However, none of these tasks had managed to take her attention from the snarl that her life had become. Her administrative leave had boiled down to one word: “limbo.” She was stuck in it as surely as if tar had grabbed her feet. And a corollary of limbo was irresolution. She didn’t know if she’d be sent back to work, fired, or sentenced to prison.
To her, all three possibilities led to a dead end. She wasn’t sure she wanted to return to a job that might require her to shoot someone again or risk her life for such ungrateful citizens as the Islanders for Collaborative Policing. If fired, she could never look for work on another force because wrongdoing would hang over her head. And prison was too terrible to consider. Having no trust in her future, Andie could only wait till Tom Wolski’s findings determined which dead-end fork she’d take in her road.
Determined not to brood, she decided to clean her house. Who cared if she’d cleaned it two days before? If my life is a shambles, at least my house can be tidy, she thought.
As she plugged in the vacuum cleaner, Justice, who’d been lounging with Bandit in front of the potbellied stove, rose to his feet. The vacuum cleaner, his archfoe, was on par with the Cone of Doom. The high-pitched whine assaulted his sensitive ears, to say nothing of the beater bar ruthlessly nipping his paws when Andie got to cleaning full-force. Justice’s look at the vacuum let her know emphatically, If I had my way, I’d banish that machine from the house.
A keen reader of Andie’s housecleaning signals, he also knew that bleach would soon make an appearance—and he was not fond of the odor. Nor did he approve of her callous washing of his bed, which took him weeks of sprawling on to return to his olfactory satisfaction. To avoid her cleaning frenzy, he hobbled up the stairs to the bathroom and squeezed between the vanity and shower, his favorite place to ride out thunderstorms.
As Andie vacuumed the living-room rug, she got on her hands and knees to reach under the sofa, wingback chairs, and oak end tables. Then she went after dust around her gratitude basket and in the bookcase and shutters.While straightening a pile of Bake Away magazines on her coffee table, she thought of her ex-husband, Rich. He would approve of her efforts. He lived by the rule “everything orderly and on schedule,” which had once seemed like balm of stability after the instability of her childhood.
Rich was an accountant—he liked keeping track down to pennies—though his innate precision would also have made him an excellent Amtrak engineer or computer-chip assembler. By eight every Saturday morning, Andie woke to the scratch-scratch-scratch of his brush cleaning the toilet bowl. By two every Saturday afternoon, he pursued his favorite hobby: picking up litter on the section of Highway 21 that he’d “adopted” in a Nisqually County cleanup program.
For Andie’s birthday, Rich had given her a heart-shaped crystal vase, which her feather duster now accidentally hit, almost toppling it over. It was supposed to hold roses he would bring home to her on special occasions—except he discovered he didn’t like petals falling on the table, or cloudy water that had to be changed.
At the beginning of their marriage, Rich had danced Andie around the living room and sung “My Wild Irish Rose,” his name of endearment for her. It had all been a pleasure until a year or so later—Andie couldn’t put her finger on the exact timing—when they seemed to dwell less on an Irish rose’s blossoms and more on its thorns.
Not major thorns. Just thorns of this and that. “The porch needs sweeping,” he’d complain, to which she’d respond, “You could do it. You live in this house too.” Or she’d leave for the grocery store, and he’d want to know where else she might stop and at exactly what time he should expect her back. Sometimes she felt like she was heeling on his leash more than living as his wife. A vague mutual peevishness became their norm, but they glossed over it and kept going.
Until a night three years ago when Andie learned that sometimes a confluence of minor irritations could create a Noah’s-ark flood.
She was supposed to have gotten home from work at six, in time for dinner with Rich. At six thirty, aware of his need for routine, she texted him: “Car rolled over on Highway 113. Home within an hour.” How was she to know that she’d get an emergency domestic violence call? And that she would pull up to a house in flames and she and Doug Baker would have to chase the arsonist perp through the woods? While Baker took him to jail, Andie rode to the hospital in an ambulance with the perp’s pregnant wife. Finally, pale and exhausted, fir cones tangled in her hair, Andie walked through her front door at 11:10.
“Where have you been?” Icicles hung from Rich’s greeting. He did not get up from the sofa.
Andie rallied from fatigue enough to describe her evening. “It was a high-wire act. I never had a chance to send another text.”
“I made you dinner. I finally ate at nine,” he said. “Now I know you can be anything from ten minutes to”—he checked his watch—“five hours and twelve minutes late.”
“I’m sorry,” Andie said to bring the conflict to an end.
Rich didn’t take the bait. “You’re always sorry. Tonight you set a record.”
“Before we married, you knew my hours.”
“I didn’t know how unpredictable they’d be,” Rich said. “As soon as I get used to your shift, it changes. I can’t make plans. When I want to go out, you want to sleep. While you’re off saving the world, I’m the lout who has to hold down the fort.”
“Oh, Rich.” Andie would not use her last drop of energy to stand there and be railed against. She took off her utility belt and its twenty-seven pounds of equipment and sank into a wingback chair across from him. She thought, No one but another cop could understand the pressures of my work. “You knew my job was stressful before we married.”
“I wouldn’t have gone through with it if I’d understood how bad it would be.”
A new low. The sharpest thorn ever.
After a fourteen-hour day—and no lunch—Andie stormed into the kitchen and left him to sulk. Her stomach’s growls now close to roars, she slammed the makings for a turkey sandwich onto the counter and slapped mayonnaise on wheat bread. As she was slicing a tomato, someone pounded on the front door and startled her. Rich held firm on the sofa to force her to answer.
Their neighbor Kate Patterson was wearing jeans tight enough to cut off circulation. Her pink angora sweater plunged dangerously into cleavage territory. “Sorry it’s so late. I saw your lights on.” Clearly having run over, she was panting. “I think I need help.”
You think? “What’s wrong?”
“A naked man was walking around my backyard just now.”
“Do you know him?”
“Not by name. I may have . . . er . . . seen him at the Tipsy Cow.”
“How does he know where you live?”
“Well . . . I’m not sure.” Kate studied her suede boots’ pointed toes. “I wouldn’t have minded him out there if he hadn’t rattled my back-door knob. He was trying to get in.”
“Is he still there?”
“He disappeared. That’s when I ran down here.” Shivering, Kate hugged herself to stave off cold. “Please, can you come and look around? For all I know, he’s hiding in my garage.”
Every muscle in Andie’s body ached, but as she’d told the high-school tennis player that night on patrol, nothing bothered her more than seeing someone frightened and not being able to help. As a cop, Andie was public property, to whom, 24-7, people felt they had a right. No matter how tired she was, duty called. She picked up her utility belt with its twenty-seven miserable pounds and told Rich, “Back in a little while.”
Rich didn’t bother to look up.
Andie searched Kate’s yard and garage and found no naked man. When she dragged home, Rich was gone. He had not returned when she left for work the next morning. That evening she found an envelope, propped against the empty heart-shaped vase on the kitchen counter. In tiny but perfect block letters on his most formal business stationery, Rich had printed what looked like a PowerPoint presentation, includi
ng meticulous indentations and bullets.
With surgical precision, he outlined his grievances against Andie, most of which rehashed the night before. He saved his one new point for last: “I no longer want to be married to a cop.” That was it. Finito.
Since by some estimates eighty percent of cops divorce, Rich’s departure should not have bowled over Andie. Still, years after reading that letter, shock and hurt rippled through her all over again. She set down her feather duster, fell back into the sofa, and rested her palms against her eyes.
Maybe sometimes you have so much on your mind that cleaning your house can’t distract you, she thought. Her worries, disappointments, and hurts added up, and their sum was steamrolling her.
CHAPTER 22
TOM
Alan Pederson’s office was palatial compared to Tom’s measly cubicle. And Pederson had windows. He could look out at the clouds that Lisa was always talking about—stratocumulus, cirrus, nimbostratus—and all day long mallards and Canada geese cruised around on a pond that glittered right under his nose. Tom, in contrast, stared at fuzzy gray walls, and sometimes in his small, dark space he felt like a besieged mole. If he made sergeant, he’d climb a ladder rung to a bigger office with a window or two. That prospect was a carrot that kept him galloping toward solving Brady’s case.
Tom handed his boss a folder of interview notes and recent reports, including the coroner’s. “No news yet on ballistics for the knife, but I’ll be getting it this afternoon.”
Pederson leaned back in his swivel chair and laced his hands behind his head. Perspiration rings darkened his khaki shirt’s armpits, surprising on a cool November day. “So what have you learned?”
“There’s evidence proving Brady shot the kid. If the knife’s ballistics check out, we’ll know he stabbed the K-9 and probably went after her. We haven’t unearthed any sign of trouble for him, unless you can count having pieces of work for parents. His room was compulsively neat, but that didn’t tell us much.”
“Yeah, no crime in that,” Pederson said.
“Brady arrested his father for DUI four years ago, but they both deny any hard feelings. She has a temper. I’m not sure yet how that played out. She claims she barely knew the kid.”
“You think that’s true?” Pederson sat up straight again.
“His parents are convinced more was going on, but we’ve found no evidence of it. And nothing else to suggest any other reason for what happened.”
“You need to dig it up if you want to finish the case right. It doesn’t sound like you’ve gotten very deep,” Pederson said.
“We’re digging as deep as we can.”
“Dig harder. And faster. Funding for this investigation can’t go on forever. It’s the end of the year. The budget is running on fumes.”
“Yes, sir. I understand.” A flock of Canada geese flew over the pond in a honking V.
“Wolski, I gave you this case because I thought you could handle it . . .” Pederson said.
Tom braced himself for a “but” that he wasn’t handling it as well as Pederson hoped.When no “but” followed, Tom breathed a little easier. “I appreciate the opportunity.”
“That’s good, but we need to wrap up this case. Soon.”
“Yes, sir.” When Tom left the office, his armpits were as damp as Pederson’s.
* * *
On Tom’s third visit to the Vanderwaals, he held out the knife found at the scene—an eight-inch kitchen carving knife with steel rivets, a wooden handle, and a steel blade that reflected the ceiling fixture’s light. The blade had an edge sharp enough to shave with and a point fine enough to pin a dust mote to the floor. Brandish it in front of anyone and that person would know fear.
Just back from the lab, the knife was secured in a clear plastic bag. Tom had intended for Jane to examine it, but she recoiled at the sight of it and pressed her back into the sofa’s pillow.
“Mr. Vanderwaal? Do you recognize this knife?” Tom handed it to him across the coffee table.
Arching an eyebrow with obvious distaste, Franz pinched a corner of the bag and held it at a distance like he was holding the tail of a dead mouse. He set it on the coffee table. “Never saw it before.”
“Mrs. Vanderwaal? Is it from your kitchen?”
Jane shuddered. “That knife isn’t ours.”
“Why are you subjecting us to this?” Franz demanded.
“Because we just got a forensic report. Christopher’s fingerprints and touch DNA were on that knife, and it’s the same one that wounded the K-9. Since we know Cristopher had it in his hand, we can conclude he stabbed the dog. It looks like that part of Officer Brady’s story checks out.”
“Didn’t you hear us? It’s not our knife. Don’t you understand plain English?” Franz insisted.
Because non-ownership trumps forensic results? “Christopher must have bought it. We’ll talk to people at DIY Hardware and Village Vittles Kitchen Store.”
“That knife belongs to Officer Brady. I told you she planted it,” Franz said. “She squeezed Christopher’s hand around it for the DNA and prints.”
“Her own would be on it if she’d done that,” Tom said.
“Not if she was wearing rubber gloves.” Franz puffed out his chest as if again he’d outfoxed the pros.
“We’ll see what else comes up. The investigation isn’t over yet.” Tom slipped the knife into its padded envelope as a courtesy to Jane, whose eyes were darting all over the room to avoid a direct look.
Franz must have felt he was on a roll to victory over Tom. He demanded, “What about that vicious dog? Have you put him down?”
“He’s an outstanding K-9, Mr. Vanderwaal. An asset to the force.” Before Franz could argue, Tom leaned forward, rested his forearms on his thighs, and said, “This afternoon I had a long talk with Christopher’s homeroom teacher, Mrs. Rachlin. Have either of you met her at a back-to-school night?”
Jane shook her head no.
“Mrs. Rachlin said Christopher was very introverted. No friends that she knew of. Does that sound right?” Tom asked her.
“We told you we didn’t know his friends.” Franz pushed his way back to center stage. “I’m sure he had some.”
“Mrs. Rachlin thought he might have been troubled.”
“Not that we ever saw,” Franz insisted. “We told you that too. How many times do you plan on asking us the same questions?”
“As many times as it takes to get answers.” You loser. “And I’ll ask you again, can you explain why Christopher went to Officer Brady’s yard and stabbed her dog?”
“We said we don’t think he did!” Franz bolted off the sofa as if he’d had enough of Tom; he leaned against the mantel. “Just so you know, Jane and I still think more was going on. That cop seduced Christopher—have you looked into that, yet? It’s the only explanation that makes sense to us, isn’t it, Jane?”
When she nodded, a pin from her French twist fell onto her shoulder.
“Look at high-school teachers and their students today. They hook up all the time. You see it in the paper,” Franz said. “Why not Officer Brady?”
“I guess anything’s possible,” Tom said.
“You’re damned right. She doesn’t have a husband, so she was preying on Jane’s son.”
In the silence that followed, Tom noticed the refrigerator hum. An ice cube fell into the receiving drawer. A branch scraped against a gutter. He took a breath.
He told Franz, “We’re looking into all that.” And he would. But as he spoke, he was also thinking that Brady wasn’t the type to get involved in something so stupid. Or was she? Still, Tom’s intuition was starting to suggest that Brady might be telling the truth.
CHAPTER 23
ANDREA
Andie worked a spatula under a Cherry-Top cookie and set it on her wire rack to cool. The kitchen smelled of cinnamon and nutmeg, and it was warm from the oven’s 375 degrees. Justice, whose thick winter coat could stave off Arctic cold, sprawled on his golden throne as
far from the oven as he could get.
All afternoon he’d napped on his back with his legs flopped out; if he’d been a person, Andie would have arrested him for flashing. And he’d sat at the back door and looked through the glass panes into the yard, guarding the house against his enemies, raccoons and squirrels. Now he was lying on his stomach in his sphinx position, staring at her. His intense concentration let her know that he was contemplating something, and Andie guessed it was his routine. In the last few weeks, it had drastically changed, as had hers. His world had shrunk to the confines of the house and yard, and he was as bored as she was.
A dog can only loll around so long, and I am not a wastrel. I am a disciplined German shepherd, and I have a job to do, his bristled eyebrows informed Andie. Let’s go nail the Beast. You know he’s out there dealing drugs. Why are we hanging around here like flakes?
Andie set another Cherry-Top cookie onto the rack. “We’ll go out in a few minutes.” She would take him to the yard for a bathroom break.
He groaned. I am not a fluffy lapdog. I am opposed to rhinestone collars and high-pitched yips. I work! He rolled over to his side and stared at the wall.
“Here, Justice. How about a little Animal Planet?” Andie wiped her hands on her red-and-white-checked apron and pressed the power button on her TV’s remote control. Who should appear on the screen but Sid King? Andie grimaced. When would she learn not to turn on the TV when his program was on? Again, she could not help herself; she had to watch.
Sid King was interviewing a woman who looked vaguely familiar. She wore an eggplant fleece jacket whose color overpowered her pale skin, and she had plucked her eyebrows to near nonexistence. Above her narrow upper lip were the wrinkles of a perpetual lip purser.
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