Helpless

Chapter 4

Tom sat in the center of a neatly ordered row of black plastic chairs tucked inside the lobby of Shilo’s single-story police station. He gazed absently through the Plexiglas window on the opposite wall at the dispatcher fielding a call. His body and mind both felt numb. He was here only to get this meeting over with, so that he could return his full attention to where it belonged—to Jill and her needs. The road she had to travel was going to be a difficult one, but Tom intended to be by her side every step of the way.

A loud buzzer sounded to Tom’s right, drawing his attention. He saw Brendan Murphy, dressed in a jacket and tie, emerge from behind a large metal door.

“Thanks for coming down,” Murphy said, his tone congenial enough. “Our interview room is this way.”

Tom followed Murphy down a well-lit corridor with blue painted walls. Murphy passed one door marked BOOKING ROOM, and came to a stop in front of another closed door, this one labeled MEETING ROOM in stenciled black lettering. Murphy opened that door and went in.

Inside, Tom found a heavily scuffed table with a tape recorder and microphone. The table basically divided the closet-sized room in half. The concrete walls were bare, except for one that had a two-way glass window about the size of a fifty-gallon fish tank.

Tom took a seat on the red plastic chair facing the door. He was already thinking about leaving. Murphy sat opposite Tom and rested his interlocked fingers on the table. Tom disliked the coldness in Murphy’s eyes.

“So,” Murphy said as he pressed RECORD on the tape machine, “I’m sure you’ve heard of your Miranda rights.”

“I have,” said Tom.

“Well, I’m going to read those to you now,” Murphy said. “It’s the law, and this way we can keep the interview on file.”

Tom looked stunned, but he had known this was coming. “You make it sound like you’re arresting me.”

Murphy laughed. “No. Just need to get the formality out of the way. But if you do become a suspect at a point in time, I can use this as evidence.”

“That’s very reassuring,” Tom said.

“So, you know you have the right to remain silent and that anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present now and during any future questioning.”

Tom made sure Murphy could see his displeasure. “Sure. I give up the right.”

“Good. Good. Thanks. Sorry about that. I know it’s awkward.”

“Yeah. It sort of is.”

“So, tell me, how’s Jill?”

The mere mention of Jill made Tom ache. He had pleaded with her to come and stay with him in Westbrook, but Jill insisted that wouldn’t be an option.

“I need to be with people who really know me and understand me,” she had said to him through her tears.

“She’s doing as well as can be expected,” Tom said to Murphy. “Right now she’s staying with Cathleen Wells and Lindsey. They’ve put her up in the guest room. A doctor from the clinic came by to check on her, and he gave Jill a sedative to help her sleep. She was sleeping when I left there to come here.”

“Were you able to make it over to the medical examiner’s office to make the official identification?” Murphy asked.

“Yeah. That’s all taken care of,” Tom said, though his voice didn’t reveal how much the experience had shaken him. He’d seen his fair share of dead bodies as a SEAL, but nothing could have prepared him for seeing the mother of his daughter lying lifeless on a steel table. His high school sweetheart dead, a thin green sheet hiding her nakedness.

Tom had seen the two wounds to her head: the one to her right temple, where police believed she had hit a rock, and the other, more suspicious one on the left side, where something else had struck her. Kelly’s once lustrous blond hair was matted down and dark. Her lips were a disturbing shade of blue. The skin didn’t look like it fit her bones anymore.

Death never looked pretty.

Murphy opened the file in front of him. “Well then,” he began, “why don’t we start with the last time you saw Kelly?”

Tom didn’t have to think hard to answer that one. He almost never saw Kelly. She never came to any of Jill’s practices or games and made it quite clear to his daughter that she stayed away intentionally to avoid seeing Tom.

“Two weeks ago,” Tom said. “At Johnny Rockets.”

“The place on one-forty?”

“Yeah. That’s the place.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Having my twice-a-month dinner with Jill. Kelly would drive her there, drop her off, and then come back forty minutes later to pick her up.”

“Does Jill ever go to your place in Westbrook?” Murphy didn’t bother referring to any notes. Troubling, thought Tom, that he was so well versed about his life.

“She hasn’t been over to my house in about a year. There was some tension around that.”

“Tension?”

“Jill didn’t want to spend every other weekend with me, which was my court-ordered visitation right.”

“You two don’t get along?”

“I thought this was about Kelly,” said Tom.

“Just compiling a complete picture here.”

“It was interfering with her social life and extracurricular activities,” Tom explained. “So I made a compromise, and we agreed to once-a-month sleepovers and twice-a-month dinners. That had worked fine up until last year. Kids get older. They get busier. Divorce sucks. What can I say?”

“Not married myself,” Murphy said, “but I can imagine.”

Not this you can’t, Tom thought, but he didn’t feel like going into Kelly’s long-running campaign to discredit him in his daughter’s eyes.

“So, the last time you saw Kelly was two weeks ago?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you know when Jill saw her last?”

“I’m guessing this morning,” Tom said. “Jill’s got a job this summer working at Lull Farm. She’s there Monday through Friday, eight until four. Then she comes to soccer practice after that.”

“First game of the season is coming up soon, huh?”

“Two weeks from today.”

“Going for what? Your third state title in a row?”

“Fourth,” Tom said. “But I don’t think now is an appropriate time to be talking sports.”

“No, of course not,” Murphy agreed. “Perhaps it would be more appropriate to discuss some of the conversations I’ve had with Kelly’s neighbors. They were pretty quick to point out to me that you two were not on the friendliest of terms.”

Why were you talking about me at all? Tom wondered. “We had our differences.”

“Would you characterize your relationship as hostile?”

“Are you trying to imply that I had something to do with Kelly’s murder?”

“I’m not implying anything, Tom,” Murphy said. “Just asking questions. But, since you’ve brought it up, where were you before soccer practice today?”

“I was home. Working on my deck.”

“Anybody with you? Anybody who could verify your whereabouts?”

“No. I was alone.”

“Girlfriend? Wife?”

“No to both.”

“And you say you were at home all day?”

“No,” Tom said. “I went to Home Depot for some supplies. I ran out of nails.”

“Do you have a receipt?”

Tom didn’t bother looking through his wallet. He never saved them. “No.”

“How’d you pay?”

“Cash,” Tom said.

Too bad for you, said Murphy’s face. “Do you remember what you were wearing?”

“T-shirt and my Red Sox hat.”

“Time?”

“Must have been around three in the afternoon. I drove right to practice from there.”

“About how far a drive is it to that Home Depot, would you say? From your place first, and then from Home Depot to Shilo.”

“Forty minutes from my place,” Tom said. “Westbrook isn’t close to any shopping. Then it’s another hour and change to Shilo from there.”

Tom could almost see Murphy running calculations in his head. “Did you and Kelly have any recent fights?” he asked.

“No.”

Murphy grimaced a little. “No fights over alimony? Jill? Past resentment because of that nasty custody battle you had?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Tom asked.

“Relax. I’m just getting a complete picture, like I said. I had your court records pulled, and I’m curious if there was any lingering tension between you and Kelly. Seemed like it was a pretty contentious custody battle after the divorce.”

“Brendan, this isn’t high school anymore,” Tom said. “I hope you’re not looking at me as a suspect because we didn’t get along back then.”

“That wouldn’t be very professional of me,” Murphy said. “Besides, I never said you were a suspect.”

“That’s because you didn’t have to,” Tom said. “But since you’ve brought up the past, I guess you should know that Kelly made a lot of unsubstantiated, unproven, and all untrue allegations about me. But that was a long time ago.”

“Nine years,” Murphy was quick to say. “Kelly called you a drug user. Said you cheated on her. Abusive. Prone to violent outbursts.” Murphy had all that memorized as well.

“None of it was true.”

“But you stopped fighting her in court and agreed to give Kelly full custody of Jill,” Murphy said. “Why?”

Tom felt his anger beginning to rise. He calmed himself. Better to be cooperative than obstinate. “I thought it was hurting Jill,” he said, coaxing his blood pressure back to normal. “I decided it was better to compromise for my daughter’s sake. Anyway, I got the visitation rights I wanted.”

“Have you been harboring a lot of anger over this?”

Tom reddened. “I’m starting to get angry now,” he said.

“Do you know of anybody who might have wanted to hurt Kelly?”

“Kelly worked as a cocktail waitress and hostess at the Pinewood Ale House,” Tom said. “Her friends weren’t subscribing to Good Housekeeping, if you know what I mean. Maybe it was a customer. Someone she worked with.”

“Was she dating somebody?”

“Kelly was always dating somebody, at least according to Jill. But I don’t think she was involved in a serious relationship. Like I said, we didn’t talk about our lives. In fact, we didn’t really talk at all. Again, her choice, not mine.”

“Because she hated you.”

“Because she had issues with me,” Tom said. “We had our differences.”

“Why?”

Tom gave it some thought. “Well, I guess you could say that I didn’t turn out to be the man she thought I was,” he said.

“You guys began dating in high school, right?” Murphy asked.

“Sure,” Tom said. “We went out.”

“And then you were in the military with her?” Again, Murphy had brought up a fact about Tom’s life without needing a reference.

Tom shook his head. “She was army. I was navy.”

“But you two were stationed together, isn’t that right?”

“We both enlisted after high school,” Tom confirmed. “But I didn’t see Kelly for years after I joined up. I trained to become a SEAL and got deployed to Kuwait for the First Gulf War.”

“When’s the next time you saw her after high school?”

Tom thought for a beat or two. “Kelly was about halfway through her second six-year, so almost ten years,” he eventually said. “She was part of the First Armored Division Support Command assigned to the Wiesbaden Army Airfield in Germany. My SEAL unit was deployed to the same airfield for a series of training exercises.”

“And that’s where you two… reconnected? Germany?” Murphy said the word reconnected in a way that implied a sexual relationship.

“That’s when she became pregnant with Jill, if that’s what you’re asking. What the hell does this have to do with Kelly’s last twenty-four hours? I thought that’s what I came here to discuss. I feel like I’m being interrogated.”

“You can always leave,” Murphy suggested. “Lawyer up.” Murphy had just showed Tom his hand and didn’t seem to mind.

“The only lawyer I’m going to need is one who will help me regain custody of my daughter.”

“Is that why you broke into the house and attacked Kelly?”

“Hey, Murph. This interview is over,” Tom said. He stood up and put on his jacket.

“Sure thing. Of course. But, Tom, before you go, I need you think about something.”

“What’s that?”

“I’d like you to look at this situation from where I’m sitting.”

“And where’s that?”

“I’ve got a woman who appears to be the victim of a homicide, an ex-husband with good reason to hold a grudge, and a weak alibi. The ME has put Kelly’s time of death at between noon and three. Now, if you made that late-day Home Depot run like you said you did, well then, maybe even I would have a hard time pursuing you as a suspect. But if I were you, Tom, I’d be looking real hard for that receipt.”

Tom left without saying another word.