Julia Spencer-Fleming - One Was a Soldier

“Would that have left her with money problems?”

“Not that she mentioned.” She leaned back into the chair’s corduroy-covered embrace. “She said her husband was away gambling, and didn’t seem too happy about that. I thought it was because he had gone off without her, but maybe they couldn’t afford his losses.”

“Away gambling? Where?”

“She didn’t say.” She tilted her chin forward to look at him. “Is he really missing?”

“No one knows where he is. The scheduler at BWI Opperman said he hasn’t been working for the past week or so.”

She buried her nose in her coffee cup and breathed in the scent before taking a sip. “Maybe money problems, then-and she has to choose, Iraq or the unemployment office.”

“Not if she quits. No benefits. Maybe no recommendation.”

She thought about Tally in their last group session, frustrated and angry. At the hospital, cynical and resigned. “Her back was up against a wall. She’s alone and upset, with her life and with her husband. Then he finally gets home from a weekend of blowing their money at the casino, and everything she’s been feeling comes to a head. She lights into him, and in the heat of that moment, he kills her.”

“There’s zero evidence of that. The house was clean and orderly. We won’t have any autopsy info until tomorrow, but I can tell you right now, there weren’t any defensive wounds on her hands.”

“He could have restrained her, killed her, and then cleaned up afterward.”

“We’re investigating that possibility right now. That’s why I have to go back after our meeting with Reverend McPartlin.”

A possibility struck her. “Are you sure it wasn’t an accident?”

He shook his head. “She was shot in the head. Through her mouth.”

“Oh, God.”

He flipped his phone open and dialed. “Anything else? Drugs? Alcohol?”

“I never saw any sign she was using.” Her rapidly dwindling secret stash swelled in her conscience, filling her mouth with the words that would confess; uppers, downers, pain pills. She swallowed her own guilt. “There was very open access to sleeping pills and stimulants in Iraq. She may have brought some back with her.”

“Hmn.” His glance shifted toward his phone. “Lyle? Russ. How’s it going?”

Across the hall, the Reverend Julie McPartlin came through the door. She spread her hands. What’s up?

Clare flashed her the same five-fingered signal Julie had given her earlier. Five minutes.

“No, no, that’s fine. Look, evidently Wyler McNabb was away gambling as of Monday night.”

Julie shrugged and tapped her watch.

“I have no idea. Could be Las Vegas or Atlantic City, could be Akwesasne or Turning Stone. Find a picture and have Kevin pick it up. He can start faxing it around to the state casinos.”

Clare nodded. This might be a short session.

“Then call Ed in to cover for him. Yeah, I know he’s on overtime. Just do it.”

Julie disappeared back down the hallway.

“McNabb was in a veterans support group over at the community center.” He covered his phone with one hand. “You don’t mind if I tell them you were in the group with her, do you?”

She shook her head.

“Yeah, Clare’s taking part in it, too. She said McNabb never mentioned seeing Nichols but that she was stressed about work and her marriage.” He paused. “Yeah, it does. She might have been under treatment for depression or something.” He cupped his hand over the phone again. “Can your therapist prescribe?”

She shook her head.

“Clare says she would have had to get scrip somewhere else if that was the case. Have you found anything?” He paused. “Okay. Yeah. The husband’s the number one priority. I’ll see you when I’m finished up here. I know.” He let out a weary laugh. “I’m going to be the only guy not on overtime.”

Russ snapped his phone shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know what I want for Christmas? Another officer.”

“She didn’t commit suicide, Russ. I know she didn’t.”

He stood up. Held out his hand to help her. “We’re not closing the door on the possibility someone else was involved, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Perps may try to hide evidence, but outside of movies, they don’t create elaborate scenarios making it look like the victim killed him or herself.”

“Tally McNabb, death by gunshot, probable suicide.” The chief flipped open a folder and draped it over his knee.

Hadley stifled a yawn and flipped her own notebook to a fresh page. She had gotten in last night at eleven, to discover Hudson half-asleep over an unfinished history project. She had sent him up to bed and stayed up until midnight gluing bark onto a cardboard longhouse.

“I got the medical examiner’s report this morning.” The chief picked his mug off the scarred wooden table he preferred to sit on and took a long drink of coffee. “ Earlier this morning,” he amended. “His finding is death consistent with suicide, but he won’t go further than that. Her injuries were caused by a Taurus.38 ACP, the weapon at the bottom of the pool”-he pointed toward one of several color pictures pinned to the corkboard-“which has her prints all over it.”

“Nitrate patterns on her firing hand?” Lyle MacAuley asked.

“If she had ’em, they were washed away by the chlorinated water.”

The dep straightened from his slouch and jotted the facts on the whiteboard.

“There’s no way she was killed anywhere else on the property,” Eric McCrea said. “We sprayed with luminol. The place was clean.”

The chief nodded. “Dr. Dvorak felt the”-he glanced down at the file-“the residual biological matter in the pool was consistent with her dying at that spot.”

Hadley tried not to think about what “residual biological matter” meant.

“The neighbors heard one shot at approximately 2:00 P.M. and discovered her shortly thereafter,” the chief went on. “Dr. Dvorak places TOD between noon and two o’clock. Nobody was seen coming or going from the place, although that’s not definitive since it was during the workday and most folks weren’t even home.”

“It reads like suicide to me,” MacAuley said.

“But we’re still missing the husband,” Eric pointed out.

“Wyler McNabb.” The chief took another drink of coffee. “The victim described him as ‘away gambling’ on Monday night, but at this point, we haven’t gotten any hits from the casinos Kevin sent his picture to. The Albany airport doesn’t have a record of him transiting this past week. His Escalade and her Navigator are still parked in the driveway of their house.”

“He could have driven home Tuesday or Wednesday, done her, and then fled the scene,” Eric said.

The chief tilted his head in agreement. “Besides his boat and his ATV, he has no other vehicles registered in his name. Which doesn’t mean he doesn’t have access to something.”

“Hadley and I checked out the backyard yesterday afternoon,” Flynn said. “There’s kind of a tangle behind the utility shed, and then a beat-down fence, and then you’re onto the neighbor’s property. Someone could’ve gone straight through to the next street over.”

“Did you include them in the canvass yesterday?”

Flynn looked at Hadley. “I did,” she said. “There was no one at home at the Saber Drive address behind McNabb’s house, or at the ones on either side. There was a retired couple across the street, but they didn’t see anything.”

“Where’s that street come out?”

Noble answered the chief. “Musket, Drum, and Saber all dead-end at the western side. Easterly, they all join up with Meersham Street. No other way out.”