Love You More (Tessa Leoni, #1)(84)

She nodded weakly, pushing him back so she could inventory her arms, legs, and most importantly, her torso. By and large, she appeared to be in one piece. She’d been far enough away and the snow had cushioned her fall. She wasn’t hurt, just dazed and confused.

She let Bobby help her to her feet, then triaged the rest of the damage.

The snowy rise targeted by Quizo’s keen nose had disintegrated. In its place was a brown hollow of earth, covered in shredded bits of tree, leaves, and—heaven help them—pink fabric.

Quizo was off to one side, muzzle buried in the snow, whimpering and panting. Nelson stood over his dog, hands gently holding the shepherd’s ears as he whispered low, soothing sounds to his distressed pet.

The other search dogs had halted in their tracks and were howling at the sky.

Officer down, D.D. thought. The dogs were telling the world. She wanted to bay with them, until this terrible feeling of rage and helplessness eased in her chest.

Cassondra Murray, team leader, already had her cellphone out and in clipped tones was summoning a vet. Other BPD officers were swarming the scene, hands on holsters, searching for signs of immediate threat.

“Stop!” Bobby yelled suddenly.

The officers stopped. The dog handlers froze.

He was looking around them in the snow. D.D., still cracking her jaw against the ringing in her ears, did the same.

She saw pieces of hot pink fabric, a shred of blue jeans, what might have been a child’s tennis shoe. She saw red and brown and green. She saw … Pieces. That was the only word for it. Where there had once been the buried remains of a body, there were now pieces, sprayed in all directions.

The entire clearing had just become a body recovery site. Meaning every single person needed to evacuate in order to limit cross-contamination. They needed to contain, they needed to control. And they needed to immediately contact the ME’s department, let alone busloads of crime-scene techs. They had bits of human remains, they had hair and fiber, they had … they had so much work to do.

Dear God, D.D. thought vaguely, her ears still ringing, her arms still stinging. The dogs howling, howling, and howling.

She couldn’t … It couldn’t …

She looked down and realized there was a puff of pink now stuck to her boot. Part of a coat maybe, or a girl’s favorite blanket.

Sophie Leoni with big blue eyes and a heart-shaped face. Sophie Leoni with brown hair and a gap-tooth smile who loved to climb trees and hated to sleep in the dark.

Sophie Leoni.

I love my daughter, Tessa had stood here and said. I love my daughter.

What kind of mother could do such a thing?

Then, all of a sudden, D.D.’s brain fired to life and she realized the next piece of the puzzle:

“Officer Fiske,” she yelled urgently, grabbing Bobby’s arm. “We need to alert Officer Fiske. Get him on the radio, now!”

Bobby already had his radio out, hit the button to transmit. “Officer Fiske. Come in, Officer Fiske. Officer Fiske.”

But there was no reply. Of course there was no reply. Why else would Tessa Leoni demand to personally escort them to the body? Why else rig her own child with explosives?

D.D. turned to her fellow investigators.

“Officer down!” she shouted, and as a group they plunged back through the woods.


Afterward, it all seemed so obvious, D.D. couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it coming. Tessa Leoni had frozen her husband’s body for at least twenty-four hours. Why so long? Why such an elaborate plan to dispose of her daughter’s remains?

Because Tessa Leoni hadn’t been just dumping a corpse. She’d been planting her get-out-of-jail-free card.

And D.D. had played right into her hand.

She’d personally checked Tessa Leoni out of the Suffolk County Jail. She’d personally driven a suspected double-murderer to a remote location in central Mass. Then she’d personally escorted a canine team to a body rigged with explosives, allowing Tessa Leoni to disappear into the wild blue yonder.

“I am such a f*cking idiot!” D.D. exclaimed two hours later. They remained at the wilderness site, Boston police and local sheriff’s department vehicles stacked up for a good three hundred yards.

Ambulance had arrived first, EMTs attempting to treat Officer Fiske, but then, when he waved them off, embarrassed, ashamed, and otherwise not ready to play well with others, they’d tended to Quizo instead. Poor dog had suffered a ruptured eardrum and singeing to the muzzle from being closest to the blast. Eardrum would heal naturally, just as it would in humans, the EMTs assured Nelson.

In the meantime, they’d be happy to drive the dog to his vet. Nelson had taken them up on that deal, obviously very shaken. The rest of the SAR team packed up his truck, including the mournful Kelli and Skyler. They would debrief with D.D. in the morning, team leader Cassondra had assured her. But for now, they needed to regroup and decompress. They were accustomed to searches that ended in tangible discoveries, not homemade explosives.

With the SAR team departing, D.D. got on the phone to Ben, the state medical examiner. Had body parts, definitely needed assistance.

So it went. Officers had withdrawn. Evidence techs had advanced.

And the search for former state police trooper Tessa Leoni, now officially a fugitive from justice, kicked into high gear.

According to Fiske, he’d forgotten to reshackle her ankles (another shamefaced admission that would no doubt lead to a pint of whiskey later tonight). Tessa had also grabbed his keys, meaning there was a good chance she’d freed her wrists.