WHO TO BELIEVE? Leith needed to get to the bottom of what had really happened on the Riverside balcony yesterday. Viviani claimed Gemma had deliberately let her fall, and Gemma was adamant that it was JD’s pushiness to blame.
Before interviewing Gemma he decided to get Dion’s opinion. And he vowed to himself that for a change he would hear Cal out without contradicting him, give his intuition the respect it deserved.
He met Dion in the case room and opened the conversation by playing devil’s advocate, suggesting that Vivi wasn’t the little sweetheart she appeared to be, but a pint-sized psychopath and master manipulator. “What d’you think?” he asked, when he was done. “Anything’s possible, right?”
Dion narrowed his eyes — maybe in thoughtfulness, maybe contempt.
“She just strikes me as a little unnaturally mature,” Leith said.
Dion had read Gemma and Viviani’s statements. He said, “What’s so unnaturally mature about the conclusions she came to? They make good sense to me.”
“Sure, but I still lean more toward Gemma. I don’t prefer her, but I believe her.”
“I’d trust Gemma as far as I can throw her,” Dion said.
Vows forgotten, Leith said, “So you’re going to go in there with your mind made up, are you, to hell with other possibilities?”
“I’m going to go in there looking for ways to trip her up.”
“Good,” Leith said with some heat. “You want to ask the questions, then? Go for it.”
“Sure thing,” Dion snapped.
“Good,” Leith repeated. But no longer with heat. Dion would do a good job of it, he was sure. “You can do them all, in fact. I’ve got Zach lined up next, then Perry, and I’ve called Chelsea in as well. We’re going to be here a while.”
“Sure,” Dion said again, this time without the snap, and his fingers tapped a nervous tattoo on the tabletop.
Leith’s phone vibrated with a message. The detainee was ready.
* * *
Dion faced Gemma Vale, hoping he could trip her up as promised, and worried about failure. For JD he had to do his best.
“Do you think you’re a good mom?” he began.
Gemma was dressed down today, in greys and blacks, and had gone easy on the bling. “I’m a very good mom,” she said.
“You love your kids?”
“Of course I do.”
“Luna, Vivi, Tia, you love them all equally?”
“In different ways, but yes.”
“Earlier in the day, before Luna went missing, Tia saw you and Zachary fighting, is that right?”
“Vivi told you about that, did she?”
“She said Tia told her about it. She also said you got mad when she told you. You told her Tia was lying. So which is true?”
“Zachary and I were arguing. That’s normal. Not very mature, but nothing extreme.”
“But when Vivi put it to you, you told her Tia was lying. Why?”
“Vivi made it sound like it was a thing. It wasn’t.”
“He said you were tearing Luna in half.”
“That’s silly. It’s a teenager’s interpretation. Zach and I do our best not to argue in front of the kids, so seeing us shouting like that upset Tia more than it should have. Have you asked the neighbours if they’ve ever heard us fighting?”
“Was Luna crying?”
“A little upset, yes. Whining. Losing patience.”
“Why do you say Tia’s lying?”
“Don’t forget my baby had just been taken from me,” Gemma said, and her voice could have iced over a fast river. “Maybe I was a little distracted by that, hmm? It’s kind of hard being the perfect parent when your heart is breaking in two.”
“Must have been hard for Tiago, too.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Why would he make up something like you and Zach yelling and screaming?”
“Not making up. Exaggerating. Kids are great at making horror stories out of nothing. Aren’t we here to talk about Vivi’s fall?”
“If you’re such a good mom, why are you and Zach yelling and screaming over Luna?”
“Is there some kind of new law I’m not aware of against being imperfect?”
“Did you swear at Zach in front of Luna?”
“No, we never swear in front of Luna.”
“Insulted each other? Called each other names? Made threats?”
She fell silent, staring at him, trying to figure him out. She was thinking, but he didn’t want to give her the time. “Is Luna more important to you than your adopted kids?”
“What?”
“Telling Tia to mind his own business when all he wanted you to do was stop scaring Luna.”
“That did not happen.”
“Why did he make up stories about you?”
“Like I said —”
“You did say, and I don’t believe you. I think he saw you and Zachary yelling and screaming, and Luna was in distress, and you were ignoring her needs, and he saw that as abuse, and that’s why you’re telling all these lies.”
“It got nowhere near abuse, and I’m going to see to it that you lose your badge. This is illegal, what you’re doing.” She looked at Leith, who didn’t jump to her defence.
“Do you feel responsible for Tia’s death?” Dion asked.
“Yes,” she cried. “I let Luna overshadow everything else. I neglected Tiago and his needs. Obviously. Are you going to throw me in jail now?”
She grabbed a tissue. He’d driven her to tears, but he didn’t slow down. “Hard to be a good mom in a situation when your baby’s gone missing.”
“Yes, it sure the hell is.”
“You’ve spent the last few years making sacrifices for the kids. Invested a lot of time into making them happy, right?”
“I willingly made sacrifices.”
“Still, even Luna got on your nerves, didn’t she?”
“Of course. All moms get frazzled.”
“But you love her.”
“Always and forever, more each day. I miss her desperately.”
“As much as you miss Tiago?”
Gemma half rose from her seat in anger, but sat again when he didn’t react. “You’re a good mom,” he said. “A great mom, would you say?”
“In the scale of things, I’m a great mom.”
She was baring her teeth now. She looked frozen.
“Yelling and screaming would be kind of traumatizing to a baby, I’d think.”
She laughed coldly. “You’re trying to get me to admit to something I didn’t do. We didn’t yell and scream. We argued.”
“But you’re a good mom anyway.”
“Damn you,” she said.
“You do your best.”
“As best as I humanly can.”
“So why did you push Vivi?”
“I didn’t push her.”
She stopped, and tried again with a shift of emphasis. “I didn’t push her. She fell. I was trying to set her down, and the policewoman was getting aggressive. She grabbed my arm, jostled me. I lost my grip.”
Dion watched her for a long moment. He checked his notes, and looked at her again. “You’re right, you didn’t push Vivi. You let her fall. That’s what Vivi says.”
“Not true.”
“Constable Temple was telling you to put her down, but you didn’t. You turned away so she couldn’t see. Instead of taking Vivi off the railing, you sat her there, held onto her, and when you knew she was tipping backward, you let her go.”
“I was trying to set her down, but the constable knocked my arm.”
Dion held his half-empty glass out to the side, suspended over the linoleum. “There’s a difference between this slipping out of my fingers ’cause my arm got knocked and me doing this.” He opened his hand and the glass dropped to the floor. It didn’t break into pieces, as he’d hoped, but bounced, spun, and left a puddle. “Big difference,” he said. “It’s what sets an accident apart from attempted murder. You let her fall.”
“You people are just protecting your own, that’s what this is,” Gemma said. She added that she needed a bathroom break.
While they waited Dion picked up the glass and mopped up the water with paper towels.
“Nice demo,” Leith said. “Would have been more showy if it shattered, though.”
A crack ran down the side of the glass in Dion’s hand. He showed it to Leith. “Close enough.”
Like the glass, he knew that Gemma Vale was cracked, if not shattered. A full breakdown would take another hour or so, but it was going to happen. He now felt sure of it.
* * *
Gemma Vale’s confession wasn’t the clean sweep Dion had hoped for, but by the end of it he knew JD was out of danger, Viviani would no longer be called a manipulative monster, and answers to the mystery of Luna Mae Garland’s kidnap would surface.
He took what he knew and put it to Zachary Garland.
“Assault, conspiracy, obstruction,” Garland said, echoing the charges he couldn’t quite believe. “That makes it sound like we did it on purpose. But we didn’t. It just happened.”
“How did it just happen?” Dion asked.
The big man seemed to shrink in his chair, and for most of his story he addressed the tabletop in front of him. “I was late bringing Luna to Gemma that day,” he said. “I’d forgotten something. Her favourite toy. I had to turn back. No big deal, ten, twenty minutes behind schedule. Got to Gemma’s, and we’re in the driveway, and I’m holding Luna, and first thing Gemma does is start screaming at me for being late. She says I do it on purpose.”
He looked at Dion. “Well, excuse me, I’m trying my best here.” He worked his fists open and closed, and carried on, again avoiding eye contact. “I guess I said a thing or two as well. And how many times have I told her not to swear in front of the kids? Gemma’s got zero self-control, and she knows I can’t stand it. So I kind of changed my mind about handing Luna over till we’d come to some kind of agreement about her behaviour, and Gemma kind of grabbed Luna’s arm, and I kind of pulled away, and …”
Garland broke down. He cried in a noisy way. Long, dragging sobs, until finally it was Dion who needed a break. He left the room and walked up and down the corridor outside, feeling queasy. Leith joined him and asked if he was okay.
“My knee’s sore. Needed a stretch.”
Of course it wasn’t the knee, but the feelings of dread stirred up by Garland’s confession. It was the parallels he could see between Garland’s stupidity and his own. Two lives falling apart through bad choices. Not just bad — disastrous.
On their return Garland was able to carry on. “Luna’s shoulder was dislocated. We took her inside. I’ve dealt with a few dislocated joints in my life, and I was able to pop it back in quite easy. I don’t know if you’ve ever dislocated your shoulder, but it hurts. Man, it hurts. And she was crying and wailing, but not as bad as I thought.”
He paused to reflect, rubbing his own shoulder as if in sympathy. “Babies are more rubbery, I think,” he continued. “They mend quicker. But all the same, I was going to take her straight to emerg. But then Gemma was walking her around in the living room and got her quieted down, and she said there was no need to take her in. I had my doubts, but I agreed that we’d just give her infants’ Tylenol and see if she was okay without treatment. And I left. I got home. The guys came over. We popped some beer, and Chelsea made chips and stuff. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Luna, how she was doing.”
He stopped and seemed perilously close to tears again. Dion pushed the tissue box forward and told him to take his time.
“I really, really don’t like phoning Gemma,” Garland said. “’Cause she either doesn’t pick up or she calls me names and hangs up on me. So I told the guys and Chelsea I had to go out, and I drove over there. I knew Gemma and Perry were having a dinner party, but I didn’t care. I knocked on the door, said I wanted to just see Luna, just make sure she’s okay, and … and Gemma was mad that I showed up, but she didn’t want to make a scene in front of her fancy guests, so we went downstairs, and we found Luna in her crib, and she was … she was dead. Not breathing. Cold. We picked her up. Shook her. Couldn’t revive her.”
Garland seized more tissues. “I figured it had to be the meds. But how could it be? We hadn’t given her more than recommended. Some kind of adverse reaction, I said, and Gemma then admitted it wasn’t baby Tylenol she’d given her, because she couldn’t find the bottle, but an adult Tylenol 2, but just half a tab. Can that do it?”
He had stopped to ask Dion the question. Dion said he didn’t know. What he did know, because Gemma had told him so, was that she had given Luna a full tab, not a half. Crushed up and added to food.
“And I was freaking out at her,” Garland went on. “And she was freaking out at me. I grabbed Luna to take her to emerg. I knew we’d be arrested and charged, and probably do time, but I didn’t care. Gemma wouldn’t let me take her. She was in a panic. Didn’t want anybody knowing she was stupid enough to play tug of war with her own child, and then poison her with meds. We argued. And then she started blackmailing me with Vivi again. She said she’d bring up those allegations, and make sure they stuck. She knows how it would kill me to go to jail, and to lose Vivi. I gave in. I agreed to do it her way. She said we had to hide Luna’s body and say she’d been abducted.”
He looked at his own hands like he couldn’t believe they were a part of him.
“Somehow we kept it together. Went back upstairs and outside so nobody could hear, and made a plan. I told her I’d go home, establish an alibi, then come over, go around back, take Luna. Then after a certain time Gemma would find her gone and sound the alarm. Then all we’d have to do is live with what we’d done for the rest of our lives.”
He was silent so long that Dion thought he was done. “So you followed through with the plan, did you?”
Garland stared at him. “What? No, I didn’t. Couldn’t. Besides, I knew I’d get blamed for the kidnap unless I had a solid alibi. So I went back to my own get-together with the guys, and somebody else went and picked her up, and hid the … the body. Till we could figure out where to hide … it … permanently.”
“Who’s the somebody else?”
“I know a guy.” Garland ducked his face.
“A guy?” Dion said. “What guy? Name.”
“I just know his first name. John. Johnny. Met him through the gym a while ago, and heard he’d do stuff for pay. Illegal stuff. So I gave him a call. Gave him directions. And he … he got Luna, brought her to me. And I … I took her and gave her a burial at sea.”
“How did you manage that?”
“I have a boat. Just a little runaround. Took her out, way out into Indian Arm. Dropped her in.”
“You have John’s number?”
“No. I lost it.”
“You called him from your cell?”
Pause. “Yes.”
“So there’ll be a record. How much did you pay Johnny?”
Another pause. “Five thousand.”
“Your bank records will show it, right?”
A third pause was one too many, and Dion said, “D’you want to start again, Zach?”
Garland nodded.
“Who went and got Luna’s body for you?”
Garland toppled forward like he’d been shot. Then he sat up and said, “Chelsea. But she only wanted to save my ass. She’s a good person. The best. Please don’t rough her up. We’ll both co-operate all the way. Promise. But please, please, please be nice to her.”
Leith said, “What did she do with Luna’s body? We need to find her.”
“You won’t find her,” Garland told him. “It’s true what I said about Indian Arm. Except Chelsea is the one who did it. She took my runaround, and she did it for me.”
Chelsea had been spoken to on the night of the disappearance, Dion recalled. But only briefly. If the team had tracked her through the night, they might have come to this point a lot sooner. But there had been no reason to think she hadn’t been at the Forbes apartment all evening with Zach and his poker buddies. She’d been written off as a suspect on the spot.
He could understand how she had slipped out. She wasn’t part of the poker game, wasn’t watching hockey with the boys. She was just around, cleaning up, staying mostly in her bedroom. Listening to music, somebody had mentioned. She had performed a kind of sleight of hand. She had planted herself in their minds as present, and then she hadn’t been. That simple.
“If I wasn’t under constant scrutiny, I’d have done it myself, believe me,” Garland said. “But she did it. After she got Luna, she went to work as always, and grocery shopping, and whatever else she had to do, until she had a chance to take the boat out. But in the end I’m the only guilty party. I did this. I got her to drop my sweet little baby into the ocean. I don’t know where. I’m so sorry, Luna Mae. I’m so, so sorry.”
Dion checked the time, and stepped outside to make a call. Had Chelsea Romanov arrived yet? She had been notified this morning to attend the detachment following her day’s work, but so far hadn’t arrived.
Maybe she’d got wind that the interviews had changed course, her boyfriend was in custody, and she would be charged for her role in the disappearance of Luna Garland. Maybe she’d been on her toes and ready to skip town all along.