by Andrew Lanh
“What was going to happen to Mary at that corner?”
She stared at me, searching for an answer. “I dunno. Danny said he knew someone who would scare her silly. You know, tell her…”
“That makes no sense, Kristen,” I said. “Think about it. She’d call your mother afterwards and find out you were lying, no? She’d learn your mother was never there.”
A long silence. “I didn’t think of that.” But she said the line too quickly. “It was all worked out so that it all made sense.”
“And how does scaring her there stop her from messing up your life with Danny?” Ardolino asked.
Another long silence, then she started to cry again. “I don’t know…I think…thought…Danny told me it would work. He promised me it would work.”
“But Mary got shot and killed,” Ardolino said.
She spoke too fast. “Danny wasn’t counting on that. He told me it was a mistake. There was a drive-by shooting that happened. She just happened to be there. Danny said drive-by shootings happen there all the time. People get killed there and…nobody pays…attention. One night we were driving and you know how they got that detour off the highway, and we ended up there. It was easy to make that mistake.”
“Kristen, do you believe what you’re telling us?”
“What?”
“That the drive-by was an accident?”
She nodded, but I could see she was faltering. There was a rehearsed quality about some of her lines now. “Danny said these things happen all the time in that neighborhood.”
“You expect us to believe this?” Ardolino asked.
A whimper. “Danny said nobody could catch a cab there. No cab stops there. Otherwise Mom would have, you know, called a cab. Mary was, you know, gullible. I kept talking until she said yes.”
“What else did she say?”
“She said it was the craziest thing she ever heard of. It was the last time she’d do such a thing.
“And so you went home?’
“Danny dropped me off at the bottom of my driveway, and he went to the gym for a while. I stayed in the yard, like hiding, then went inside. Mom was there. She yelled at me for the stupid note, but then we heard that Mary died and I was too afraid to say anything. I knew it was an accident.”
“What did Danny say to you?”
“He called me that night and told me not to say anything because we’d look bad. He told me it was a tragic accident. ‘Every week somebody is killed there,’ he said. So I couldn’t say anything. People would think we killed her. The next day he had to drive to New York so he wasn’t around.”
I looked at Ardolino, and he nodded. “Let’s take a break.” I told Kristen we’d be back in a second, and she asked for another diet Coke. Watching her through the one-way mirror, I saw a young woman drying her eyes and then reaching into her purse to repair her makeup. It seemed to take all of her attention. She applied fresh lipstick. She smiled into the compact mirror and then snapped it shut. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, looked at the ceiling, and then smiled. “She’s probably thinking of Danny,” I said.
“Is she this dense for real?” he asked me.
“She’s not very bright.”
“That’s not what I asked. Even dumb people—her own little corner of humankind—know enough not to commit murder or to abet a murderer like Danny.”
“Well, you combine a little-girl mentality with a little-girl puppy love infatuation, and tuck her into the Machiavellian folds of a slick operator like Danny, and, sure, she could miss the picture.”
“I think she’s faking all this.”
“Yeah, it’s possible.” I glanced back at Kristen. I told him what Marcie and Vinnie had said about her days at Chesterton—how she could be manipulative. “She’s a little game player. Wily.”
“There were moments in there I thought she was aware of what she was saying….”
“That’s my point.”
I stared back into the room. Kristen was checking her face in a compact. “Danny set her up—or she really knew what was going to happen.”
“How could she not, Rick?” he said. “Think about it. She’s not that dumb.” He sighed. “Ready for round two?”
“Wait. Alibis. Obviously you ran the alibis…”
“What little they were. Most were alone or unavailable. But the one solid alibi we have for that night is Danny. That night he was at the gym on New Britain Avenue.’
“For sure?”
“We checked that out. He worked one-on-one with a personal trainer. The whole time.”
“How convenient.”
“Nobody else has such an airtight alibi.” He cleared his throat. “Real convenient.”
Chapter Thirty-two
“You want anything?” I asked Kristen when we returned to the room.
She smiled. “I’m okay. Can I go home now?”
“Pretty soon. We appreciate your honesty, Kristen. There are just a few more questions. Thank you for telling us the truth.”
“You gonna tell Danny?” She was wide eyed. “I did promise him.”
“Don’t worry about Danny,” Ardolino said. “You take care of yourself.”
“How?” It seemed a genuine question.
“By telling us the truth,” I told her. “When I talked to you before, you never told me this.”
She smiled. “I didn’t say anything. I was quiet.”
“Don’t be quiet now.” Ardolino smiled at her.
I looked at her. “We think that Danny killed your Aunt Mary.”
She screamed. “No.” Her voice broke.
“Tell us,” Ardolino said.
“I told you, she was supposed to be scared.”
“That sounds a little hollow, Kristen,” I said.
“What does that mean?”
I pulled my chair closer to her. I could smell her perfume, cloying and sweet. It mixed with the sweat of her body. She was nervous.
“Tell me this, Kristen, what do you think happened to your aunt?”
She nibbled on the corner of a nail and then stopped. “You know,” she said to me, stressing the word. “She got herself killed in a drive-by…”
“Did Danny tell you that?”
She looked from me to Ardolino. “He says it happens all the time there.”
“Then why would you send your aunt there?”
She faltered. “To scare her.” But she barely whispered the words.
“We’re not buying that. Maybe you bought Danny’s story for Mary, but by the time your own mom was dead, you must have suspected something.”
She bit her lip, said nothing. Her hand gripped the can of diet Coke. I thought she’d crunch it.
“Mary was going to the police, Kristen. Right?”
She sighed. “Well, I overheard Mom tell Dad.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, I guess Aunt Mary was on Tommy’s case. She was afraid Tommy was back into drugs and she wanted to—to—intervene.“
“Intervene?”
“Have someone talk to him. But also to Danny. She told Mom that Tommy and Danny were doing drugs. She wanted the police to look at Danny. Selling drugs, maybe. Call the bank, in fact. She told Mom that. Talk to someone at the bank. And that pissed Danny off. I told Danny what I heard, but he already thought Mary was going over the edge. Danny didn’t want the police talking to him. He kept mentioning the bank. Can you blame him?”
“But then Mary was dead.”
“The drive-by.”
“And then there was your mother,” Ardolino said.
She nodded.
“Come on, Kristen, what did your mother say about all this?”
“She was suspicious, that’s all. Why did I leave that note? Why was Danny calling? She got nervous. She said she should have been there for
Mary.”
“Meaning?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
I spoke up. “Maybe your mother realized that Mary was dead because she had talked to Mary about Tommy and Danny and drugs and you…”
“She didn’t trust Danny, so she wanted to blame him for something.”
“Did she tell you anything about the murder?” I asked.
Kristen clicked her tongue. “No, but I heard her tell Dad that his golden boy had to be looked at.”
“What did your Dad say?”
“He said he’d talk to Danny.”
“Did he?”
“I don’t know. Danny was afraid of losing me, Rick. Losing me. And once Mary was dead, Mom got suspicious. But I couldn’t tell her anything. There was nothing to tell, Rick. It was an accident. Danny didn’t really plan it. You know that.”
“What did your mother tell you to do after Mary’s death?” I asked.
A pause. Then: “Stay away from Danny.”
“Did you?”
“I told Danny to lay low. But you know what Danny said. ‘This is a lot of nonsense.’ We’re talking about a couple sticks of pot. Nothing. A few dollars. I told Mom it was nothing. And do you know what she said to me?” She waited.
“What?” From Ardolino.
Her voice deepened. “She said, ‘Kristen, I hope you don’t think you’re going to marry that man. It’s just not gonna happen.’”
“And you said what?” Ardolino asked.
“I started crying and I told her nothing was going on, but I think by crying she got the answer she wanted.”
“Did she ask you if Danny killed Mary?”
“Oh, no, of course not. Because Danny didn’t do that. I told you.”
“Don’t you find it strange,” Ardolino said, “that your Mom died in the same location?”
She didn’t speak. She stared at her nails. Then she bit another corner of one of them.
“Your mother said you’d never marry Danny. That must have hurt.”
“A little, but I didn’t care. She didn’t understand how much he loves me. How much I love him. I said to her—Danny is a good man. But she laughed and said, ‘Your father and I are moral people. We don’t do drugs or sleep around with tramps.’”
“Did that make you angry?”
“She said she was going to tell Susie that Danny couldn’t come to the house any more. Even if it made Susie mad. Danny picked her up sometimes. Sometimes he stopped in to see me.”
“You believe whatever Danny tells you?” Ardolino asked.
“I said Dad would never stop Danny from coming, but she said Dad would listen to her.”
Kristen was out of breath, talking slowly now but swallowing her words.
“And you said?” I asked her.
Softly, almost a whisper. “I couldn’t have that.”
I looked at Ardolino, and he narrowed his eyes. I could read his mind. The more she talked, the more Kristen seemed aware of things. Here was a feeble intellect infused with a diabolic purpose.
“So you told Danny the conversation,” I said.
“I told Danny everything.”
“And so you did it again. Another phone call, this time to your mother.”
“No.”
“Of course you did,” Ardolino said.
“But it’s not what you think.”
“What am I thinking?” Ardolino said.
“That I killed my own mother. God, no. I couldn’t do that. I just wanted to—to scare her.”
I was angry. “Kristen, you can’t keep using that word scare. You can’t. We’re talking about murder here.”
She pouted. “Danny said scare.”
“So what did you do?” I asked.
“When?”
“That night your Mom died.”
She was breathing heavily now and kept biting her lower lip. “I called from my cell phone.” She breathed in and out, then started again. “I was at Danny’s apartment. He told me what to say. I said I was driving with Danny, and she got real mad. ‘Where are you?’ she said. ‘I told you to stay away from him.’ I told her we drove to the spot where Mary died because I wanted to look around.”
“What did she say to that?”
“She called me stupid. Over and over. ‘Why are you there? And with Danny? Are you crazy?’ She wouldn’t shut up. But I said I had a fight with him—he told me to say that—and I got out of the car real mad and he drove off, mad. I told her he made me get out, and I was scared. I told her I thought he was just scaring me, but he drove off and left me there. I told her I knew he’d come back, but she started yelling about what a loser he was. I said I needed help. ‘Call 911,’ she said. ‘Right now.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘Dad’ll kill me if he finds this out. I’m afraid. Really afraid. Come get me.’ I started crying. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Run into a store and call a taxi.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t have any money on me. Someone is watching me, coming close. Come get me. Please. I’m gonna stay in this, like, grocery store.’ Wait for her, then come out. Then I hung up.”
“So she went there. What did Danny do?”
“He left.”
“Danny killed her,” I said, flat out. “Or had someone do it.”
She looked at me. “He said he wanted me to have his baby. His baby. He just wanted her to leave us alone. We’re in love. We have a right to be in love.”
Ardolino and I sat quietly for a while. Kristen said nothing. She stared into her lap for a minute, but I noticed a quick, almost furtive glance out the corner of her eyes. That bothered me. She was trying to think of how to handle this.
“We’re in love,” she mumbled.
“Did Danny return to his apartment?”
“Not—I don’t know. He—he called me at his apartment. He said to drive myself home…”
“When did you fix your car?” Ardolino said.
“What?”
“You said your car was broken.”
“Yes, but that was when Mary went there. My car was fixed and…”
“You knew he was going to kill your mother,” Ardolino said. “That night, after you called her to come get you.”
“No, I…” She reached into her purse and pulled out a handkerchief. “She was my mother. He…promised…”
“Promised what?” I asked.
“Promised that he would talk to her.”
“About the two of you being in love?”
“Yes.”
“That’s stupid. Why did he have to have her go to that square?”
Silence. Then: “He said it would confuse the police. They’d, you know, think of gangs.” But she listened to her own words, stopped. “I mean, the police…”
“You were sending your Mom to be killed,” I said.
“No, I just wanted them to leave me and Danny alone. He promised me a baby.”
“And,” I raised my voice, “I’m not buying that stuff about Mary either. To scare her. To frighten her. You knew she’d get killed.”
“I…I didn’t know. I swear. It all happened so fast. Danny said nothing would happen. He said it was like…like a game we were playing.”
“And you believed him when he said Mary’s death was a drive-by,” Ardolino said
She mumbled, “Yes.”
“And you didn’t doubt him afterwards?”
She looked at the wall over my shoulder. She thought about her words. “I did believe him.”
“But Danny killed Mary.”
“He couldn’t. He was at the gym.”
“Then how was he going to scare her when she arrived there?”
She looked rattled. “I didn’t believe he’d hurt Aunt Mary. That was about her yapping and a few joints. And us. Us. Our love. You don’t kill for that.” She was nodding furiously. “
I didn’t understand it. I still don’t. Danny kept saying it would be all right. Everything’s all right. Just tell everyone nothing happened. He told me he just wanted to talk. He needed my help. Not murder. I don’t know what happened.”
“What happened is that you set your Aunt Mary up to be killed.”
“No,” she gasped, but the words were coming out gargled now, a little hysterical. “No.”
“But didn’t you think something else was going on—bigger than the pot and the romance?” I asked.
“What?”
“Didn’t you think Danny was involved with something bigger, something he hid from you?”
“Like what?”
“He never told you?” Ardolino asked.
“He told me he loved me. And if I kept quiet he would love me forever.”
“After Mary’s death, didn’t you worry about your mother?”
A transformation. A flash of fire in her eyes. “She was gonna get him in trouble,” she yelled. “My Danny. I couldn’t have that. We love each other. She was gonna call the police on him. I knew it. That was funny.”
“Why funny?”
“Because he said that if Mary went to that square, the police would never look at us. That they’d look to drug people in Hartford. Danny said it was the most perfect place in the world for a…”
“Crime?”
“No, like a…”
“But then they got nosy, the police. And me,” I said.
“That’s when it got all mixed up. Danny said people were too nosy.”
“Kristen.” I looked into her face. “You knew Danny would kill your mother when you called her that night. You knew that, right?”
She said nothing.
“Come on, Kristen,” Ardolino prodded. “You set your own mother up to be murdered.”
She looked at him helplessly. “What else could I do? Everyone was trying to take away our happiness. That’s not right, is it? When do I get a chance to be in love?”
Chapter Thirty-three
That afternoon after I left, Ardolino read Kristen her Miranda rights, had her sign off on them, and then led her through a taped confession. Then he got an arrest warrant for Danny Trinh. In her bumbling way, Kristen finally came clean.