by Lisa Gardner
D.D. wrote a fresh header: Motive.
“If I were Tessa Leoni,” she stated, “and I discovered my husband was not only still gambling, but that the sorry son of a bitch had run up tens of thousands in credit card debt in my daughter’s name, I’d kill him for that alone. Interestingly enough, my-husband-is-a-worthless-asshole is not an affirmative defense, meaning Tessa’s still better off arguing battery and getting Lyons to beat the shit out of her.”
Several officers nodded agreeably. Bobby, of course, poked the first hole in the argument.
“So she loves her daughter enough to be offended by the credit card scam, but then kills her anyway?”
D.D. pursed her lips. “Point taken.” She looked at the room. “Anyone?”
“Maybe she didn’t kill Sophie on purpose,” Phil suggested. “Maybe, it was an accident. She and Brian were having a fight, Sophie got in the way. Maybe, Sophie’s death became one more reason to kill Brian. Except now her family’s dead, her husband shot by her service weapon—automatic investigation right there,” Phil added, “so Tessa panics. Gotta figure out a plausible scenario—”
“Self-defense worked for her once before,” Bobby commented. “The Tommy Howe shooting.”
“She freezes her husband’s body to buy her time, takes Sophie’s body for a drive, and the next morning concocts a story to manipulate both Shane Lyons and us into believing what she needs us to believe,” D.D. finished. “Sunday morning becomes showtime.”
“What if she withdrew the fifty grand Saturday morning because she discovered Brian was gambling again?” another officer spoke up. “Brian found out, or she confronted him. Events escalated from there.”
D.D. nodded, wrote a new note on the board: Where’s the $$$?
“Gonna be hard to trace,” Phil warned. “Check’s made out to cash, meaning it can be deposited at any bank under any name, or taken to a dealer and cashed.”
“Big check for most dealers,” Bobby said.
“Guaranteed percentage,” Phil countered. “Especially if she called ahead, there are several check cashers who’d make that deal. Bank checks are good as gold and it’s a tight financial market out there.”
“What if Tessa needed the money?” D.D. asked abruptly. “What if she had a payment to make?”
Thirty pairs of eyes looked at her.
“It’s another possibility,” she thought out loud. “Brian Darby had a gambling problem. He couldn’t control it, and like a sinking ship was taking Tessa and Sophie down with him. Now, Tessa is a woman who’s already hit bottom once before. She knows better. In fact, she’s worked doubly hard to rebuild a life, particularly for her daughter’s sake. So what can she do? Divorce takes time, and God knows how much Brian will destroy their financials until it goes through.
“Maybe,” D.D. mused, “maybe there was an enforcer. Maybe, Tessa Leoni hired him—a hit man to finally put her husband out of his misery. Except the man in black took out his own insurance policy—Sophie Leoni—so Tessa couldn’t turn around and arrest him.”
Bobby looked at her. “I thought you were convinced she’d killed her own daughter?”
D.D.’s hand was resting unconsciously across her stomach. “What can I tell you? I’m getting soft in my old age. Besides, a jury will buy a wife killing her gambling-addicted husband. A mother killing her child, however, is a tougher sell.”
She glanced at Phil. “We need to follow the money. Nail down that Tessa definitely took it out. See what else you can find in the financials. And tomorrow, we’ll give Tessa’s lawyer a call, see if we can arrange for a fresh chat. Twenty-four hours in jail has a tendency to make most people more talkative.
“Any other news from the hotline?” she asked.
Nothing, her taskforce agreed.
“Final drive of the white Denali?” she tried hopefully.
“Based on fuel mileage, it remained within a hundred miles of Boston,” the lead detective reported.
“Excellent. So we’ve narrowed it to, what, a quarter of the state?”
“Pretty much.”
D.D. rolled her eyes, set down the marker. “Anything else we should know?”
“Gun,” spoke up a voice from the back of the room. Detective John Little.
“What about it?” D.D. asked. “Last I knew, the firearms discharge investigation team had turned it over for processing.”
“Not Tessa’s gun,” Little said. “Brian’s gun.”
“Brian had a gun?” D.D. asked in surprise.
“Took out a permit two weeks ago. Glock forty. I couldn’t find it on the evidence logs as seized from either the house or his car.”
The detective gazed at her expectantly. D.D. returned his stare.
“You’re telling me Brian Darby had a gun,” she said.
“Yes. Applied for the permit two weeks ago.”
“Maybe bulking up wasn’t getting the job done anymore,” Bobby murmured.
D.D. waved her hand at him. “Hello. Bigger picture here. Brian Darby had a Glock forty, and we have no idea where it is. Detective, that’s not a small thing.”
“Gun permit just went through,” Detective Little countered defensively. “We’re a little backed up these days. Haven’t you been reading the papers? Armageddon is coming and, apparently, half the city intends to be armed for it.”
“We need that gun,” D.D. said in a clipped voice. “For starters, what if that’s the weapon that killed Sophie Leoni?”
The room went silent.
“Yeah,” she said. “No more talk. No more theories. We have a dead husband of a state police officer, and a missing six-year-old. I want Sophie Leoni. I want Brian Darby’s gun. And if that evidence leads us where we think it’s probably going to lead us, then I want us to build a case so fucking airtight, Tessa Leoni goes away for the rest of her miserable life. Get out. Get it done.”
Eleven o’clock Monday night, the detectives scrambled.
26
Every woman has a moment in her life when she realizes she genuinely loves a guy, and he’s just not worth it. It took me nearly three years to reach that point with Brian. Maybe there were signs along the way. Maybe, in the beginning, I was just so happy to have a man love me and my daughter as much as Brian seemed to love me and Sophie, I ignored them. Yes, he could be moody. After the initial six-month honeymoon, the house became his anal-retentive domain, Sophie and I receiving daily lectures if we left a dish on the counter, a toothbrush out of its holder, a crayon on the table.
Brian liked precision, needed it.
“I’m an engineer,” he’d remind me. “Trust me, you don’t want a dam built by a sloppy engineer.”
Sophie and I did our best. Compromise, I told myself. The price of family; you gave up some of your individual preferences for the greater good. Plus, Brian would leave again and Sophie and I would spend a giddy eight weeks dumping our junk all over the place. Coats draped over the back of kitchen chairs. Art projects piled on the corner of the counter. Yes, we were regular Girls Gone Wild when Brian shipped out.
Then, one day I went to pay the plumber and discovered our life savings was gone.
It’s a tough moment when you have to confront the level of your own complacency. I knew Brian had been going to Foxwoods. More to the point, I knew the evenings he came home reeking of booze and cigarettes, but claimed he’d been hiking. He’d lied to me, on several occasions, and I’d let it go. To pry would involve being told an answer I didn’t want to hear. So I didn’t pry.
While my husband, apparently, gave in to his inner demons and gambled away our savings account.
Shane and I confronted him. He denied it. Not very plausibly. But at a certain point, there wasn’t much more I could do or say. The money magically returned, and again, I didn’t ask many questions, not wanting to know what I didn’t want to know.
I thought of my husband as two people after that. There was Good Brian, the man I fell in love with, who picked up Sophie after school and took her sledding until
they were both pink-cheeked from laughter. Good Brian fixed me pancakes and maple syrup when I got home from graveyard shift. He would rub my back, strained from the weight of carrying body armor. He would hold me while I slept.
Then there was Bad Brian. Bad Brian yelled at me when I forgot to wipe down the counter after doing the dishes. Bad Brian was curt and distant, not only turning the TV to whatever testosterone-bound show he could find, but turning up the volume if Sophie or I tried to protest.
Bad Brian smelled like cigarettes, booze, and sweat. He worked out compulsively, with the demons of a man with something to fear. Then he’d disappear for a couple of days at a time—time with the guys, Bad Brian would say, when we both knew he was going off alone, his friends having long since given up on him.
But that was Bad Brian for you. He could look his state police officer wife in the eye, and tell a lie.
It always made me wonder: Would he be a different kind of husband if I were a different kind of wife?
Bad Brian broke my heart. Then Good Brian would reappear long enough to patch it back together again. And around and around we would go, plummeting through the roller coaster ride of our lives.
Except all rides have to end.
Good Brian and Bad Brian’s ride ended at exactly the same moment, on our kitchen’s spotlessly clean floor.
Bad Brian can’t hurt me or Sophie anymore.
Good Brian is going to take me a while to let go.
Tuesday morning, seven a.m.
The female CO started head count and the unit officially stirred to life. My roommate, Erica, had already been awake for an hour, curled up in the fetal position, rocking back and forth, eyes pinned on something only she could see, while muttering beneath her breath.
I would guess she’d retired to her bunk shortly after midnight. No watch on my wrist, no clock in the cell, so I had to gauge the time in my head. It gave me something to do all night long—I think it’s … two a.m., three a.m., four twenty-one a.m.
I fell asleep once. I dreamt of Sophie. She and I were in a vast, churning ocean, paddling for all we were worth against steadily climbing waves.
“Stay with me,” I screamed at her. “Stay with me, I’ll keep you safe!”
But her head disappeared beneath the black water, and I dove and I dove and I dove, but I couldn’t find my daughter again.
I woke up, tasting salt on my lips. I didn’t sleep again.
The tower made noises in the night. Nameless women, goading nameless groaning men. The rattle of pipes. The hum of a huge facility, trying to settle its bones. It felt as if I were inside some giant beast, swallowed up whole. I kept touching the walls, as if the rough feel of cinder blocks would keep me grounded. Then I would get up and pee, as the cover of night was the closest to privacy I could get.
The female CO had reached our cell. She glanced at rocking Erica, then at me, and our eyes met, a flicker of recognition, before she turned away.
Kim Watters. Dated one of the guys in the barracks, had attended a couple of the group dinners. ’Course. CO at the Suffolk County Jail. Now I remembered.
She moved to the next cell. Erica rocked harder. I peered out the barred window and tried to convince myself that personally knowing my own prison guard didn’t make things worse.
Seven-thirty. Breakfast.
Erica was up. Still muttering, not looking at me. Agitated. Meth had fried her brain. She needed rehab, and mental health services more than a jail sentence. Then again, welcome to most of the prison population.
We got limp pancakes, applesauce, and milk. Erica put the applesauce on her pancakes, rolled it all together, and ate it in three giant mouthfuls. Four gulps took care of the milk. Then she eyed my tray.
I had no appetite. The pancakes tasted like wet tissue on my tongue. I stared at her and slowly ate them anyway.
Erica sat on the toilet. I turned around to give her privacy.
She laughed.
Later, I used my hooter bag to brush my teeth and apply deodorant. Then … Then I didn’t really know what to do. Welcome to my first full day in prison.
Rec time arrived. The CO opened our cell. Some women drifted out, some stayed inside. I couldn’t take it anymore. The ten foot ceilings and yawning windows gave the illusion of space, but a jail cell was a jail cell. I already felt overflouresced, pining for natural sunlight.
I paced over to the sitting area at one end of the commons, where six ladies had gathered to watch GMA. The show was too happy for me. Next, I tried the tables, four silver rounds where two women currently played hearts, while one more sat and cackled at something only she understood.
A shower went on. I didn’t look. I didn’t want to know.
Then I heard a funny sound, like a shivery gasp, someone trying to inhale and exhale at the same time.
I turned around. The CO, Kim Watters, looked like she was doing a funny dance. Her body was up in the air, her feet twitching as if reaching for the floor, except they couldn’t find it. A giant black female with long dark hair stood directly behind her, heavily muscled arm cocked around Kim’s windpipe, squeezing tight even as Kim’s fingers scraped frantically at the massive forearm.
I stepped forward and in the next instant, my roommate, Erica, screamed, “Get the fucking pig!” and half a dozen detainees rushed toward me.
I took the first blow in the stomach. I tightened my abs reflexively, rocked left and drove my fist into a soft, oomphing middle. Another careening blow. Ducking low, moving on instinct now, because that’s why recruits trained. Do the impossible over and over and it becomes the possible. Better yet, it becomes routine, meaning one day, when you least expect it, months and years of training can suddenly save your life.
Another hard crack to my shoulder. They were aiming for my face, my swollen eye and shattered cheek. I brought up both hands in the classic pugilist stance, blocking my head, while driving myself toward the closest attacker. I caught her around the waist and flung her back at the rushing stampede, toppling two in a tangle of limbs.
Cries. Pain, rage, theirs, mine, didn’t really matter. Moving, moving, moving, had to stay on my feet, confront the onslaught or be crushed by sheer numbers.
Sharp sting. Something cutting my forearm, while another fist connected with my shoulder. I sidestepped again, drove my elbow into the stomach of the attacker, then the side of my hand sharp into her throat. She went down and stayed there.
The remaining four finally backed up. I kept my gaze on them, trying to process many things at once. Other detainees, where? Back in their cells? Self-imposed confinement so they wouldn’t be busted later?
And Kim? Gasping scuffle behind me. Officer down, officer down, officer down.
Panic button. Had to be one somewhere—
Fresh slice to my arm. I slapped at it, kicking out and catching the woman in the knee.
Then I screamed. I screamed and screamed and screamed, days’ worth of rage and helplessness and frustration finally erupting from my throat, because Kim was dying and my daughter was probably already dead and my husband had died, right in front of my eyes, taking Good Brian with him, and the man in black had taken my daughter and left behind only the blue button eye from her favorite doll and I would get them. I would make them all pay.
Then I moved. I was probably still screaming. A lot. And I don’t think it was a sane sound because my attackers retreated until I was the one falling upon them, lips peeled back, hands fisted into hard balls.
I moved, I kicked, I jabbed, and I punched. I was twenty-three years old again. Behold the Giant Killer. Behold the Giant Killer really truly pissed off.
And my face dripped with sweat and my hands dripped with blood and the first two females were down and the third was running now, ironically toward the safety of her cell, but the fourth had a shank and she thought that would keep her safe. She’d probably fought off aggressive johns and pissed-off pimps. I was just a prissy white girl and no match for a genuine graduate of the school of hard knocks.
Rattling gasp from the CO’s desk. The sound of a woman dying.
“Do it!” I snarled at her. “Come on, bitch. Show me what you got.”
She charged. Stupid shit. I moved left, and straight-armed her in the throat. She dropped the shank and clutched at her crushed windpipe. I picked up the shank, and jumped over her body for central command.
Kim’s toes weren’t dancing anymore. She remained suspended in the air, black arm still twisted around her throat as her eyes glazed over.
I stepped around her.
I looked up at the large black female who turned out not to be a female at all, but a long-haired male who’d somehow infiltrated the unit.
He appeared startled to see me.
So I smiled at him. Then drove the shank through his ribs.
Kim’s body dropped to the floor. The inmate staggered back, grabbing his side. I advanced upon him. He scrambled, twisting around, trying to run for the unit door. I kicked him in the back of his right knee. He stumbled. I kicked him in the back of the left knee. He went down, then rolled over, hands coming up defensively.
I stood over him, holding the bloody shank. I must have looked fearsome, with my dripping hands, battered face, and one good eye, because large black male peed his orange prison jumpsuit.
I raised the shank.
“No,” he whispered hoarsely.
I brought it down into the meat of his thigh. He screamed. I twisted.
Then I sang for the entire unit to hear: “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth, two front teeth.…”
The inmate cried, as I leaned over, brushed back the long dark locks of his hair, and whispered like a lover in his ear: “Tell the man in black I’m coming for him. Tell him he’s next.”
I twisted the shank again.
Then I stood up, wiped the shank on my pant leg, and hit the panic button.
Do you mourn when your world has ended? When you have arrived at a destination from where there is no going back?
The SERT team descended as a stampede. The entire facility went to lockdown. I was shackled where I stood, legs swaying, arms lacerated, fresh bruises blooming down my sides and across my back.