by Lisa Gardner
Juliana frowned, held her baby a little closer. “What does that have to do with me? I don’t know any child from Allston-Brighton. I live in Arlington.”
“When was the last time you saw Tessa Leoni?” D.D. asked.
Juliana’s reaction was immediate. She stiffened and looked away from D.D., her blue gaze dropping to the hardwood floor. A square block with the letter “E” and a picture of an elephant was by her slippered foot. She retrieved the block and offered it to the baby, who took it from her, then tried to cram the whole thing in his mouth.
“He’s teething,” she murmured absently, stroking her child’s red-flushed cheek. “Poor little guy hasn’t slept in nights, and whimpers to be held all day long. I know all babies go through it, but I didn’t think it would be so hard. Seeing my own child in pain. Knowing there’s nothing I can do but wait.”
D.D. didn’t say anything.
“Sometimes, at night, when he’s crying, I rock and cry with him. I know it sounds corny, but it seems to help him. Maybe no one, not even babies, likes to cry alone.”
D.D. didn’t say anything.
“Oh my God,” Juliana MacDougall exclaimed abruptly. “Sophie Leoni. Sophia Leoni. She’s Tessa’s daughter. Tessa had a little girl. Oh. My. God.”
Then Juliana Howe shut up completely, just sitting there with her baby boy, who was still chewing the wooden block.
“What did you see that night?” D.D. asked the young mother gently. No need to define which night. Most likely, Juliana’s entire life circled back to that one moment in time.
“I didn’t. Not really. I was half asleep, heard a noise, came downstairs. Tessa and Tommy … They were on the couch. Then there was a noise, and Tommy stood up, kind of stepped back, then fell down. Then Tessa stood up, saw me, and started crying. She held out her hand, and she was holding a gun. That was the first thing I really noticed. Tessa had a gun. The rest sunk in from there.”
“What did you do?”
Juliana was quiet. “It’s been a long time.”
D.D. waited.
“I don’t understand. Why these questions now? I told everything to the police. Last I knew, it was an open-and-shut case. Tommy had a reputation … The detective said Tessa wasn’t the first girl he’d hurt.”
“What do you think?”
Juliana shrugged. “He was my brother,” she whispered. “Honestly, I try not to think about it.”
“Did you believe Tessa that night? That your friend was protecting herself?”
“I don’t know.”
“She ever show any interest in Tommy before? Ask about his schedule? Bat her eyelashes in his direction?”
Juliana shook her head, still not looking at D.D.
“But you never spoke to her afterward. You cast her out. Like her father.”
Now Juliana flushed. Her grip tightened on her baby. He whimpered and immediately she let go.
“Something was wrong with Tommy,” she said abruptly.
D.D. waited.
“My parents couldn’t see it. But he was … mean. If he wanted something, he took it. Even when we were little, if I had a toy and he wanted that toy …” She shrugged again. “He’d break something, rather than let me keep it. My father would say boys will be boys, and let it go. But I learned. Tommy wanted what he wanted and you didn’t get in his way.”
“You think he attacked Tessa.”
“I think when Detective Walthers told us other girls had called about Tommy, I wasn’t surprised. My parents were horrified. My father … he still doesn’t believe. But I could. Tommy wanted what he wanted and you didn’t get in his way.”
“Did you ever tell that to Tessa?”
“I haven’t spoken to Tessa Leoni in ten years.”
“Why not?”
“Because.” The ubiquitous shrug again. “Tommy wasn’t just my brother—he was my parents’ son. And when he died … My parents burned up their savings on Tommy’s funeral. Then, when my father couldn’t go back to work, we lost our house. My parents had to declare bankruptcy. Eventually, they divorced. My mother and I moved in with my aunt. My father had a nervous breakdown. He lives in an institution, where he spends his days going through Tommy’s scrapbook. He can’t get over it. He just can’t. The world is a terrible place, where your child can be killed and the police cover it up.”
Juliana stroked her own baby’s cheek. “It’s funny,” she murmured. “I used to think my family was perfect. That’s even what Tessa loved best about me. I came from this great family, not like her family at all. Then, in one night, we turned into them. It wasn’t just that I lost my brother, but that my parents lost their son.”
“She ever try to contact you?”
“The last words I spoke to Tessa Leoni were, ‘You need to go home right now!’ And that’s what she did. She took her gun and she ran out of my house.”
“What about seeing her around the neighborhood?”
“Her father kicked her out. Then she was no longer around the neighborhood.”
“You never wondered about her? Never worried about your best friend in the whole wide world, who had to fight off your own brother? You invited her over that night. According to her initial statement, Tessa had asked if Tommy would be home for the evening.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Did you tell Tommy she was coming?”
Juliana’s lips thinned. Abruptly, she set the baby on the floor, stood up. “You should go now, Detective. I haven’t spoken to Tessa in ten years. I didn’t know she had a daughter, and I certainly don’t know where she is.”
But D.D. stayed put, sitting on the edge of the sofa, peering up at Tessa’s former best friend.
“Why did you leave Tessa in the family room that night?” D.D. pushed. “If it was a sleepover, why didn’t you rouse your best friend to come up to your room? What did Tommy tell you to do?”
“Stop it!”
“You suspected, didn’t you? You knew what he was up to, and that’s why you came downstairs. You feared your brother, you worried about your friend. Did you warn Tessa, Juliana? Is that why she brought the gun?”
“No!”
“You knew your father wouldn’t listen. Boys will be boys. Sounds like your mom had already internalized the message. That left you and Tessa. Two sixteen-year-old girls, trying to stand up to one brute of an older brother. Did she think she’d simply scare him off? Wave the gun, and that would be the end of things?”
Juliana didn’t respond. Her face was ashen.
“Except the gun went off,” D.D. continued conversationally. “And Tommy got hit. Tommy died. Your entire family fell apart. All because you and Tessa didn’t really know what you were doing. Whose idea was it to bring the gun that night?”
“Get out.”
“Yours? Hers? What were the two of you thinking?”
“Get out!”
“I’m going to check your phone records. One call. That’s all I need. One call placed from Tessa to you and your new little family is going to fall apart, too, Juliana. I’m gonna rip it apart, if I learn you’ve been holding out on me.”
“Get out!” Juliana screamed. On the floor, the baby responded to his mother’s tone and started to wail.
D.D. climbed off the sofa. She kept her eyes on Juliana MacDougall, the woman’s pale face, heaving shoulders, wild gaze. She looked like a deer caught in the headlights. She looked like a woman trapped by a ten-year-old lie.
D.D. gave one last try: “What happened that night, Juliana? What aren’t you telling me?”
“I loved her,” the woman said suddenly. “Tessa was my best friend in the whole world, and I loved her. Then my brother died, my family shattered, and my world went to shit. I’m not going back. Not for her, not for you, not for anyone. Whatever happened to Tessa this time around, I don’t know and I don’t care. Now get out of my home, Detective, and don’t bother me or my family again.”
Juliana held open the door. Her baby was still sobbing on the floor.
D.D. took the hint and finally departed. The door slammed shut behind her, the dead bolt turning for good measure.
When D.D. turned, however, she could see Juliana through the front window. The woman had picked up her crying son, cradling the baby against her chest. Soothing the child or letting the child soothe her?
Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe that’s the way these things worked.
Juliana MacDougall loved her son. As her parents had loved her brother. As Tessa Leoni loved her daughter.
Cycles, D.D. thought. Pieces of a larger pattern. Except she couldn’t quite pull it apart, or put it back together.
Parents loved their children. Some parents would go to any length to protect them. And other parents …
D.D. started to get a bad feeling.
Then her cellphone rang.
19
Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren and Detective Bobby Dodge came for me at 11:43 a.m. I heard their footsteps in the corridor, fast and focused. I had a split second; I used it to stash the blue button in the back part of the lowest drawer in the hospital bed stand.
My only link to Sophie.
My final unnecessary reminder to play by the rules.
Maybe, one day I could return and retrieve the button. If I was lucky, maybe Sophie and I could do it together, reclaiming Gertrude’s missing eye and reattaching it to her dispassionate doll’s face.
If I was lucky.
I’d just sat down on the edge of my hospital bed when the privacy curtain was ripped back and D.D. strode into the room. I knew what was coming next and still had to bite my lower lip to hold back my scream of protest.
“All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth, my …”
I realized belatedly I was humming the song under my breath. Fortunately, neither of the detectives seemed to notice.
“Tessa Marie Leoni,” D.D. began and I steeled my spine. “You are under arrest for the murder of Brian Anthony Darby. Please rise.”
More footsteps in the corridor. Most likely the DA and his assistant, not wanting to miss the big moment. Or maybe some muckety-mucks from the BPD, always attuned to high profile photo ops. Probably some brass from the state police, as well. They wouldn’t abandon me just yet, a young, abused female officer. They couldn’t afford to appear so insensitive.
The press would be amassing in the parking lot, I realized, impressed by my own detachment as I rose to my feet, presenting both wrists to my colleagues. Shane would arrive shortly, as union rep. Also my lawyer. Or maybe they would meet me at the courthouse, where I would be formally charged with killing my own husband.
I had a flashback to another moment in time, sitting at a kitchen table, my freshly showered hair dripping down my back as a heavyset detective asked over and over again, “Where’d ya get the gun, why’d ya bring the gun, what made ya fire the gun.…”
My father, standing impassively in the doorway, his arms crossed over his dirty white T-shirt. And me, understanding even then that I’d lost him. That my answers didn’t matter anymore. I was guilty, I would always be guilty.
Sometimes, that’s the price you paid for love.
Detective Warren read me my rights. I didn’t speak; what was left to say? She cuffed my wrists, prepared to lead me away, then encountered the first logistical issue. I had no clothes. My uniform had been bagged and tagged as evidence upon my admittance, delivered to the crime lab yesterday afternoon. That left me in a hospital Johnny, and even D.D. understood the political dangers of a Boston cop being photographed dragging away a battered state trooper who was wearing nothing but a hospital gown.
She and Detective Dodge had a quick conference, off to one side of the room. I sat back down on the edge of the bed. A nurse had entered and was watching the proceedings with concern. Now she crossed to me.
“Head?” she asked crisply.
“Hurts.”
She took my pulse, made me track her finger with my eyes, then nodded in satisfaction. Apparently, I was merely in pain, not in crisis. Having assured herself that her patient was in no immediate danger, the nurse retreated out the door.
“Can’t use a prison jumpsuit,” D.D. was arguing in low tones with Bobby. “Her lawyer will argue we biased the judge, bringing her before him in jailhouse orange. Hospital gown presents the same issue, except this time we look like insensitive jerks. We need clothes. Simple nondescript blue jeans, sweater. That sort of thing.”
“Get an officer to swing by her house,” Bobby muttered back.
D.D. regarded him for a second, then turned to study me.
“Got a favorite outfit?” D.D. asked.
“Wal-Mart,” I said, standing up.
“What?”
“Couple blocks over. Size 6 jeans, medium sweater. I’d appreciate underclothes, too, plus socks and shoes.”
“I’m not buying you clothes,” D.D. said crossly. “We’ll get some from your house.”
“No,” I said, and sat back down.
D.D. glared at me. I let her. She was arresting me, after all, what did she have to be so angry about? I didn’t want clothing from home, personal articles the Suffolk County Jail would seize from me and lock away for the duration of my incarceration. I would rather arrive in a hospital gown. Why not? The look bought me sympathy, and I would take all the help I could get.
Apparently, D.D. figured that out, as well. A uniformed officer was summoned, instructions given. The patrol officer didn’t even bat an eye at being told to buy women’s clothing. He disappeared out the door, which left me alone with D.D. and Bobby again.
Others must be staying out in the hall. Hospital rooms weren’t that big. They might as well wait in the corridor for the show.
I was counting down, though I didn’t know to what.
“What did you use?” D.D. asked abruptly. “Bags of ice? Snow? Funny, you know. I noticed the damp spot on the basement floor, yesterday. I wondered about it.”
I said nothing.
She walked toward me, eyes narrowed, as if studying a particular species of wildlife. I noticed when she walked, she kept one hand splayed over her stomach, the other on her hip. I also noticed that her face was pale with dark circles under her eyes. Apparently, I was keeping the good detective up at night. Score one for me.
I regarded her with my good eye. Dared her to look at the swollen, eggplant purple mess of my face, and pass judgment.
“You ever meet the ME?” she asked now, switching gears, becoming more conversational. She halted in front of me. From my vantage point, perched on the edge of the hospital bed, I had to look up at her.
I didn’t speak.
“Ben’s good. One of the best we’ve ever had,” she continued. “Maybe another ME wouldn’t have noticed it. But Ben loves the details. Apparently, the human body is like any other meat. You can freeze it and thaw it, but not without some changes in—how did he put it?—consistency. The flesh on your husband’s extremities felt wrong to him. So he took a few samples, stuck them under a microscope, and hell if I understand all the science, but basically determined damage at a cellular level consistent with the freezing of human tissue. You shot your husband, Tessa. Then, you put him on ice.”
I didn’t speak.
D.D. leaned closer. “This is what I don’t get, though. Obviously, you were buying time. You needed to get something done. What, Tessa? What were you doing while your husband’s corpse lay frozen in the basement?”
I didn’t speak. I listened to a song instead, playing in the back of my mind. All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth, my two front teeth.…
“Where is she?” D.D. whispered, as if reading my mind. “Tessa, what did you do with your little girl? Where’s Sophie?”
“When are you due?” I asked, and D.D. recoiled as if shot, while five feet away, Bobby inhaled sharply.
He hadn’t known, I determined. Or maybe he’d known, but not known, in that way men sometimes do. I found this interesting.
“Is he t
he father?” I asked.
“Shut up,” D.D. said curtly.
Then I remembered. “No,” I corrected myself, as if she’d never spoken. I looked over at Bobby. “You’re married to another woman, from the state mental institute case, couple years back. And you have a baby now, don’t you? Not that long ago. I heard about that.”
He didn’t say anything. Just stared at me with cool gray eyes. Did he think I was threatening his family? Was I?
Maybe I just needed to make conversation, because otherwise I might say all the wrong things. For example, I used snow, because it was easy enough to shovel and didn’t leave behind trace evidence such as a dozen empty ice bags. And Brian was heavy, heavier than I’d imagined. All that working out, all that pumping up, just so myself and a hit man could lug an extra forty pounds down the stairs and into his precious, never-any-tool-out-of-place garage.
I’d cried when I scooped the snow on top of my husband’s dead body. The hot tears formed little holes in the white snow, then I had to pile on more snow and all the while my hands were shaking uncontrollably. I kept myself focused. One shovel full of snow, then a second, then a third. It took twenty-three.
Twenty-three scoops of snow to bury a grown man.
I’d warned Brian. I’d told him in the beginning that I was a woman who knew too much. You don’t mess with a woman who knows the kind of things I know.
Three tampons to plug the bullet holes. Twenty-three scoops of snow to hide the body.
All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth, my two front teeth.…
Love you more, he’d told me as he died.
Stupid, sorry son of a bitch.
I didn’t speak anymore. D.D. and Bobby also sat in silence for a good ten, fifteen minutes. Three members of law enforcement not making eye contact. Finally, the door banged open and Ken Cargill barged in, black wool coat flapping around him, thinning brown hair mussed. He drew to a halt, then noticed my shackled wrists and turned on D.D. with all the fury of a good defense lawyer.
“What is this!” he cried.
“Your client, Tessa Marie Leoni, has been charged in the death of her husband, Brian Anthony Darby. We have read her her rights, and are now awaiting transport to the courthouse.”