“Turn around, Mattheus,” Rodney said then.
“Go to hell,” Mattheus hissed between his teeth.
Rodney took a step closer, put his hand on his shoulder.
“Listen,” he said, “we’re not out to hurt you – we just have to understand.”
“I thought you said you got the guy – that Anthony did it.” Mattheus could barely speak.
“That’s what we think, “said Rodney, “but the more we know about your wife, the easier it’s going to be to get a conviction. We need to bring in as many facts as we can find. Right now there are questions about her no one has the answer to.”
“And you think I do?” Mattheus spun around and stared.
“You got to have them,” said Rodney, “even if you don’t think you do.”
“Go ahead then, ask me! I want to find the answer as much as you!”
“Again, think carefully, was your wife running around with other guys behind your back?” Rodney drummed his hand on the table.
Mattheus clenched his jaw. He’d heard this question a million times.
“No, she wasn’t.”
“Were you running around on her?”
“Absolutely not,” said Mattheus.
“Did you guys have some kind of blow up? Is that why she left? Think about it.” Rodney was insistent.
“No,” said Mattheus, “you don’t think I thought about this already a thousand times? It’s all in the record. The police in New Orleans asked me all of it when she went missing.”
“Nothing else occurred to you over all the years?” Rodney continued.
“No, nothing.”
“So, let’s go over it again now. They found the body. She was just killed. Maybe you can remember something different now? Was she mentally unstable?”
“She wasn’t. I’m not kidding around. She was fine. She had friends, colleagues, they all knew her. She worked, she played, she laughed, she loved me. She told everyone how happy she was with me.”
“Told who?” asked Alex.
“She told her friends, her co-workers. She wasn’t close to her family. I was all the family she really had.”
“What happened with her family?” Rodney pounced on that.
“I only met them one time, at our wedding,” said Mattheus. “They came in from Oregon for it. There were just her parents and retarded brother, Mike. The parents loved the brother, gave him all the attention. Shelly told me she was always on her own, raised herself. She didn’t want to talk much about it.”
“Where was her brother Mike at the time of her murder?” Rodney seemed fitful.
Mattheus looked at Rodney amazed. “You’re fishing in murky waters,” he said. “The family lives in Oregon. They didn’t even come back down to New Orleans when they heard their daughter had gone missing years ago.”
“Maybe because they knew where she was then?” Rodney said. “Maybe she told them? Maybe she went there first?”
“Impossible,” said Mattheus. “She never spoke to them. They wrote her off a long time ago.”
“You never really wanted to know why?” Rodney muttered.
“Why don’t you contact them yourself and let them know her body has been found?” said Mattheus. “Question them, go ahead.”
“We tried,” said Rodney. “We got their contact information from the New Orleans Police. They moved a year ago and left no forwarding address.”
That shocked Mattheus. Just like Shelly, he thought. “That’s wild,” he said.
“It’s more than wild,” said Rodney, “it could look suspicious. We tried to track them down, got nowhere.”
Mattheus shook his head. “I haven’t stayed in touch with them. They didn’t care about me or Shelly. But I can’t imagine they had any reason to harm her. Going after them is a wild goose chase.”
“It says on the record that when she disappeared the father said he always knew she’d never come to any good,” Rodney commented.
“Yes, that’s true,” Mattheus recollected.
“What did you make of that rotten remark?” asked Rodney. ”It’s not something a father would normally say.”
Mattheus was impressed that they’d done such detailed research. That comment had bothered him as well when he’d heard it.
“I just took it to be a nasty remark,” said Mattheus. “Probably the reason Shelly stayed far away from them.”
“That’s too simple,” said Rodney. “There had to be real trouble there.”
“I guess,” said Mattheus.
“You guess?” Alex looked at him strangely and joined in. “That’s something most husbands would know. How close were you to her, anyway?”
“I told you, Shelly didn’t like to talk about her past life. When I’d ask her about it she’d say, chapter closed, over, it happened a long time ago.”
“And you didn’t press it?”
“Of course not,” Mattheus said. “Why would I push things that upset her? I wanted her to be happy. I wanted our time together to be good. I did everything in my power to make a great life for her.”