eyebrow. “Go on.”
“It wasn’t on the body or in her car,” Jo said. “It should have been there, like her rings and her watch. Her coat’s missing, too. I saw her wearing it in the security footage from the Warehouse Club that I viewed last night. I think there’s more to this case than the obvious.”
“What about you, Phelps?” Cap asked, turning to her partner. “What’s your gut tell you?”
Jo wanted to know that, too.
“The point of entry was the right temple,” Hank said, touching a finger to his own temple. “According to the vic’s husband, she was right-handed. The placement of the watch on her left wrist backs that up.”
“You believe it’s suicide?”
Hank slid Jo a sideways glance. He grunted. “That’s the ME’s call, not mine.”
Jo’s chest felt tight.
The captain rubbed his jaw. “So there’s the possibility our victim might not have been abducted. She might not even be the victim of a crime?” He shook his head. “Any chance we can run a GSR and get it over with?”
Jo started to open her mouth, but Hank beat her to it.
“There’s no primer on the casing of a twenty-two, so there’s no residue to look for,” he said. “She’d been in the water for a while, and we all know it’s not recommended to test for gunshot residue after someone’s washed their hands, much less soaked in a crater full of water overnight.”
Captain Morris sat quietly, brow wrinkled, digesting the information. Then he pushed his chair back and stood, reaching for his jacket and tie.
“What we’ve got is a suspicious death,” he said. “As far as this department is concerned, it’s still an open investigation.”
“I want to talk to her husband again, Cap, and the ex,” Jo said.
“Get on it,” Cap said, then gestured at the door. “Dismissed.” He was pulling up his collar to put on his tie when Jo and Hank walked out the door.
Jo stayed at the station for a long while after, talking to the uniforms who had canvassed the Dielmans’ neighbors, making calls to get the Dielmans’ phone records, staring at the security footage on her computer screen, enduring the twitter of ringing phones, running reports, putting up a timeline, and sucking down bad coffee until she’d had it. Hank was already long gone by the time she finally took off.
She drove home through the dark, a misty-moist haze in the beams of her headlights. She turned on the radio even though it did little to banish the noise in her head.
Once locked inside her condo, she closed the shutters, drapes, and blinds, turning on the lights inside her cocoon of bricks and mortar. After she’d peeled off her dirty clothes and put away her holster and the .38 she’d cleaned and oiled, Jo had taken as long and hot a shower as humanly possible. Every inch of her ached.
Despite the best attempts of the EMTs to clean her up at the scene, brown water swirled around her feet and gurgled down the drain. She gently scrubbed the parts of her that were abraded and bruised, wincing as the soap stung her cuts. Though steam fogged the air around her, she felt cold beneath her skin. Her mind kept jumping from one thought to the next, and no amount of deep breathing could still it.
She made the water even hotter, until it turned her flesh red, and she gritted her teeth. Still, the chill lingered, even after the shower, when she’d dried off and donned her robe. She’d only just dragged a comb through her damp hair when she heard someone at the door.
Adam stood on the welcome mat, wearing his old bomber jacket, his boyish features grimly set. Blue eyes relayed worry behind wire rims.
“I saw the news about the woman in the quarry,” he said. “Is that your case?”
Jo nodded.
He shifted a brown paper sack from his right hand to his left. He reached up and cupped her chin. “How’s the other guy look?”
“The other guy’s the quarry.”
He grimaced. “Ouch.”
She tugged him in and locked the door.
He took off his jacket as he made his way into the living room, then tossed it over a chair. He set the bag on the coffee table and drew her toward him.
“You all right?” He peered at her closely, and she knew he was taking in each nick on her face, each red scratch and purple mark. The pain in her eyes. “You want to talk about it?”
He spoke with such tenderness that she wanted to weep.
What the hell was wrong with her? There wasn’t much holding her together tonight, just the barest thread of control. Should the thread snap, she’d come apart at the seams.
“Tell me what happened,” he coaxed, drawing her down on the couch beside him.
She trembled as his hand slid over her back, fingers moving lightly down the curve of her spine. “I saw her, Adam.” She swallowed hard, worked to get it out. “I saw her face. I felt her fear.” She told him all of it before she could stop. “I wanted to help her, but I was too late.”
“You couldn’t have saved her,” he said. His slim brow creased. “You’re pretty damn amazing, but you’re not Superman.”
Jo sighed. “I’m not even Underdog.”
“I don’t know about that,” Adam said. “I watched you jump into White Rock Lake once to save a drowning bunny.”
“You also saw me lose it when a mouse ran up the leg of my pants,” she reminded him, and he laughed softly.
“So mice are your Kryptonite.” He stopped rubbing her back, and she leaned into him. “Everybody’s got something. Mine’s Jell-O. Food should not move.”
Jo smiled, but it was short-lived. “There’s just so much that doesn’t make sense,” she said.
“About Jell-O?”
“About Jenny, the woman in the quarry.” She blinked hard, the bits and pieces of the case shuffling inside her head.
“It’s a crazy world.”
Crazy.
She winced at his choice of words, thought of Jenny’s diagnosis, the post-traumatic stress. If the medical examiner ruled her death a suicide, that would be all anyone remembered, and Jo didn’t want it to go down that way.
Adam stroked her damp hair. “I wish I could help.”
“Me, too.”
He drew away, peering into her eyes so intently she wished she could shrivel up and disappear, like a wisp of smoke. He was so comfortable with intimacy, both in and out of bed, had always been that way, since the first time they’d been together.
While Jo didn’t feel so exposed in the dark, she felt completely vulnerable when the lights were on, every time their eyes met.
He cocked his head. “Have you eaten anything since breakfast?”
“Does dirt count?”
“No.”
Paper crinkled as he retrieved the brown bag from the table and removed a Styrofoam container. He spread a napkin on her lap and gave her a plastic spoon. Then he popped the lid off the cup. Steam floated up to her nose as he pressed it into her hands. “Careful, it’s hot.”
The heat warmed her palms, and she inhaled the rising steam. “Smells great,” she said. “What is it?”
“Cream of potato from Jason’s.”
Sweet nectar of the gods.
He reached into the sack and removed a wax-wrapped bundle as well. “And a muffaletta,” he added.
“Just put an apple in my mouth and get the spit ready,” she murmured, and he grinned.
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