The Wife Who Knew Too Much(93)

“I haven’t had a chance to listen to that yet. It’s being downloaded as we speak by a technician at the DA’s office. Can you fill me in?”

“There’s no time to explain. Just—Juliet killed Nina, okay? Kovacs was involved somehow. I don’t really know how, exactly. But Connor is innocent. Juliet shot him. And I’m afraid he’s dead. Please, Detective. Please. Do something.”

I broke into sobs.

“Okay, now I understand,” Hagerty said. “Listen. Hang up. I’ll find out whatever I can and get back to you ASAP at the number you’re calling from.”

As I sat in the chair beside Kelsey’s desk, crying hysterically, a familiar figure marched down the hall toward me. It was Liz, my manager from the restaurant, with her arms outstretched and a concerned look on her face. I stepped into her comforting embrace.

“Alex called me, and I rushed right over. What the hell happened?” she said.

“Alex?”

“The guy who picked you up in his truck, escaping from kidnappers apparently? He’s my husband’s cousin. What the hell is going on, Tabitha?”

I tried to talk through my sobs, but it was just too hard.

“Never mind, you can explain later. What can I do to help?”

I managed to get out that Connor had been shot, and I was waiting to hear if he’d survived. I had to wait by Kelsey’s desk, because I didn’t have my phone, and the detective was going to call me back on hers.

“I’ll stay with you for as long as you need me,” Liz said. “Let’s text him my number instead, so we’re not stuck waiting in this hallway.”

After that, Liz brought me to the cafeteria and made me drink some herbal tea and eat something. It felt like a lifetime, but only fifteen minutes passed before Hagerty called Liz’s cell. The recording from last night had been downloaded and reviewed by the DA. They now understood I’d been telling the truth all along.

“We’re sorry for the inconvenience,” Hagerty said. “Your charges are being dismissed.”

I huffed in disbelief. “You’re sorry for the—Jesus. My husband was shot. Would that even have happened if—”

I dropped my head into my hands, crying again, my breath coming in harsh sobs. Liz took the phone. I couldn’t tell from her end of the conversation what was happening. She hung up after a couple of minutes.

“They’re on the way here right now. We’re supposed to meet them in five minutes in a conference room in the basement.”

“I never want to see those cops again.”

“You need to be strong, hon. I think they have news.”

Her eyes were veiled with worry. It was bad.

I leaned on Liz all the way to the elevator, down four floors and one long, sterile corridor. Hagerty and Pardo were already there, waiting for me in a small conference room with buzzing lights, along with another man in plain clothes who had the look of a cop about him. I knew what was coming. I could see it in their eyes. The truth was, I’d known for hours. I couldn’t forget what I’d seen—the deathly pallor on Connor’s face, the blood soaking the back of the Suburban, Juliet’s horrified expression when she checked his pulse. I knew in my heart that he couldn’t survive all that. Yet, I’d been hoping. Praying. Pretending none of it was real.

“I’m sorry, Tabitha,” Hagerty said, and his choirboy face looked crumpled and sad. “The local PD recovered a body from the ski house—”

I collapsed into the nearest chair, shaking all over.

“—and we believe it’s your husband.”

My body felt cold as ice. I stared back and forth between them, everyone in that awful room, for whom this was just another day on the job. I’d thought I’d known what was coming. How it would feel. I’d had no idea. It felt like the world had stopped. Like there would be no tomorrow. All I could do was tremble and beg.

“No, please. You must be wrong. It’s not true.”

But I knew it was.

“This is Detective Martinez. He’ll take it from here,” Hagerty said.

“Ma’am, my condolences,” Martinez said. He was middle-aged, balding, with a sober expression. “It appears that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the abdomen. The morgue is right down the hall. I have to ask you to identify your husband’s body.”

I dropped my head into my hands. “No, no, no,” I whispered, but words couldn’t make this nightmare go away.

“I understand this is very difficult,” Martinez said. “But until he’s identified, we can’t proceed with the autopsy, and we can’t release the body. He’ll just stay in the morgue.”

“Tabitha. Come on, sweetie, I know you’re strong,” Liz said.

I nodded blindly, my eyes full of tears, and reached for her hands. She helped me to my feet, and I followed Martinez from the room on shaky legs. The walk of twenty feet seemed endless, and I knew I would live it many times over in my dreams. We reached a pair of closed metal doors. The detective typed a code into a keypad on the wall, and I heard a lock disengage. We stepped into a refrigerated space no larger than a doctor’s waiting room, and I gasped. There were no lockers for the bodies, like on TV. Just several steel gurneys and a smell of death and chemicals in the air. Two of the gurneys held bodies, covered by sheets. A pair of bare white feet protruded from the sheet of the gurney on the left.