Lisa Gardner - Love You More

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WHO DO YOU LOVE?
One question, a split-second decision, and Brian Darby lies dead on the kitchen floor. His wife, state police trooper Tessa Leoni, claims to have shot him in self-defense, and bears the bruises to back up her tale. For veteran detective D. D. Warren it should be an open-and-shut case. But where is their six-year-old daughter?
AND HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO…
As the homicide investigation ratchets into a frantic statewide search for a missing child, D. D. Warren must partner with former lover Bobby Dodge to break through the blue wall of police brotherhood, seeking to understand the inner workings of a trooper's mind while also unearthing family secrets. Would a trained police officer truly shoot her own husband? And would a mother harm her own child?
… TO SAVE HER?
For Tessa Leoni, the worst has not yet happened. She is walking a tightrope, with nowhere to turn, no one to trust, as the clock ticks down to a terrifying deadline. She has one goal in sight, and she will use every ounce of her training, every trick at her disposal, to do what must be done. No sacrifice is too great, no action unthinkable. A mother knows who she loves. And all others will be made to pay.
Love you more…

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“Meaning, if Tessa wanted quick access to a vehicle…”

“Resourceful,” Bobby commented.

D.D. looked down at Tessa’s passed-out father, shook her head again. “He could’ve at least put up a fight, for God’s sake.”

“Maybe she brought him the Jack,” Bobby said with a shrug, pointing to the empty bottle. He was an alcoholic; he knew these things.

“So she definitely has a vehicle. Description would be nice, but somehow I don’t think Papa Leoni’s talking anytime soon.”

“Assuming this isn’t a chop shop, Leoni should have papers on everything. Let’s check it out.”

Bobby gestured to the open door of a small back office. Inside, they found a tiny desk and a battered gray filing cabinet. In the back of the top file was a manila folder marked “Title Work.”

D.D. pulled it and together they walked out of the garage, leaving the snoring drunk behind them. They identified three vehicles sequestered behind a chain link fence. The file held titles for four. By process of elimination, they determined that a 1993 dark blue Ford pickup truck was missing. Title listed it as having over two hundred thousand and eight miles.

“An oldie but a goodie,” Bobby remarked, as D.D. got on the radio and called it in.

“License plate?” D.D. asked.

Bobby shook his head. “None of them have any.”

D.D. looked at him. “Check the front street,” she said.

He got what she meant, and jogged a quick tour around the block. Sure enough, half a block down, on the other side of the street, a car was missing both plates. Tessa had obviously pilfered from it to outfit her own ride.

Resourceful, he thought again, but also sloppy. She was racing against the clock, meaning she’d grabbed the nearest plates, instead of burning time with the safer option of snatching plates from a vehicle blocks away.

Meaning she was starting to leave a trail and they could use it to find her.

Bobby should feel good about that, but he felt mostly tired. He couldn’t stop thinking what it must’ve been like, returning home from duty, walking through the front door, to discover a man holding her daughter hostage. Give us your gun, no one will get hurt .

Then the same man, shooting Brian Darby three times before disappearing with Tessa’s little girl.

If Bobby had ever walked through the door, found someone with a gun at Annabelle’s head, threatening his wife and child…

Tessa must’ve felt half-crazed with desperation and fear. She would’ve agreed to anything they wanted, while maintaining a cop’s inherent mistrust. Knowing her cooperation would never be enough, of course they’d betray her first chance they got.

So she desperately needed to get one step ahead. Cover up her own husband’s death to buy time. Plant a corpse with baby teeth and homemade explosives as a macabre backup plan.

Shane had originally stated Tessa had called him Sunday morning and requested that he beat her up. Except now they knew Shane had most likely been part of the problem. Made sense-a friend “helping” another friend would just smack her around a little, not deliver a concussion requiring an overnight hospital stay.

Meaning it had been Shane’s idea to beat Tessa. How would that play out? Let’s drag your husband’s dead body up from the garage to defrost. Then, I’m going to pound the shit out of you for kicks and giggles. Then, you’ll call the police and claim you shot your dirtbag husband because he was going to kill you?

They’d known she’d get arrested. Shane, at the very least, should’ve figured out how thin her story would sound, especially with Sophie missing and Brian’s body having been artificially maintained on ice.

They’d wanted her arrested. They’d needed her behind bars.

It all came down to the money, Bobby thought again. Quarter mil missing from the troopers’ union. Who’d stolen it? Shane Lyons? Someone higher in the food chain?

Someone smart enough to realize that sooner or later they’d have to supply a suspect before internal affairs grew too close.

Someone who realized that another discredited officer, a female, as seen on the bank security cameras-say, Tessa Leoni-would make the perfect sacrificial lamb. Plus, her husband had a known gambling problem, making her an even better candidate.

Brian died because his out-of-control habit made him a threat to everyone. And Tessa was packaged up with a bow and handed over to the powers that be as their own get-out-of-jail-free card. We’ll say she stole the money, her husband gambled it away, and all will be accounted for. Investigation will be closed and we can ride off into the sunset, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars richer and no one the wiser.

Brian dead, Tessa behind bars, and Sophie…

Bobby wasn’t ready to think about that. Sophie was a liability. Maybe kept alive in the short term, in case Tessa didn’t go along with the plan. But in the long term…

Tessa was right to be on the warpath. She’d already lost one day to planning, one day to hospitalization, and one day to incarceration. Meaning this was it. She was running out of time. In the next few hours, she’d find her daughter, or die trying.

A lone trooper, going up against mobsters who thought nothing of breaking into police officers’ homes and shooting their spouses.

Who would have the balls to do such a thing? And the access?

Russian mafia had sunk huge tentacles into the Boston area. They were widely acknowledged to be six times more ruthless than their Italian counterparts, and were swiftly becoming the lead players in all things corrupt, drug-fueled, and money-laundered. But a quarter mil defrauded from the state troopers’ union sounded too small time in Bobby’s mind.

The Russians preferred high risk, high payoff. Quarter mil was a rounding error in most of their undertakings. Plus, to steal from the state police, to actively summon the wrath of a powerful law enforcement agency upon your head…

It sounded more personal to Bobby. Mobsters wouldn’t seek to embezzle from a troopers’ union. They might, however, apply pressure to an insider who then determined that was the best way to produce the necessary funds. An insider with access to the money, but also with the knowledge and foresight to cover his own trail…

All of a sudden, Bobby knew. It horrified him. Chilled him to the bone. And made complete sense.

He raised his elbow and drove it through the passenger-side window of the parked car. Window shattered. Car alarm sounded. Bobby ignored both sounds. He reached inside, popped the glove compartment, and helped himself to the vehicle registration info, which included record of the license plate now adorning Tessa Leoni’s truck.

Then he trotted back to D.D. and the garage, armed with new information as well as their final target.

40

People were brought down here to die.

I knew that from the smell alone. The deep, rusty scent of blood, so deeply soaked into the concrete floor, no amount of bleach or lime would ever make it go away. Some people had workshops in the basements of their homes. Apparently, John Stephen Purcell had a torture chamber.

I needed overhead light. It would destroy my night vision, but also disorient any gangsters waiting to pounce.

Standing on the top step, my hand on the left-hand wall switch, I hesitated. I didn’t know if I wanted light in the basement. I didn’t know if I wanted to see.

After hours of blessed numbness, my composure was starting to crack. The smell. My daughter. The smell. Sophie.

They wouldn’t torture a little girl. What would they have to gain? What could Sophie possibly tell them?

I closed my eyes. Flipped up the switch. Then, I stood in the deep quiet that falls after midnight, and waited to hear the first whimper of my daughter waiting to be saved, or the rush of an attacker about to ambush.

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