Love You More (Tessa Leoni, #1)(8)

Fundamental to every officer’s training was the ability to quickly size up the threat and respond with the appropriate level of force. A subject yells at you, you didn’t pull your gun. A subject hits you, you still didn’t necessarily pull your weapon.

But Trooper Leoni had.

D.D. was starting to understand why the state union rep was so eager to get Tessa Leoni appropriate legal counsel, and so insistent that she not talk to the police.

D.D. sighed, rubbed her forehead. “I don’t get it. So battered wife syndrome. He hit her one too many times, she finally cracked and did something about it. That explains his body in the kitchen and her visit with the EMTs in the sunroom. But what about the kid? Where’s the girl?”

“Maybe this morning’s fight started last night. Stepdad started pounding. Girl fled the scene.”

They looked at the snow, where any trace of small footsteps had been thoroughly eradicated.

“Calls went out to the local hospitals?” D.D. asked. “Uniforms are checking with the neighbors?”

“It’s a full Amber Alert, and no, we’re not stupid.”

She stared pointedly at the snow. Bobby shut up.

“What about birth father?” D.D. tried. “If Brian Darby is the stepdad, then where’s Sophie’s birth father and what does he have to say about all this?”

“No birth father,” Bobby reported.

“I believe that’s biologically impossible.”

“No name listed on the birth certificate, no guy mentioned around the barracks, and no male role model visiting every other weekend.” Bobby shrugged. “No birth father.”

D.D. frowned. “Because Tessa Leoni didn’t want him in the picture, or because he didn’t want to be in the picture? And oh yeah, in the last couple of nights, did those dynamics suddenly change?”

Bobby shrugged again.

D.D. pursed her lips, starting to see multiple possibilities. A birth father intent on reclaiming parental rights. Or an overstretched household, trying to juggle two intense careers and one small child. Option A meant the biological father might have kidnapped his own child. Option B meant the stepdad—or birth mother—had beat that child to death.

“Think the girl is dead?” Bobby asked now.

“Hell if I know.” D.D. didn’t like to think about the girl. A wife shooting her husband, fine. A missing kid … This case was gonna suck.

“Can’t hide a body in the ground,” she considered out loud. “Too frozen for digging. So if the girl is dead … Most likely her remains have been tucked somewhere inside the house. Garage? Attic? Crawl space? Old freezer?”

Bobby shook his head.

D.D. took his word for it. She hadn’t ventured into the house beyond the kitchen and sunroom, but given the number of uniforms currently combing through the eleven hundred square foot space, they should’ve been able to dismantle the structure board by board.

“I don’t think this has anything to do with the birth father,” Bobby stated. “If the birth father was back in the picture making noise, those would be the first words out of Tessa Leoni’s mouth. Contact my rat bastard ex-boyfriend, who’s been threatening to take my daughter from me. Leoni’s said no such thing—”

“Because the union rep has shut her down.”

“Because the union rep doesn’t want her to make statements that incriminate herself. Totally fair game, however, to make statements that incriminate others.”

Couldn’t argue with that logic, D.D. thought. “Fine, forget birth father for a second. Sounds like the current household was dysfunctional enough. To judge by Trooper Leoni’s face, Brian Darby is a wife beater. Maybe he hit his stepdaughter, too. She died, Trooper Leoni came home to the body, and they both panicked. Stepfather has done a terrible thing, but Trooper Leoni let him, making her party to the crime. They take the body for a drive and dump it. Then get home, get into a fight, and the stress of the whole situation leads Tessa to snap.”

“Trooper Leoni helped dump her own daughter’s body,” Bobby said, “before returning home and shooting her husband?”

D.D. regarded him squarely. “Make no assumptions, Bobby. You of all people know that.”

He didn’t say anything, but met her stare.

“I want Trooper Leoni’s cruiser,” D.D stated.

“I believe the brass is ironing that out.”

“His car, too.”

“Two thousand and seven GMC Denali. Your squad already has it.”

D.D. raised a brow. “Nice car. Merchant mariners make that kind of money?”

“He was an engineer. Engineers always make that kind of money. I don’t think Trooper Leoni hurt her own child,” Bobby said.

“You don’t?”

“Spoke to a couple of the troopers who worked with her. They had nothing but good things to say about her. Loving mom, dedicated to her daughter, yada yada yada.”

“Yeah? They also know her husband was using her for a punching bag?”

Bobby didn’t say anything right away, which was answer enough. He turned back to the scene. “Could be an abduction,” he insisted stubbornly.

“Unfenced lot, bordered by a couple hundred strangers …” D.D. shrugged. “Yeah, if just the six-year-old were missing, I’d absolutely run the perverts up the flagpole. But what are the odds of a stranger creeping into the home the same evening/morning the husband and wife have a fatal argument?”