Dear Wife(73)

I park at the edge of the lot and head to the door.

“Hey, Marcus,” another detective says, nodding at the basket in my arms. “Rick’s gym clothes are stinking up the office, if you’re doing a load.”

“Har. Get the door for me, will you?”

He backtracks a couple steps, pulls on the handle. “Oh, and Chief was looking for you earlier. Watch your six, he’s on the warpath.”

Great. A grilling from Chief Eubanks is the very last thing on my agenda. He’s the kind of cop who was born to wear a uniform, an eternally grumpy guy who barks out orders in a tone that makes grown men shake in their buffed boots. I take the long way to my desk, sneaking up the back staircase and looping around.

I don’t relax until I step into my office, where the Chief is sitting in my chair, looking through a pile of papers I really wish he wasn’t reading.

“Oh. Hey, Chief.” He doesn’t look up. I settle the laundry basket on the floor, kick it so it’s half-hidden under the desk. “Can I help you find something?”

He stabs a finger to the top page. “Yeah, you can tell me what this means: ‘Charlotte, Louisville, Jacksonville, Raleigh, Atlanta.’” He looks up over his half-moon reading glasses. “You have some reason to believe Sabine Hardison is on the run?”

It’s the assumption Jade made, as well. I sink into the chair across from the Chief, the one I normally offer to guests, and swing my ankle over a knee, relaxed and casual. “Just covering all the bases, sir. The husband said it wouldn’t have been the first time. She has a history of antidepressants and wasn’t exactly stable.”

Chief peels off the glasses and tosses them on the desk. “Yeah, well, funny you should mention the husband. I received a call from Olivia Spinella. I’m sure you know who that is.”

I shake my head, the name squirming in my belly. I don’t know who Olivia Spinella is, but the fact Chief’s bringing her up can’t be good. “Not familiar, no.”

“Ms. Spinella is Jeffrey Hardison’s attorney. She claims Jeffrey has an alibi for the window of time his wife went missing, and she also claims you knew about it when you showed up at her client’s house two days ago to harass him.”

“I wasn’t harassing him. I was questioning him. There’s something fishy about his alibi. Why not be straight about where he was? Why not just say what he was doing in Little Rock?”

“At 2:30 p.m., Mr. Hardison checked in at the offices of a Dr. Lee, a urologist at CHI St. Vincent in Little Rock. His appointment took about forty minutes, after which he got his prescription filled at the hospital pharmacy downstairs. The prescription was for Viagra, and his attorney has offered up the still-full bottle as evidence. It seems Mr. Hardison had plans to reinvigorate his marital relationship with Mrs. Hardison that night, but he never got the chance.”

His words are like a punch to the gut, and I try my damnedest not to wince. “Oh.”

“Yeah. ‘Oh.’” He heaves a heavy sigh, never a good sign. “Ms. Spinella and Mr. Hardison would like to know what we’re doing to find his wife, and to tell you the truth, I’d like to hear the answer, too. Where are you looking? What leads are you exploring?”

Chief Eubanks knows better than anybody here the limitations I’m working under. There are sixteen detectives under this leaky roof, and we’ve shared 357 case files so far this year. All of us have more work than we can handle, and the city won’t grant us pay raises or overtime. We’re the most necessary work force in a city that doesn’t appreciate us. It’s no wonder that every year our rank shrinks.

And yet it sure feels like the Chief here is accusing me of not doing the legwork.

“Come on, Chief, you know I work harder than anybody in this place. Everything I’ve done has been by the book. I interviewed her friends and family. I combed her computer and tracked her phone. I looked at her bank accounts, even found a couple her husband didn’t know about.”

He gives me a slow nod, and a pounding starts up in the base of my skull.

“I also received a complaint from Trevor McAdams,” he says.

I take a deep breath, blow it out long and slow. “Is that so?”

“He claims you came to his house with all sorts of accusations about Sabine, that she’s unstable, that she faked a pregnancy test. You want to explain yourself?”

“She was unstable. The pharmacy confirmed an ongoing prescription for antidepressants and that she had an adverse reaction when she went off them cold turkey last year. She has a history of difficulty getting pregnant as well as a long string of miscarriages. I haven’t been able to confirm she was actually pregnant, or if she had some sort of irregularity that made it impossible to stay that way.”

“So you think what, that she had some kind of breakdown and took off?”

I lift both hands like, maybe. “Like I said, sir, I’m just covering all the bases. And Shelley McAdams skipped town the day her husband’s lover disappeared. There’s definitely motive there, maybe opportunity, as well.”

“The doctor wants you to stay away from her, too.”

I puff a laugh. “I’ll bet he does.”

“Did you question her?”

“She’s in Chicago through the weekend.”

“Do you have enough to haul her back?”