Lisa Gardner - Alone

"One night."

"I thought one night was all it took for an alcoholic." "I never said I was an alcoholic."

"Come on, ten years without a drink…"

"My body is my temple. I take care of it; it treats me right." He looked at the ADA's definitely softer middle.

"You should try it sometime."

"We're gonna nail her," Copley said.

"Who?"

"Catherine Gagnon. We know that somehow, some way, she was behind it."

"She arranged for me to kill her husband? Murder by police sniper? Come on…" a Copley had a calculating gleam in his eye.

"You know, the Gagnons used to have a housekeeper."

"Really?"

"Marie Gonzalez. Older woman, very experienced. Worked for the Gagnons for the past three years. Know why she was fired?"

"Since I didn't know they had a housekeeper, I obviously don't know why she was fired."

"She fed Nathan a snack. Part of her tuna sandwich. The boy-who is twenty pounds underweight, by the way-was hungry. So Marie gave him some of her sandwich. Nathan wolfed down the entire half. And Catherine fired Marie the very next day. No one other than the nanny is supposed to feed anything to Nathan. Not even if he's starving."

Bobby didn't say anything, but the wheels were once again turning in his mind.

"We're going through the other nannies now," Copley said, almost casually.

"So far, it's a string of strange and sordid stories. How Catherine would disappear for long periods of time. How no sooner did she reappear than Nathan would be sick again. Then there were the soiled diapers she demanded be kept in the refrigerator-"

"Soiled?"

"Filled with shit, to be exact. For six months, each and every one of them went straight into the fridge. Then there were the diets-lists of things he wasn't allowed to eat, lists of things he could only eat. This, combined with strange minerals and herbs and supplements and drugs. I tell you, Officer Dodge, I've been in the business fifteen years, and I've never seen anything like this. No doubt about it, Catherine Gagnon is abusing her son."

"Do you have proof?"

"Not yet, but we'll get it. The security camera was her first mistake."

They were baiting him again. He still couldn't stop himself from asking, "The security camera?"

"For the master bedroom," D.D. supplied.

"It was turned off Thursday night. Except according to the security company, that's not possible."

"I don't get it," Bobby said honestly, finally standing in one place and rubbing the back of his neck.

"The security camera in the master bedroom was set to turn off at midnight; instead, it magically shut down at ten p.m. Catherine gave us some song and dance about the control panel messing up the time. But we talked to the security company. Tuesday, when Jimmy filed for divorce, he contacted the company directly. He told them he had a situation at home-he wanted to be able to monitor the rooms without someone manually overriding the cameras. So the security company reset the whole system, then gave him a new code. As of Tuesday, the control panel was in proper working order, and more importantly, the only person who could alter the system was Jimmy Gagnon."

"So he shut off the camera in the master bedroom?"

"No," Copley said.

"He didn't. She did."

"But you just said she couldn't-" "She couldn't. Which I bet you anything she didn't know, until ten o'clock Thursday night, when her plan went into play. I bet she stood in front of that control panel for ten minutes, trying to figure out why she couldn't override the system, and slowly getting desperate. She has to be in the bedroom. You of all people should know why."

Bobby opened his mouth to protest, but then abruptly, he got it. He got the whole sordid theory. He shut up and simply waited for Copley to finish his spiel.

"You had to be able to see them, Officer Dodge. You had to be able to see Jimmy, who has no history with firearms, suddenly threaten his wife and child with a gun. The big questions, of course, are what got him going, and what-or who-put that gun in his hand. Now that's the kind of stuff Catherine can't afford for us to see. That's the kind of stuff she doesn't want caught on their home security system. So it comes to her. She advances the control panel's clock two hours, and boom, her work is done. The camera thinks it's midnight, and automatically shuts off. She's clever, I'll give her that. Almost too clever for her own good."

Copley switched gears.

"Did you mean to help her, Officer Dodge? Were you just flirting a little at a cocktail party, bragging about your life with the STOP team, trying to make yourself sound good? Or did it go deeper than that? Few little rendezvous later, maybe this whole thing was actually your idea."

"For the last time, I don't remember ever talking to her!" Bobby shook his head, frustrated, fed up. He couldn't even bring any kind of concert event into focus in his mind. Frankly, the functions bored him. He attended on autopilot, pasting on a smile, shaking hands, and counting down the minutes until the evening was done and he could go home, take off the penguin suit and get Susan into bed.

But then, all of a sudden, he did remember something.

"What's the most common kind of call for a team like yours? Bank robberies, hostage situations, escaped felons?"

"Nah. Around here it's mostly domestics. Drunk guy gets all pissed off and starts threatening his own family."

"And that's a SWAT call?"

"If the guy is armed, you bet it is. It's called a domestic barricade, where the family members are considered hostages. We take those calls very seriously, especially if there are reports of shots fired."

It had been a Mardi Gras party, with all the symphony patrons floating around in elaborately feathered masks. Jimmy and Catherine Gagnon had stopped by to congratulate Susan on her performance. Catherine had had her black hair piled on top of her head and was wearing a formfitting gold dress and exotic peacock mask. At first glance, Bobby had been aware of a certain visceral-level response to the stunning costume. Then he'd been too busy watching Jimmy devour Susan with his eyes to pay Catherine much attention.

He'd ended up breaking off the conversation abruptly, leading Susan away with some flimsy excuse or another. Later, they'd shaken their heads at Jimmy's obvious display, feeling that vague sense of moral superiority one couple gets when they meet another couple who is obviously more glamorous, more successful, and more fucked up.

Bobby hung his head. Ah shit, he did not want to remember this now.

"We're going to get her," Copley repeated.

"And you know Catherine's not the kind of woman to take the fall. First sign of real danger, and she's going to cry me a river. You don't want to get caught in that deluge, Officer Dodge."

"Got a deadline?" Bobby shot back, stung.

"Let me guess. It's tomorrow by five."

Copley scowled at him.

"Now that you mention it-" "Yeah, well, there we go. Tomorrow it is. I'll give you a call." Bobby gestured them up, off his dilapidated sofa and out his front door. D.D. was regarding him strangely. He wouldn't look her in the eye.

"One last thing," Copley said, halting in the door frame.

"Where were you last night, between ten p.m. and one a.m.?"

"I was killing Tony Rocco, of course."

"What-" "I was sleeping, you piece of shit. But thanks for insulting me in my own home. Get out."

Copley was still in the doorway.

"This is serious business-"

"This is my life," Bobby said and slammed the door. Robinson made the mistake of answering the phone. Not a good thing these days. Now Robinson had to deal with the caller, and the caller was not happy.

"His instructions were to make it look like an accident or, at the very least, random bad luck-say a carjacking. Carving someone up with a butcher knife does not appear accidental!"