Lisa Gardner - Love You More

The detective gazed at her expectantly. D.D. returned his stare.

“You’re telling me Brian Darby had a gun,” she said.

“Yes. Applied for the permit two weeks ago.”

“Maybe bulking up wasn’t getting the job done anymore,” Bobby murmured.

D.D. waved her hand at him. “Hello. Bigger picture here. Brian Darby had a Glock forty, and we have no idea where it is . Detective, that’s not a small thing.”

“Gun permit just went through,” Detective Little countered defensively. “We’re a little backed up these days. Haven’t you been reading the papers? Armageddon is coming and, apparently, half the city intends to be armed for it.”

“We need that gun,” D.D. said in a clipped voice. “For starters, what if that’s the weapon that killed Sophie Leoni?”

The room went silent.

“Yeah,” she said. “No more talk. No more theories. We have a dead husband of a state police officer, and a missing six-year-old. I want Sophie Leoni. I want Brian Darby’s gun. And if that evidence leads us where we think it’s probably going to lead us, then I want us to build a case so fucking airtight, Tessa Leoni goes away for the rest of her miserable life. Get out. Get it done.”

Eleven o’clock Monday night, the detectives scrambled.

Every woman has a moment in her life when she realizes she genuinely loves a guy, and he’s just not worth it. It took me nearly three years to reach that point with Brian. Maybe there were signs along the way. Maybe, in the beginning, I was just so happy to have a man love me and my daughter as much as Brian seemed to love me and Sophie, I ignored them. Yes, he could be moody. After the initial six-month honeymoon, the house became his anal-retentive domain, Sophie and I receiving daily lectures if we left a dish on the counter, a toothbrush out of its holder, a crayon on the table.

Brian liked precision, needed it.

“I’m an engineer,” he’d remind me. “Trust me, you don’t want a dam built by a sloppy engineer.”

Sophie and I did our best. Compromise, I told myself. The price of family; you gave up some of your individual preferences for the greater good. Plus, Brian would leave again and Sophie and I would spend a giddy eight weeks dumping our junk all over the place. Coats draped over the back of kitchen chairs. Art projects piled on the corner of the counter. Yes, we were regular Girls Gone Wild when Brian shipped out.

Then, one day I went to pay the plumber and discovered our life savings was gone.

It’s a tough moment when you have to confront the level of your own complacency. I knew Brian had been going to Foxwoods. More to the point, I knew the evenings he came home reeking of booze and cigarettes, but claimed he’d been hiking. He’d lied to me, on several occasions, and I’d let it go. To pry would involve being told an answer I didn’t want to hear. So I didn’t pry.

While my husband, apparently, gave in to his inner demons and gambled away our savings account.

Shane and I confronted him. He denied it. Not very plausibly. But at a certain point, there wasn’t much more I could do or say. The money magically returned, and again, I didn’t ask many questions, not wanting to know what I didn’t want to know.

I thought of my husband as two people after that. There was Good Brian, the man I fell in love with, who picked up Sophie after school and took her sledding until they were both pink-cheeked from laughter. Good Brian fixed me pancakes and maple syrup when I got home from graveyard shift. He would rub my back, strained from the weight of carrying body armor. He would hold me while I slept.

Then there was Bad Brian. Bad Brian yelled at me when I forgot to wipe down the counter after doing the dishes. Bad Brian was curt and distant, not only turning the TV to whatever testosterone-bound show he could find, but turning up the volume if Sophie or I tried to protest.

Bad Brian smelled like cigarettes, booze, and sweat. He worked out compulsively, with the demons of a man with something to fear. Then he’d disappear for a couple of days at a time-time with the guys , Bad Brian would say, when we both knew he was going off alone, his friends having long since given up on him.

But that was Bad Brian for you. He could look his state police officer wife in the eye, and tell a lie.

It always made me wonder: Would he be a different kind of husband if I were a different kind of wife?

Bad Brian broke my heart. Then Good Brian would reappear long enough to patch it back together again. And around and around we would go, plummeting through the roller coaster ride of our lives.

Except all rides have to end.

Good Brian and Bad Brian’s ride ended at exactly the same moment, on our kitchen’s spotlessly clean floor.

Bad Brian can’t hurt me or Sophie anymore.

Good Brian is going to take me a while to let go.

Tuesday morning, seven a.m.

The female CO started head count and the unit officially stirred to life. My roommate, Erica, had already been awake for an hour, curled up in the fetal position, rocking back and forth, eyes pinned on something only she could see, while muttering beneath her breath.

I would guess she’d retired to her bunk shortly after midnight. No watch on my wrist, no clock in the cell, so I had to gauge the time in my head. It gave me something to do all night long-I think it’s… two a.m., three a.m., four twenty-one a.m.

I fell asleep once. I dreamt of Sophie. She and I were in a vast, churning ocean, paddling for all we were worth against steadily climbing waves.

“Stay with me,” I screamed at her. “Stay with me, I’ll keep you safe!”

But her head disappeared beneath the black water, and I dove and I dove and I dove, but I couldn’t find my daughter again.

I woke up, tasting salt on my lips. I didn’t sleep again.

The tower made noises in the night. Nameless women, goading nameless groaning men. The rattle of pipes. The hum of a huge facility, trying to settle its bones. It felt as if I were inside some giant beast, swallowed up whole. I kept touching the walls, as if the rough feel of cinder blocks would keep me grounded. Then I would get up and pee, as the cover of night was the closest to privacy I could get.

The female CO had reached our cell. She glanced at rocking Erica, then at me, and our eyes met, a flicker of recognition, before she turned away.

Kim Watters. Dated one of the guys in the barracks, had attended a couple of the group dinners. ’Course. CO at the Suffolk County Jail. Now I remembered.

She moved to the next cell. Erica rocked harder. I peered out the barred window and tried to convince myself that personally knowing my own prison guard didn’t make things worse.

Seven-thirty. Breakfast.

Erica was up. Still muttering, not looking at me. Agitated. Meth had fried her brain. She needed rehab, and mental health services more than a jail sentence. Then again, welcome to most of the prison population.

We got limp pancakes, applesauce, and milk. Erica put the applesauce on her pancakes, rolled it all together, and ate it in three giant mouthfuls. Four gulps took care of the milk. Then she eyed my tray.

I had no appetite. The pancakes tasted like wet tissue on my tongue. I stared at her and slowly ate them anyway.

Erica sat on the toilet. I turned around to give her privacy.

She laughed.

Later, I used my hooter bag to brush my teeth and apply deodorant. Then… Then I didn’t really know what to do. Welcome to my first full day in prison.

Rec time arrived. The CO opened our cell. Some women drifted out, some stayed inside. I couldn’t take it anymore. The ten foot ceilings and yawning windows gave the illusion of space, but a jail cell was a jail cell. I already felt overflouresced, pining for natural sunlight.