by JoAnn Chaney
“The same thing every one of these tests tells me. He was nervous in there. Heart rate was up, respiration too. Blood pressure was fairly high, but he’s the right age for hypertension—”
“Am I crazy or are you a doctor conducting a physical exam in there, Judy?” Loren demanded. “Did you grab the guy by the balls, ask him to turn his head and cough? Maybe you slipped a finger up his ass while we weren’t watching to check his prostate, too? Christ on a cross, lady. I don’t need to know all that other garbage. I just want to know if he was lying or not.”
“Are you new here, Loren?” Judy asked waspishly. “You know how this works. Polygraph testing is an imperfect science. All I can tell you is when I see spikes in his heart rate or an elevated level of perspiration. Those jumps might mean he’s lying, or they might mean nothing at all.”
“Were there certain questions that caused a spike?” Spengler asked, holding up a hand and speaking before Loren could begin another fresh rant.
“There were definitely moments,” Judy said. She turned her laptop so Spengler could see the screen. “See how the measurements stay mostly level until here? Then everything jumps up. Then it all lowers again, and there’s a second spike.”
“What did you ask to cause that first one?” Spengler said.
“That was when we were discussing the man who killed his first wife. Jesse O’Neil? It’s when I asked Mr. Evans if he thought O’Neil was the one behind her murder. He said he didn’t know, but based on his body’s reactions I’d say that was a lie.”
Spengler put her hand on the back of Judy’s chair and leaned closer to the laptop’s screen.
“What about this second spike?”
“That was when I asked if he’d ever killed anyone,” Judy said. “He said no, but again, looking at these results I’d say that was a lie.”
“But when you asked if he’d pushed Marie off the cliff—” Spengler began.
“His vitals all stayed flat. No reaction. He’s telling the truth. He didn’t push his wife off the cliff. But he seems to be lying about whether he’s killed anyone before.”
“You called the polygraph an imperfect science,” Spengler said. “How accurate have you found it to be?”
Judy hesitated. Shrugged.
“It’s controversial,” she said.
“How long have you been administering polygraphs?” Spengler asked. Behind her, Loren was silent, but she could feel him listening.
“Almost thirty years.”
“And in those thirty years, how accurate have you found it to be?”
The old woman started to shrug again, but stopped when Spengler gently touched her shoulder.
“Off the record,” Spengler said. “I’m just looking for your personal opinion. No harm, no foul.”
Judy sighed and pinched her leg, yanked on the skin. Amusedly, Spengler realized it wasn’t skin but panty hose, the same kind her mother always wore under her waitress uniform. Sheer, with the seam running across the toes and a control top.
“Oh, a polygraph is accurate enough,” Judy said. “I’ve been running these tests a long time, I’ve done hundreds of them. Lots of people are good liars on a day-to-day basis, but when I’m measuring a person’s physiological response to questions, it tells a completely different story. Most people couldn’t do it. When you lie, your body gives you away. It wants to tell the truth, even if your mouth doesn’t.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Loren had to take a minute to catch his breath after the polygraph was over, so he went to his office and shut the door. When you lie, your body gives you away. That’s what Judy said. Your body wants to tell the truth, even if your mouth doesn’t. Loren already knew that, you can’t be a detective without learning how to pick up on those things—but for the first time, he wondered what he’d been giving away without even realizing it.
He tented his hands over his nose and sucked down a deep breath. It could make a man crazy, trying to remember everything he’d said and done, and then second-guess every look and gesture he’d gotten. He took another breath. His palms smelled sour and tangy. Maybe that was the smell of sweat, or maybe he was already nuts and that was what the scent was. Everything has a smell, he knew that from experience. Arousal and fear, even sadness. And crazy had a particular smell, too.
The last time he’d caught a whiff of that was when Paul Hoskins went nuts, after he’d attacked a woman who’d murdered her own daughter. That freak-out had gotten Hoskins tossed out of Homicide, almost cost him everything. Loren had gone to the hospital to check on his partner after the ambulance had hauled him away, and he’d been surprised when they told him Paulie was in the psych ward. Seventh floor, eighth room on the left.
“She had a roast in the oven, did you smell it?” Paulie asked after Loren had come in and sat down. He was lying back in the hospital bed, blankets pulled up to his chest so you couldn’t really tell that he was strapped down unless you really looked. “And there was a pot on the stove. Mashed potatoes, I think.”
“Yeah, I saw,” Loren had said. He remembered being uncomfortable, and shifting back and forth in that hard chair. Oh, he’d visited plenty of crazies over the course of his career, but he’d never expected to be doing it with Paulie Hoskins, who’d always seemed like one of the most stable guys out there.
“And there were those dinner rolls. Fresh, it smelled like. Just baked.”
“Yeah.”
“She was busy cooking,” Hoskins had said, turning his head on the pillow. There was a long scratch running down the side of his face, from the corner of his eye all the way to his jaw. Not deep enough to need stitches, but it’d probably scar. “Cooking while her daughter was dead in the closet.”
A doctor had walked by then, paused and peered in through the door’s little window, then moved on. Hoskins had an IV dripping into his arm, a constant stream of medicine to keep him calm. He’d be asleep soon, a nurse had told Loren. He wouldn’t be able to keep his eyes open after too long, not with the dose they’d been pumping into him.
They’d been called out to a crime scene, a nice house down on the south end of town, not too far from the high school where that shooting had gone down over a decade before, and there was a little girl in the closet, curled up beside her Barbie Dream House, she could’ve been napping but she wasn’t, the examiner said death had come from blunt force trauma, specifically to the skull. The girl’s mother had killed her, she immediately confessed and then went back to the kitchen to check on the meal she was putting together, to baste the roast and make sure the silver was polished, and Loren had seen the change come across Paulie’s face. The anger, and the disgust. A person could only witness so many horrible things before they reached their breaking point, and this suburban homemaker with her perfectly coiffed hair and pressed slacks had pushed Hoskins there. Loren had been walking that same road himself for a long time and he’d managed to keep himself under control, but Hoskins had ended up at the endgame so fast it made Loren’s head spin.
Warp factor nine, Mr. Sulu. Engage.
“There were bruises all up and down her back, from being kicked. Did you see that?” Paulie whispered from his bed. “That woman kicked her. Her own mother. That woman probably heard the bones breaking. Can you imagine? Hitting a kid so hard you’d hear her bones snapping?”
Paulie and his questions. Loren didn’t think he expected any answers, but just wanted to get the words out there. Wanted to hear his own voice, because it might be the only thing that was real to him now. Hoskins had spent the few years before this stint in the hospital doing a slow crumble, ever since they’d arrested Jacky Seever back in 2008. Hoskins had spent a lot of time alone with Seever in the interview room, trying to get every bit of information about the murders, it was the only way Seever would agree to talk. Only to Hoskins. But spending all those hours and days and weeks alone with a guy who’d killed thirty-some people and buried them under his house had a price, it’d filled Hoskins’s head with poison he’d never
be able to be free from. It’d taken time to work through his system, four years, but then it’d come to a head, like a zit, a great big one on your forehead, dead center, the kind that throbs painfully with its own life, its own heartbeat, until it erupts and spews its pus and blood.
Aftershocks, that’s what they call it. Like an earthquake, but the little ones that come later, when you think it’s all over, the main event has been tied up neatly and tucked away, to be forgotten. Loren could understand, he’d been through the aftershocks himself—hell, he thought he was still going through them, and he knew that sometimes you just have to wait for the explosion, stand there and chill, hold onto your tits, the water’s getting choppy.
“How bad was it?” Paulie had asked. His hands were squirming on top of the blankets, full of their own life, even though the rest of his body was still. The nurse hadn’t yet bandaged his bleeding knuckles.
“What?”
Paulie sighed, and the blankets rose and fell like an ocean wave.
“How bad did I hurt her?”
That woman had screamed when Hoskins had grabbed a handful of her hair, more out of surprise than pain. At least at first. Loren had turned away, he’d let it happen, because a part of him felt that this woman needed to be punished for what she’d done—oh, she’d go to prison, but it’d probably be one of those glorified correctional facilities for overprivileged women where she’d serve ten to twenty-five years playing tennis and gardening, and she’d never end up getting what she really deserved. She’d tortured her daughter, she’d starved her and beat her and murdered her, and she deserved to feel a bit of that, to know what it was like. If a kid is a biter you bite him back, make him feel how much it hurts, that’s how they learn. That was part of why Loren had let Hoskins do it, but some of it was because it was bound to happen sometime, Hoskins had been riding the train toward Crazytown for years now, it was either now or later, so why not now?
“It was pretty bad,” Loren said. Worse than pretty bad. Hoskins had ripped a big chunk of the woman’s hair right off her scalp, gave her a black eye. Cracked one of her teeth and snapped a few ribs. Loren had finally stepped in and broken it up. The woman was unconscious by then, and Hoskins was weeping. “It’s turning into a real clusterfuck. I guarantee that woman’s got money and a good lawyer, and she’s gonna scream police brutality.”
Hoskins shrugged, flapped his hand. I don’t give a shit.
“She cooked dinner, Loren. Murdered her own kid and then cooked dinner.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Hoskins sighed, turned his head on the pillow. It made a rough, scratchy sound. Pillowcases at hospitals were always that way, like they wanted you to be as uncomfortable as possible so you’d go home sooner. The right side of his face was slack, and his eye on that side kept slipping shut.
They sat in silence for a few minutes. A thoughtful silence, you might call it. Loren had been able to hear the shuffling noises of people walking by in the hallway, and the muffled sound of laughter farther on. A machine beeped once, and then again.
“I fucking hate people,” Hoskins said, his voice thick and slurred, startling Loren out of his daze. He’d been sure Paulie was out for the count. “I don’t understand why they have to be so goddamn cruel.”
And then Hoskins really had fallen asleep, his head drooping down toward his shoulder and his mouth slack. A single tear had oozed out from under one closed eyelid and got caught in his lashes. Loren hadn’t wiped that tear away, but he sometimes wished to sweet Jesus that he had done Paulie that single kindness, to make up for the things he’d done before, to other partners.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Spengler left the station and drove out to the Holiday Inn near downtown. The case file Ortiz had given her was on the passenger seat, unopened. She’d been afraid to see what she’d find inside, so she’d left it there and tried to stay focused on work, although her gaze kept wandering back to it as she drove. But even when she couldn’t see the damn thing it was on her mind.
The Evans girls were waiting for her in one of the hotel’s conference rooms, sitting so they were both looking out the windows. The view wasn’t great. A hedge gone partly brittle and brown, and then the parking lot. The sisters were sedate as they answered Spengler’s questions, although Spengler suspected the calm came out of a prescription bottle of Xanax.
The oldest, Hannah, was twenty-two years old. Maddie was nineteen. Both girls wore jeans and sweaters. Typical college student attire. They both looked like Marie—brunettes with hair that swept their shoulders and pert noses, although Hannah could’ve passed for a younger Marie, based on the pictures Spengler had seen. But Hannah was extremely thin, nearly painfully so. It didn’t suit her well. The bones in her wrists were sharp and pointed, and the razor edge of her collarbone was obvious through the fabric of her top. She was either suffering from a health problem or an eating disorder.
“Do you think Dad killed her?” Hannah asked dully. “Is that why you’re here?”
Spengler had a good poker face, but she wasn’t sure how well it was holding up.
“I just need to ask a few questions,” she said. “That’s all.”
“If I was in your shoes and there was a couple who’d gone hiking alone and the wife fell off a cliff, I’d assume he killed her.”
“Hannah, why don’t you shut up?” Maddie said sharply.
“I’m just saying,” Hannah said. Her eyes moved slowly between her sister and Spengler. Definitely drugged. Stoned out of her damn mind. “Mom and Dad have been fighting so much lately it makes me wonder.”
Spengler made a note on her paper. “What’ve they been arguing about?”
“I don’t know,” Hannah said, shrugging. “Neither one of us were around much this summer.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, why did you decide to stay here instead of with your father?” There was a pitcher of ice water in the center of the table. Spengler poured herself a glass, then motioned at the sisters. Any for you? They both shook their heads.
“Dad’s pretty upset right now, and he doesn’t like to be seen that way. He told us it would be best if we didn’t stay at home.”
“Your father told me he wasn’t sure why the two of you decided to stay here,” Spengler said, flipping back through her notes. “Actually, he made it sound like neither one of you wanted to stay with him.”
Maddie’s eyes dropped down to the table. Hannah shrugged.
“I really don’t remember what happened,” Hannah said. She started to say something else, then fell silent.
Spengler watched the girls for a moment, hoping one of them might keep talking, but neither did.
“You said he doesn’t like to be seen that way,” Spengler said. “What exactly does that mean? He doesn’t like to be seen what way?”
“He’s devastated that Mom’s gone,” Maddie said. “They’ve been together for so long I don’t think he knows how to live without her.”
“A few years ago they were fighting all the time, and I asked Mom if they were getting a divorce,” Hannah said. She had three or four bangle bracelets around her wrist, and she kept pushing them up her arm, then down again. “She just laughed, said it wasn’t worth the effort. I asked her what that meant, and she told me her and Dad had separated before, but they couldn’t stay away from each other. They were like magnets, she said. She was always saying things like that.”
“Do you remember when Scottie Union dumped me on Valentine’s Day?” Maddie asked her sister. “Mom told me men are like drugs. A great high, fun to use for short periods of time, but after a while they’d probably kill you. I don’t know how she thought that was supposed to make me feel better, or why she thought it was appropriate to let me know about her experience with drugs.”
Both the girls laughed a little, then sighed.
“What would your parents argue about?” Spengler asked.
“I don’t know,” Hannah said. “They’d usually shut themselves in their bedroom while
they fought, so we couldn’t hear much. Sometimes I’d go over to a friend’s place just to get out of there.”
“I’d put in my earbuds and listen to music,” Maddie said. “I just didn’t want to hear it.”
“Did your parents have any problems that you’re aware of? Marital? Financial?” Spengler asked both girls the questions, but looked at Hannah. It seemed as though the meds had loosened her tongue, or she was just the loose-lipped sister.
“Well, there was that time Dad kept hiding his phone and Mom was convinced he was cheating. She swore she could smell perfume on him when he came home from work, but I never smelled it.”
“Hannah, shut up.”
“What? Mom’s dead, and this cop is just trying to help. Aren’t you a little curious about what happened? But even if you’re not, why don’t you just shut up and let me talk?”
Maddie sat back, mollified by her sister’s burst of sudden fury.
“Mom made me sniff a pile of his dirty clothes one time,” Hannah said. “Gross, you know. But I didn’t smell anything except sweat. She was so pissed when I told her that.”
“Do you think your father has had an affair?”
“God, no,” Maddie said quickly. “If anything, Dad was too scared to do anything like that. Mom would’ve destroyed his life and taken everything. And I wouldn’t have blamed her one bit.”
“Did they ever argue about money?”
“No,” Hannah said, smiling a little. “That’s one thing I never heard them fight about. Dad’s really good at making money, that’s what Mom would say. It was his special talent. I don’t know if she meant that as a compliment, though.”
“Do you either of you know if your mother had any interests outside of the house?” Spengler asked. “Clubs or activities, friends she might’ve confided in?”
“She was part of a running club,” Hannah said after a moment of thought. “And a book club.”
“She was president of the PTA where we went to high school,” Maddie said. “She always spent a lot of time outside. Hiking and camping. She liked to take classes. Art and pottery and yoga.”