Love You More (Tessa Leoni, #1)(57)

“Tough with contusions,” Neil answered. “Everyone heals at a different rate. But I’m gonna guess the severity of the injuries dictates they happened sooner versus later. She wouldn’t have been terribly functional after taking such massive blows to the head.”

“Who beat her up?” another officer asked.

“Accomplice,” Phil muttered up front.

D.D. nodded. “In addition to revamping our timeline, this new information also means we need to reconsider the scope of the case. If Brian Darby didn’t beat his wife, who did, and why?”

“Lover,” Bobby said quietly. “Most logical explanation. Why did Tessa Leoni kill her husband and daughter? Because she didn’t want to be with them anymore. Why didn’t she want to be with them anymore? Because she had met someone new.”

“Hear anything through the grapevine?” D.D. asked him. “Rumors from the barracks, that sort of thing.”

Bobby shook his head. “Not that plugged in, though. I’m a detective, not a trooper. We’ll need to interview the LT.”

“First thing this afternoon,” D.D. assured him.

“Gotta say,” Phil spoke up, “this theory fits better with what Darby’s boss, Scott Hale, reported. I talked to him at eleven, and he swore up and down that Darby didn’t have a violent bone in his body. A tanker crew is pretty tight. You see people sleep deprived, homesick, and stressed out, while maintaining a twenty-four/seven work schedule. As an engineer, Darby got to deal with all the technical crises, and apparently big things go wrong on big ships—water in the fuel, fried electrical systems, glitches in the control software. Still, Hale never saw Darby lose his composure. In fact, the bigger the problem, the more jazzed Darby was about finding a solution. Hale certainly doesn’t believe a guy like that goes home and beats up his wife.”

“Darby was a model employee,” D.D. said.

“Darby was everyone’s favorite engineer. And apparently, quite good at Guitar Hero—they have a rec room on board.”

D.D. sighed, crossed her arms over her chest. She glanced over at Bobby, not quite meeting his eye, but looking in his general direction. “What’d you learn at the gym?” she asked.

“Brian had spent the past nine months following a vigorous exercise regimen designed to bulk up. Personal trainer swore he wasn’t doing steroids, just putting in blood, sweat, and tears. She only heard him say good things about his wife, but thought that having a state trooper for a spouse was tough on the guy. Oh, and in the past three weeks, since returning home from his last tour, Darby was definitely in a mood, but not willing to talk about it.”

“What do you mean by ‘in a mood’?”

“Personal trainer said he seemed darker, temperamental. She’d asked a couple of times, guessing trouble on the home front, but he wouldn’t comment. For what it’s worth, that makes him something of a novelty. Apparently, most clients pour out their souls while working out. Go to a gym, enter a confessional.”

D.D. perked up. “So something was on his mind, but Darby wasn’t talking about it.”

“Maybe he discovered his wife was having an affair,” Neil commented from the back. “You said when he returned, meaning, he’d just left his wife all alone for sixty days.…”

“In addition to the rec room on the ship,” Phil spoke up, “there’s a computer room for the crew. I’m working on the warrant now to get copies of all of Darby’s ingoing and outgoing e-mail. Might find something there.”

“So Tessa meets another man,” D.D. mused, “decides to off her husband. Why homicide? Why not divorce?”

She posed the question generally, a challenge to the room.

“Life insurance,” an officer spoke up.

“Expediency,” said another. “Maybe he threatened to fight a divorce.”

“Maybe Darby had something on her, threatened to make trouble if she divorced him.”

D.D. wrote down each comment, seeming particularly interested in the third bulletin. “By her own admission, Tessa Leoni is an alcoholic, who’d already killed once when she was sixteen. Figure if that’s what she’s willing to admit to, what isn’t she willing to say?”

D.D. turned back to the group. “Okay, then why kill her daughter? Brian’s a stepdad, so he doesn’t have grounds to challenge for custody. It’s one thing to end a marriage. Why kill her own kid?”

Room was slower with this one. Of all people, it was Phil who finally ventured an answer: “Because her lover doesn’t want kids. Isn’t that how these things work? Diane Downs, etc., etc. Women kill their children when their children are inconvenient for them. Tessa was looking to start a new life. Sophie could not be part of that life, so Sophie had to die.”

No one had anything to add to that.

“We need to identify the lover,” Bobby murmured.

“We need to find Sophie’s body,” D.D. sighed more heavily. “Prove once and for all just what Tessa Leoni is capable of.”

She set down her marker, looked over the whiteboard.

“All right, people. These are our assumptions: Tessa Leoni killed her husband and child, most likely sometime Friday evening or Saturday morning. She froze her husband’s body in the garage. She disposed of her daughter during a Saturday afternoon drive. Then she reported to work—most likely while unthawing her husband’s body in the kitchen—before returning home, letting her lover beat the shit out of her, and calling her fellow state troopers. It’s some story. Now get out there, and find me some facts. I want e-mails and phone messages between her and her lover. I want a neighbor who noticed her unloading ice or shoveling snow. I want to know exactly where Brian Darby’s white Denali traveled to on Saturday afternoon. I want Sophie’s body. And if this is indeed what happened, I want Tessa Leoni locked up for life. Any questions?”