Love You More

3

Brian Darby died in his kitchen. Three shots, tightly clustered midtorso. D.D.’s first thought was that Trooper Leoni must’ve taken her firearms training seriously, because the grouping was textbook perfect. As new recruits learned at the Academy-never go for the head and never shoot to wound. Torso is the high percentage shot and if you’re discharging your weapon, you’d better be in fear for your life or someone else’s, meaning you’re shooting to kill.

Leoni had gotten the job done. Now, what the hell had happened to drive a state trooper to shoot her husband? And where was the kid?

Currently, Trooper Leoni was sequestered in the front sunroom, being tended by EMTs for an ugly gash in her forehead and even uglier black eye. Her union rep was already with her, a lawyer on his way.

A dozen other state troopers had closed ranks outside, standing stiff-legged on the sidewalk where they could give their Boston colleagues working the scene, and the overexcited press reporting the scene, thousand-yard stares.

That left most of the Boston brass and most of the state police brass to squabble amongst themselves in the white command van now parked at the elementary school next door. The homicide unit supervisor from the Suffolk County DA was presumably playing referee, no doubt reminding the Massachusetts State Police superintendent that the state really couldn’t oversee an investigation involving one of its own officers, while also reminding the commissioner of Boston Police that the state’s request for a state police liaison was perfectly reasonable.

In between bouts of marking turf, the head muckety-mucks had managed to issue an Amber Alert for six-year-old Sophie Leoni, brown hair, blue eyes, approximately forty-six inches tall, weighing forty-five pounds, and missing her top two front teeth. Most likely wearing a pink, long-sleeved pajama set dotted with yellow horses. Last seen around ten-thirty the previous evening, when Trooper Leoni had allegedly checked on her daughter before reporting for her eleven p.m. patrol shift.

D.D. had a lot of questions for Trooper Tessa Leoni. Unfortunately, she did not have access: Trooper Leoni was in shock, the union rep had squawked. Trooper Leoni required immediate medical attention. Trooper Leoni was entitled to appropriate legal counsel. She had already provided an initial statement to the first responder. All other questions would have to wait until her attorney deemed appropriate.

Trooper Leoni had a lot of needs, D.D. thought. Shouldn’t one of those include working with the Boston cops to find her kid?

For the moment, D.D. had backed off. Scene this busy, there were plenty of other matters that required her immediate attention. She had Boston district detectives swarming the scene, Boston homicide detectives working the evidence, various uniformed officers canvassing the neighborhood, and-given that Trooper Leoni had shot her husband with her service Sig Sauer-the firearms discharge investigation team had been automatically dispatched, flooding the small property with even more miscellaneous police personnel.

Bobby had been right-in official lingo, this case was a cluster-fuck.

And it was all hers.

D.D. had arrived thirty minutes ago. She’d parked six blocks away, on bustling Washington Street versus a quieter side street. Allston-Brighton was one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in Boston. Filled to the brim with students from Boston College, Boston University, and Harvard Business School, the area was dominated by academics, young families, and support staff. Expensive place to live, which was ironic given that college students and academics rarely had any money. End result was street after street of tired, three-story apartment buildings, each carved into more units than the last. Families were piled in, with twenty-four-hour convenience stores and Laundromats sprouting up to meet the continuous demand.

This was the urban jungle in D.D.’s mind. No wrought-iron balustrades or decorative brickwork like Back Bay or Beacon Hill. Here, you paid a fortune for the honor of renting a strictly utilitarian box-like apartment in a strictly utilitarian box-like building. Parking was first come first serve, which meant most of the masses spent half their time cruising for spaces. You fought your way to work, you fought your way home, then ended the day eating a microwavable dinner in a standing room only kitchenette, before falling asleep on the world’s smallest futon.

Not a bad area, however, for a state trooper. Easy access to Mass Pike, the main artery bisecting the state. East on the Pike hit I-93, west brought you to 128. Basically, in a matter of minutes, Leoni could access three major hunting grounds for the trooper on patrol. Smart.

D.D. also liked the house, an honest to goodness single-family dwelling plunked down in the thick of Allston-Brighton, with a tidy row of three-story apartment buildings on one side and a sprawling brick elementary school to the other. Thankfully, being Sunday, the school was closed, allowing the current mass of law enforcement to take over the parking lot while sparing them from further drama caused by panicky parents overrunning the scene.

Quiet day in the neighborhood. At least it had been.

Trooper Leoni’s vintage two-bedroom bungalow was built into a hillside, white-dormered structure stacked over a redbricked two-car garage. A single flight of concrete steps led from the street-level sidewalk up to the front door and one of the largest yards D.D. had ever seen in downtown Boston.

Good family home. Just enough space to raise a kid inside, perfect lawn for a dog and a swing set outside. Even now, walking the lot in the dead of winter, D.D. could picture the cookouts, the playdates, the lazy evenings hanging on the back deck.

So many things that could go right in a house like this. So what had gone wrong?

She thought the yard might hold the key. Big, sprawling, and completely unprotected in the midst of population overload.

Cut through the school parking lot, walk onto this property. Emerge from behind four different apartment buildings, walk onto this property. You could access the Leoni residence from the back street, as D.D. had done, or by walking up the concrete steps from the front street, as most of the Massachusetts state police seem to have done. From the back, the front, the right and left, the property was easy to enter and easier to exit.

Something every uniformed officer must have figured out, because instead of studying a pristine sweep of white snow, D.D. was currently looking at the largest collection of boot imprints ever amassed in a quarter acre.

She hunched deeper into her winter field coat and exhaled a frustrated puff of frosty breath. Fucking morons.

Bobby Dodge appeared on the back deck, probably still searching for his vantage point. Given the way he was frowning down at the mucked-up snow, his thoughts mirrored her own. He caught sight of her, adjusted his black brimmed hat against the early March chill, and walked down the deck stairs to the yard.

“Your troopers trampled my crime scene,” D.D. called across the way. “I won’t forget that.”

He shrugged, burying his hands in his black wool coat as he approached. A former sniper, Bobby still moved with the economy of motion that came from spending long hours holding perfectly still. Like a lot of snipers, he was a smaller guy with a tough, sinewy build that matched his hard-planed face. No one would ever describe him as handsome, but plenty of women found him compelling.

Once upon a time, D.D. had been one of those women. They’d started out as lovers, but discovered they worked better as friends. Then, two years ago Bobby had met and married Annabelle Granger. D.D. hadn’t taken the wedding well; the birth of their daughter had felt like another blow.

But D.D. had Alex now. Life was on the up. Right?

Bobby came to a halt before her. “Troopers protect lives,” he informed her. “Detectives protect evidence.”

“Your troopers screwed my scene. I don’t forgive. I don’t forget.”

Bobby finally smiled. “Missed you, too, D.D.”

“How’s Annabelle?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“And the baby?”

“Carina’s already crawling. Can barely believe it.”

D.D. couldn’t either. Crap, they were getting old.

“And Alex?” Bobby asked.

“Good, good.” She waved her gloved hand, done with small talk. “So what d’ya think happened?”

Bobby shrugged again, taking his time answering. While some investigators felt a need to work their homicide scenes, Bobby liked to study his. And while many detectives were prone to jabber, Bobby rarely spoke unless he had something useful to say.

D.D. respected him immensely, but was careful never to tell him that.

“At first blush, it would appear to be a domestic situation,” he stated finally. “Husband attacked with a beer bottle, Trooper Leoni defended with her service weapon.”

“Got a history of domestic disturbance calls?” D.D. asked.

Bobby shook his head; she nodded in agreement. The lack of calls meant nothing. Cops hated to ask for help, especially from other cops. If Brian Darby had been beating his wife, most likely she’d taken it in silence.

“You know her?” D.D. asked.

“No. I left patrol shortly after she started. She’s only been on the force four years.”

“Word on the street?”

“Solid officer. Young. Stationed out of the Framingham barracks, working the graveyard shift, then racing home to her kid, so not one to mingle.”

“Works only the graveyard shift?”

He arched a brow, looking amused. “Scheduling’s a competitive world for troopers. Rookies get to spend an entire year on graveyard before they can bid for another time slot. Even then, scheduling is awarded based on seniority. Four-year recruit? My guess is she had another year before she could see daylight.”

“And I thought being a detective sucked.”

“Boston cops are a bunch of crybabies,” Bobby informed her.

“Please, at least we know better than to disturb crime-scene snow.”

He grimaced. They resumed their study of the trampled yard.

“How long have they been married?” D.D. asked now.

“Three years.”

“So she was already on the force and she already had the kid when she met him.”

Bobby didn’t answer, as it wasn’t a question.

“In theory, he would’ve known what he was getting into,” D.D. continued out loud, trying to get a preliminary feel for the dynamics of the household. “A wife who’d be gone all night. A little girl who’d require evening and morning care.”

“When he was around.”

“What do you mean?”

“He worked as a merchant marine.” Bobby pulled out a notepad, glanced at a line he’d scribbled. “Shipped out for sixty days at a time. Sixty out, sixty home. One of the guys knew the drill from statements Trooper Leoni had made around the barracks.”

D.D. arched a brow. “So wife has a crazy schedule. Husband has a crazier schedule. Interesting. Was he a big guy?” D.D. hadn’t lingered over the body, given her tender stomach.

“Five ten; two hundred ten, two hundred twenty pounds,” Bobby reported. “Muscle, not flab. Weight lifter, would be my guess.”

“A guy who could pack a punch.”

“In contrast, Trooper Leoni’s about five four, hundred and twenty pounds. Gives the husband a clear advantage.”

D.D. nodded. A trooper had training in hand-to-hand combat, of course. But a smaller female against a larger male was still stacked odds. And a husband, to boot. Plenty of female officers learned on-the-job skills they didn’t practice on the home front; Trooper Leoni’s black eye wasn’t the first D.D. had seen on a female colleague.

“Incident happened when Trooper Leoni first came home from work,” Bobby said now. “She was still in uniform.”

D.D. arched a brow, let that sink in. “She was wearing her vest?”

“Under her blouse, SOP.”

“And her belt?”

“Drew her Sig Sauer straight from the holster.”

“Shit.” D.D. shook her head. “This is a mess.”

Not a question, so again Bobby didn’t answer.

The uniform, not to mention the presence of a trooper’s duty belt, changed everything. For starters, it meant Trooper Leoni had been wearing her vest at the time of the attack. Even a two hundred and twenty pound male would have a hard time making an impact against an officer’s body armor. Second, a trooper’s duty belt held plenty of tools other than a Sig Sauer that would’ve been appropriate for defense. For example, a collapsible steel baton, or police-issued Taser or pepper spray or even the metal handcuffs.

Fundamental to every officer’s training was the ability to quickly size up the threat and respond with the appropriate level of force. A subject yells at you, you didn’t pull your gun. A subject hits you, you still didn’t necessarily pull your weapon.

But Trooper Leoni had.

D.D. was starting to understand why the state union rep was so eager to get Tessa Leoni appropriate legal counsel, and so insistent that she not talk to the police.

D.D. sighed, rubbed her forehead. “I don’t get it. So battered wife syndrome. He hit her one too many times, she finally cracked and did something about it. That explains his body in the kitchen and her visit with the EMTs in the sunroom. But what about the kid? Where’s the girl?”

“Maybe this morning’s fight started last night. Stepdad started pounding. Girl fled the scene.”

They looked at the snow, where any trace of small footsteps had been thoroughly eradicated.

“Calls went out to the local hospitals?” D.D. asked. “Uniforms are checking with the neighbors?”

“It’s a full Amber Alert, and no, we’re not stupid.”

She stared pointedly at the snow. Bobby shut up.

“What about birth father?” D.D. tried. “If Brian Darby is the stepdad, then where’s Sophie’s birth father and what does he have to say about all this?”

“No birth father,” Bobby reported.

“I believe that’s biologically impossible.”

“No name listed on the birth certificate, no guy mentioned around the barracks, and no male role model visiting every other weekend.” Bobby shrugged. “No birth father.”

D.D. frowned. “Because Tessa Leoni didn’t want him in the picture, or because he didn’t want to be in the picture? And oh yeah, in the last couple of nights, did those dynamics suddenly change?”

Bobby shrugged again.

D.D. pursed her lips, starting to see multiple possibilities. A birth father intent on reclaiming parental rights. Or an overstretched household, trying to juggle two intense careers and one small child. Option A meant the biological father might have kidnapped his own child. Option B meant the stepdad-or birth mother-had beat that child to death.

“Think the girl is dead?” Bobby asked now.

“Hell if I know.” D.D. didn’t like to think about the girl. A wife shooting her husband, fine. A missing kid… This case was gonna suck.

“Can’t hide a body in the ground,” she considered out loud. “Too frozen for digging. So if the girl is dead… Most likely her remains have been tucked somewhere inside the house. Garage? Attic? Crawl space? Old freezer?”

Bobby shook his head.

D.D. took his word for it. She hadn’t ventured into the house beyond the kitchen and sunroom, but given the number of uniforms currently combing through the eleven hundred square foot space, they should’ve been able to dismantle the structure board by board.

“I don’t think this has anything to do with the birth father,” Bobby stated. “If the birth father was back in the picture making noise, those would be the first words out of Tessa Leoni’s mouth. Contact my rat bastard ex-boyfriend, who’s been threatening to take my daughter from me. Leoni’s said no such thing-”

“Because the union rep has shut her down.”

“Because the union rep doesn’t want her to make statements that incriminate herself. Totally fair game, however, to make statements that incriminate others.”

Couldn’t argue with that logic, D.D. thought. “Fine, forget birth father for a second. Sounds like the current household was dysfunctional enough. To judge by Trooper Leoni’s face, Brian Darby is a wife beater. Maybe he hit his stepdaughter, too. She died, Trooper Leoni came home to the body, and they both panicked. Stepfather has done a terrible thing, but Trooper Leoni let him, making her party to the crime. They take the body for a drive and dump it. Then get home, get into a fight, and the stress of the whole situation leads Tessa to snap.”

“Trooper Leoni helped dump her own daughter’s body,” Bobby said, “before returning home and shooting her husband?”

D.D. regarded him squarely. “Make no assumptions, Bobby. You of all people know that.”

He didn’t say anything, but met her stare.

“I want Trooper Leoni’s cruiser,” D.D stated.

“I believe the brass is ironing that out.”

“His car, too.”

“Two thousand and seven GMC Denali. Your squad already has it.”

D.D. raised a brow. “Nice car. Merchant mariners make that kind of money?”

“He was an engineer. Engineers always make that kind of money. I don’t think Trooper Leoni hurt her own child,” Bobby said.

“You don’t?”

“Spoke to a couple of the troopers who worked with her. They had nothing but good things to say about her. Loving mom, dedicated to her daughter, yada yada yada.”

“Yeah? They also know her husband was using her for a punching bag?”

Bobby didn’t say anything right away, which was answer enough. He turned back to the scene. “Could be an abduction,” he insisted stubbornly.

“Unfenced lot, bordered by a couple hundred strangers…” D.D. shrugged. “Yeah, if just the six-year-old were missing, I’d absolutely run the perverts up the flagpole. But what are the odds of a stranger creeping into the home the same evening/morning the husband and wife have a fatal argument?”

“Make no assumptions,” Bobby repeated, but didn’t sound any more convinced than she had.

D.D. resumed studying the churned-up yard, which might have once contained footprints relative to their present discussion and now didn’t. She sighed, hating it when good evidence went bad.

“We didn’t know,” Bobby murmured beside her. “Call came in as an officer in distress. That’s what the troopers responded to. Not a homicide scene.”

“Who made the call?”

“I’m guessing she made the initial phone call-”

“Tessa Leoni.”

“Trooper Leoni. Probably to a buddy in the barracks. The buddy summoned the cavalry and the call was picked up by operations. At that point, most of the troopers responded, with the lieutenant colonel bringing up the rear. Now, once Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton got here-”

“Realized it was less of a crisis, more of a cleanup,” D.D. muttered.

“Hamilton did the sensible thing and notified Boston turret, given the jurisdiction.”

“While also summoning his own detectives.”

“Skin in the game, babe. What can I say?”

“I want transcripts.”

“Somehow, as official state police liaison, I have a feeling that will be the first of many things I will fetch for you.”

“Yes, state police liaison. Let’s talk about that. You’re the liaison, I’m the head detective. I take that to mean I call the shots, you run the plays.”

“Have you ever worked any other way?”

“Now that you mention it, never. So first task, find me the girl.”

“Don’t I wish.”

“Fine. Second task-get me access to Trooper Leoni.”

“Don’t I wish,” Bobby repeated.

“Come on, you’re the state police liaison. Surely she’ll talk to the state police liaison.”

“Union rep is telling her to shut up. Her lawyer, once he arrives, will most likely second that command. Welcome to the blue wall, D.D.”

“But I also wear the fucking uniform!”

Bobby looked pointedly at her heavy field jacket, emblazoned BPD. “Not in Trooper Leoni’s world.”