CHAPTER 21
Detective Andy Anderson ran a hand over the bristly fuzz on his head. “Listen, I don’t like to think of myself as a particularly impatient man. But I don’t see the need for any more details.” He leaned forward and counted off on his fingers. “I’ve got a dead body. I’ve got officers interviewing so many people the overtime’s gonna send everybody to Cancun this winter. And I’ve got a security tape of you breaking into Jasper’s office.”
My heart seemed to stop beating for several seconds. Then it took off running, banging against my ribs so hard I was sure anyone watching would see my shirt heaving. A security tape?
“Andy, calm down.” Sally Normandy reached out and laid her hand on my arm again. “Tess is walking us straight through what happened. She’s been totally cooperative.”
“Yeah?” Anderson asked. “Well, if this is your idea of cooperation, we got different dictionaries working. I’m the one with the badge. How about we do things my way for a while? See how far we get.”
I turned to Sally Normandy. “You’re not a police officer? Who are you?” I shifted my attention to Andy Anderson. “Who is she?”
Anderson smirked. “Some idea the chief had. You ask me, a homicide investigation is no time to be working experiments. I work things the tried and true way. Every interview room in this station is filled right now. We’re gonna wrap this up before sunrise. No more strolling down the twists and turns of memory lane.”
Sally stood and nodded toward the door. “Let’s work out our differences on the other side of that wall.”
Anderson scoffed. “I don’t take orders from you.”
Sally’s voice remained calm despite Anderson’s agitation. “You’re correct. But I believe you do from the man who called me at home and asked me to come in to interview Tess. He’s your boss’s boss’s boss. Do I have that chain of command correct? I can leave right now and allow you to conduct this line of questioning any way you deem fit, but I’m going to tell the chief the truth when he asks me how things went.”
Anderson’s jaw churned. He shot me a look that, if I weren’t already scared out of my wits, would have pushed me there.
Sally’s smile seemed sincere as she followed Anderson out the door. “We’ll be right back, Tess. Can I get you anything?”
My mouth was a sandbox. Anderson was right. I’d been talking for what seemed like hours. “Some more water would be great. Thanks.”
She nodded and left me alone in the room. My mind was an unattended fire hose with thoughts flailing aimlessly like some sort of giant, spitting snake hopped up on Red Bull, spurting fears in every direction.
What did they know about Mimi and me breaking into Jasper’s office? Who did they have in those interview rooms? Who was saying what about me? Was I ever getting out of here?
Images flooded my mind. My apartment. Favorite patrons from the library. Rosie making a face behind Brian’s back before her shoulders shook with silent giggles. Innocent and Agnes. Walking to my favorite coffee shop on Sunday mornings. Bringing groceries to my father.
Oh, God! What was going to become of my father?
And then I thought of John. Kind, sweet, funny, sexy John Rappaport.
I looked at the wall opposite me, knowing people were watching behind the one-way mirror. I imagined they were looking for some sort of behavior that would let them know if I was innocent or guilty.
I was both, I supposed. How was I supposed to act? What did they expect of me as I sat waiting for my interrogators to return?
Anderson and Sally came back in the room less than five minutes after they left. The detective’s face was carved from cold granite. Like he had something he wanted to say but knew the cost would be too high. Sally, on the other hand, looked as if she’d arrived that very minute to start her shift. She seemed calm, rested, and relaxed as she handed me a fresh glass of water and returned to her seat beside me at the table.
“You were telling us what happened after Mimi suggested it was time to go see Phillip Jasper,” she said.
That line from the movie Alice in Wonderland came to me: Curiouser and curiouser. It was bizarre enough for me to be sitting in the police station answering questions in a murder case.
But I still didn’t know who was on the other side of that mirror or in those interview rooms.
“Tess?” Sally asked. “Are you all right?”
“You haven’t answered my question,” I said.
“Which question is that?” she asked.
“Who are you?” I nodded toward Anderson. “He’s the detective. Yet here you are, asking me questions, waiting for me to say . . . what? The wrong thing? The right thing? What you need to hear to send me to jail?”
“We’re looking for answers,” Anderson said.
“I’m not talking to you right now.” I realized I was in no position to snap and apologized. “It’s been a long string of days. I’m afraid my nerves are shot. There’s no reason for me to speak to you like that.”
Sally’s voice was as smooth as it had been all night. “I think we have a good idea how shot those nerves of yours are. In fact, that’s why I’m here. I’m a psychologist, Tess. The officers who came to your apartment saw your distress.”
“Cops knocking on my door telling me to come with them? Yeah. I’ll bet I sounded distressed. Anybody would be. I don’t see where that calls for a shrink.” I forced myself to ease up. That kind of attitude would get me nowhere.
“You told the officers what happened when you first got here. Do you remember that?”
“Of course I do,” I said. “But I wasn’t ready for what they had to tell me. About the kid finding that body.”
“So you were confused?” Sally asked.
“Still am, I guess.”
“That makes sense to me. Maybe that’s why I got the call.”
“I’ve seen psychologists before,” I said. “That didn’t work out too well.”
Sally nodded. “Did your father stop you from continuing in therapy?”
I didn’t answer her.
“Were you upset about that? About your dad deciding not to let you talk to someone about your anger? About what was bothering you?”
“What is it you think you understand about my father and his parenting decisions? Tell me. Slowly. Don’t leave out any details.” I know I sounded bitter, mocking her like that. But I didn’t really care.
Sally remained calm despite my attack. “I’ve been in this line of work a long time. I know how difficult it is for some parents to accept that their child may need help beyond what they are able to provide.”
“My father was all I had after my mother . . . after my mother left us.” I struggled to keep my voice civil. The two were quiet while I composed myself. I appreciated their kindness. After a while it was Detective Anderson who spoke. This time he kept his irritation out of his voice.
“So you decided to go see Jasper.”
I nodded.
“It was Mimi’s idea?” Sally asked.
“Yeah. But don’t think I was some gullible lamb in all this. I wanted to figure this out as much as she did.”
“What was she proposing, exactly?” Anderson asked.
“Just that we go talk to him. Find out what he knew about my mother’s travels.”
“So how’d we get to the breaking in part?”
“That came after we couldn’t get in to see him. The first time, I mean. When we got turned away. But we knew we still needed to get our hands on travel records that would prove our mother was living two lives.”
“Mimi suggested that, too?”
“Yes. Mimi’s the PhD. The researcher. She said there’s no way in hell any scientist worth their salt wouldn’t keep meticulous records. Since our mother worked so closely with him, those notes would document her movements as well. Mimi said Jasper would have logs of the wheres and whens of her absences that would help us piece this whole thing together. If we got our hands on those files, we’d have the proof we needed to confront our mother.”
“Phillip Jasper’s office is in one of the most state-of-the-art buildings on campus. How did Mimi propose you were going to break in?”
“She said we should keep it simple. And she was right. It worked.”
“What worked?” Anderson asked.
“We didn’t break into the building,” I said. “We never left.”
I could sense Anderson’s struggle to keep his irritation in check.
“Mimi and I didn’t leave the biogenetics building after we were turned away from seeing him. We stayed. For the rest of the afternoon we sat in the atrium, reading magazines. We watched the students and faculty leave. When the folks at the information desk starting closing down, we scooted into a lobby restroom we’d watched being cleaned earlier. Then it was a matter of waiting another couple of hours. We talked. We played games on my cell phone. When we left the bathroom, the entire building was empty. We didn’t run into a soul when we went up to Jasper’s office.”
“But surely his suite was secured,” Sally Normandy said.
“Not the outer waiting room. The door was closed, but it wasn’t locked. In fact, the door to Jasper’s office wasn’t even closed. Mimi assured me that was the way academia was. The only locks we encountered were on his file cabinets.”
“How’d you break those?” Anderson asked.
“We didn’t. Like I said, Mimi knows her way around faculty offices. She scouted Jasper’s. He had a few pottery pieces on his shelves. The keys to the file cabinets were in a little blue jug. Took us about three minutes from the time we entered his office to have every file drawer opened.”
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Sally asked.
“No.” A heavy wave of sadness replaced my anger. It was magnetic, pulling the steely vault of my fearful soul down . . . down . . . deeper with each beat of my sorry heart. “But we did find something. Something I wish to God we never had.”