Lisa Gardner - Love You More

Day nine or so, we took a little walk to my former hospital room, where lo and behold, tucked in the back of the bottom drawer, we found Gertrude’s missing button eye .

I sewed it on that afternoon with surgical thread, and Sophie made Gertrude her own hospital bed for recovery .

Gertrude would be okay, she informed me solemnly. Gertrude had been a very brave girl .

We watched more SpongeBob after that, and I kept my arm around my little girl and her head upon my shoulder even though it ached .

The hospital arranged for a pediatric psych specialist to visit with Sophie. She wouldn’t talk about her captivity and hadn’t mentioned Brian’s name at all. The doctor advised me to keep “the channels of communication open” and to let Sophie come to me. When she was ready, the doctor said, she would talk. And when she did, I must keep my face neutral and my comments nonjudgmental .

I thought this was funny advice to give a woman who’d committed three murders to save her daughter, but I didn’t volunteer that .

I held Sophie. We slept, by mutual consent, with the lights on, and when she drew pictures filled with black night, red flames, and exploding guns, I complimented her level of detail and promised to teach her how to shoot the moment my arm healed .

Sophie liked that idea very much .

Detectives D. D. Warren and Bobby Dodge returned. They brought Mrs. Ennis with them, who took Sophie to the hospital cafeteria so I could answer the last of their questions .

No, Brian had never hit me. My bruised ribs were because I had fallen down icy steps, and, being late for patrol, tended the injury myself. Shane, however, had beat me on Sunday morning, in an attempt to make it look like Brian’s death was self-defense .

No, I didn’t know Trooper Lyons had been shot. What a terrible tragedy for his family. Did they have any leads at this time?

They showed me photos of a thin-faced man with blazing dark eyes and thick brown hair. Yes, I recognized the man as the one I’d discovered in my kitchen on Saturday morning, holding my husband at gunpoint. He’d told me that if I would cooperate, no one would get hurt. So I had taken off my duty belt; at which time, he’d pulled my Sig Sauer and shot my husband three times in the chest .

Purcell then explained that if I wanted to see my daughter alive again, I had to do exactly what he said .

No, I’d never seen Purcell before that morning, nor did I know of his reputation as a professional hit man, nor did I know why he had my husband at gunpoint or what had happened to Sophie. Yes, I’d known my husband had a gambling problem, but I did not realize it had grown so bad that an enforcer had been hired to deal with the problem .

After Purcell had shot Brian, I’d offered him fifty thousand dollars in return for more time before reporting his death. I’d explained I could freeze Brian’s body, then thaw it and call the cops on Sunday morning. I’d still do whatever Purcell wanted, I just needed twenty-four hours to prepare for Sophie’s return, as I’d be in jail for shooting my husband .

Purcell had accepted the deal, and I’d spent Saturday afternoon covering Brian’s body in snow, then retrieving the dog’s body from under the deck, and building a couple of incendiary devices. I tried to rig them to blow back so no one would get hurt .

Yes, I had planned my escape from jail. And no, I hadn’t felt it was safe to disclose to anyone, even to the Boston detectives, what was really going on. For one thing, I didn’t know who’d taken Sophie and I genuinely feared for her life. For another, I knew at least one fellow officer, Trooper Lyons, was involved. How could I know the taint didn’t extend to Boston cops? Or, as the case turned out, to a superior officer?

At the time, I was acting on instinct, carefully trying to do as I’d been instructed, while also realizing that if I didn’t escape and find my daughter myself, chances were she was as good as dead .

D.D. wanted to know who had given me a lift from the search and recovery site. I stared her straight in the eye and told her I’d hitchhiked. She wanted a description of the vehicle. Sadly, I didn’t remember .

But I’d ended up at my father’s garage, where I helped myself to a vehicle. He’d been passed out at the time, in no shape to agree or protest .

Once I had the Ford truck, I’d driven straight to western Mass. to confront Hamilton and rescue Sophie .

No, I didn’t know what happened to Shane that night, or how he came to be shot by Brian’s Glock.40. Though, if they’d retrieved the Glock.40 from the hit man’s house, didn’t that imply that Purcell had done the deed? Maybe someone viewed Shane as another loose end that needed to be wrapped up. Poor Shane. I hoped his wife and kids were doing okay .

D.D. scowled at me. Bobby said nothing at all. We had something in common, he and I. He knew exactly what I’d done. And I think he accepted that a woman who’d already killed three people probably wasn’t going to magically crack and confess, even if his partner used her angry voice .

I did shoot and kill Hamilton’s mistress, Bonita Marcoso. The woman had been assaulting my child. I had to use deadly force .

As for the lieutenant colonel… In killing him, Bobby Dodge had saved my life, I informed D.D. And I wanted to go on record with that. If not for the actions of state detective Bobby Dodge, Sophie and I both would probably be dead .

“Investigated and cleared,” Bobby informed me .

“As it should be. Thank you.”

He flushed a little, not liking the attention. Or maybe he simply didn’t want to be thanked for taking a life .

I don’t think about it much myself. I don’t see the point .

So there you have it, I wrapped up for D.D. My husband was not a wife beater or child abuser. Just a gambling addict who’d gotten in way over his head. And maybe I should’ve done more about that sooner. Cut him off. Kicked him out .

I hadn’t known about the credit cards he’d opened in Sophie’s name. I hadn’t known about his skimming of union funds. There was a lot I hadn’t known, but that didn’t make me culpable. Just made me a typical wife, wishing fruitlessly that my husband would walk away from the card tables and come home to me and my child instead .

“Sorry,” he’d told me, dying in our kitchen. “Tessa… love you more.”

I dream of him, you know. Not something I can tell Detective Warren. But I dream of my husband, except this time he is Good Brian, and he is holding my hand in his and Sophie is riding ahead of us on her bike. We walk. We talk. We are happy .

I wake up sobbing, which makes it just as well that I don’t sleep much anymore .

Want to know how much the lieutenant colonel made in the end? According to D.D., internal affairs recovered one hundred thousand dollars in his account. Ironically, a mere fraction of what he would’ve received in legitimate retirement benefits if he’d just done his job conscientiously, then taken up fishing in Florida .

The lieutenant colonel had ordered my husband’s death, and lost money in the process .

They hadn’t been able to recover the rest of the funds. No record in Shane’s accounts and no record in Brian’s. According to D.D., internal affairs believed that both men had gambled away their illicit gains at the casino, while Hamilton had saved his share of the scam. Ironically, their bad habit meant Shane and Brian would never be charged in the crime, while Hamilton and his girlfriend Bonita-who’d been positively ID’d as the female who’d closed out the shell company’s bank account-would posthumously shoulder the blame .