Golden Girl(117)

The Chief




He had nothing for weeks, then everything at once. No sooner did Jasmine Kelly say the name Lopresti than the Chief knew it was Marissa’s sister, Alexis, who worked dispatch and her new boyfriend, Officer Pitcher, who tampered with the evidence. They destroyed Vivian Howe’s clothes; they paid Justin to plant the running shoes.

Alexis wants to take all the blame. It was her fault, her plan. She had been able to persuade Pitcher because she had something Pitcher wanted. (This is an old story, Ed thinks.) Alexis was trying to protect her sister, Marissa.

Marissa Lopresti is the one who hit Vivian Howe. The Chief brings Marissa into the station and she spews forth the whole story. She and Leo Quinboro broke up at a bonfire at Fortieth Pole the night before the accident. Marissa then got cozy with Peter Bridgeman. It was easy, she said, because Peter had had a crush on her since fourth grade. Marissa thought Leo would get jealous seeing her with Peter, but Leo disappeared; no one had seen him. Marissa blew Peter off and left the party but Peter Bridgeman lurked around, eventually catching Leo and Cruz DeSantis kissing by the side of Cruz’s Jeep.

The photograph, which the Chief had suspected was of two people in a compromising position, was of Cruz and Leo.

Okay, okay, the Chief thinks. He’s a lot more “woke” (as Chloe and Finn would say) than he was twenty or even ten years ago, but this possibility hadn’t even crossed his mind. Clearly, he still has some evolving to do.

Peter sent the photograph to Leo and Cruz in the middle of the night, but he didn’t send it to Marissa until the next morning, right after Cruz woke Peter up by pounding on his door. (Peter hadn’t answered, not wanting a confrontation that his parents might hear.) Peter Bridgeman’s phone records, which the Greek managed to subpoena, showed a text with an attachment sent to Marissa’s phone at 7:14 a.m.

Marissa says she was driving over to the Howe residence to see Leo and “make up” when she got a text alert on her phone. Because it was so early, she assumed it could only be Leo. She checked her phone and clicked on the photo as she was turning onto Kingsley Road. She had only glimpsed the photo—she said she wasn’t even sure what she was looking at—when she heard a sickening thud. She slammed on the brakes and realized she had hit a person. She had hit Vivi.

She panicked, she said. There was no one on Kingsley and no cars on the Madaket Road. She backed up and drove west. She took the turn onto Eel Point Road.

“I had every intention of going back to Kingsley,” Marissa said. “But I just…didn’t. Alexis texted to say Vivi was dead and then…she told me another officer had seen Cruz running a stop sign and speeding and that Cruz had probably killed Vivi, and I felt relieved by that. I was angry at Cruz. By then, I had seen the photograph. So I drove my Jeep into the Bathtub and I told Rip Bonham at my insurance company that I’d done it on Friday night.”

When the Chief called Rip Bonham, Rip said he’d had doubts about Marissa’s story all summer; according to the mechanic, the Jeep hadn’t been submerged for as long as Marissa said it had been. He thought she’d been lying as a way to angle for insurance money, not to cover up a crime.



Rip Bonham put Lisa Hitt in touch with the garage that was holding Marissa’s Jeep. Luminol turned up Vivi’s blood on the fender.



“Every contact leaves a trace,” Lisa Hitt says mournfully to Ed over the phone. “I can’t believe how this turned out. It’s like a…”

“Vivian Howe novel?” Ed says. As relieved as he is to close the case, his heart is heavy for all involved. He has joked many times about having job security—people will never stop making mistakes—but this isn’t funny.



Ed doesn’t get home until noon the next day; he stayed up all night questioning people and filling out paperwork. “Phones,” he says to Andrea. “They’ll be the death of civilization.”

Andrea pulls Ed’s phone out of his shirt pocket. “Leave yours right here,” she says, plugging it in at the kitchen counter. “I got you the pastrami special from the Nickel, then you’re going to bed.”





Vivi




Vivi doesn’t have to call for Martha; she’s right there, the same red and gold scarf from the other day serving as a pocket square.

“Marissa hit me?” Vivi says. “Marissa killed me?”

“I’m surprised you didn’t figure that out,” Martha says. “She checked her phone as she was turning and was just looking at the photograph of Leo and Cruz when she hit you.” Martha pauses. “I’m surprised you didn’t figure out about Leo and Cruz either.”

Since Vivi has been dead, her children have surprised her, it’s true, but she is not surprised to learn that her son has romantic feelings for his best friend. The whole Howe-Quinboro clan fell in love with Cruz at least in part because of the sterling quality of Leo’s devotion for Cruz. When Leo was in preschool, he once drew a picture of himself and Cruz living in a house together, with smaller figures that were meant to be their children. The teachers at the school had chuckled about this, Vivi remembers, but at least they were open-minded enough not to tell him the picture was wrong—and Vivi, for her part, had taped it to the refrigerator.