The director met them in the lobby. “You’re Cassidy, yes?” she asked, shaking her hand. “We only use first names here.” She ushered Cassidy down the hall.
Allison figured the women at the shelter didn’t need anyone else there, eavesdropping on their own personal horrors, so she went out into the dayroom, with Nicole following. The TV was on, the sound turned down to a low murmur. Katie’s parents were being interviewed by Madeline McCormick. Was this the bigfooting thing Cassidy was always going on about?
Eliana, who worked the front desk, came in with an armful of dogeared donated magazines. She began to sort through them, putting most of them on a low table in the middle of the room, pausing every now and then to reject copies of The Watchtower, Opera Today, and Golf Digest. Then she glanced up at the screen.
“Huh!” she said in a tone of surprise.
“What?” Allison asked. “Do you know them?”
Eliana glanced sideways at Nicole and then looked back at Allison. “It’s confidential. You know I can’t talk about clients.”
Clients? Allison and Nicole exchanged surprised looks. This changed everything. Wayne had abused his wife, maybe his children?
If so, Wayne Converse had just changed from a grieving father to the number one suspect.
“Eliana,” Allison said carefully, “this is Nicole Hedges. She’s an FBI agent. And you know that I’m a federal prosecutor. We are both working an active murder case that involves their daughter, Katie Converse. So if they were clients, we need to know.”
“It wasn’t under that name, but yeah, I recognize them.”
“So Valerie Converse came here for services?” Nicole asked.
“No,” Eliana said. “Not the mom. The dad. We see that every now and then. He came here a few times a couple of years ago because his wife was beating him. It was the wife who was the bad guy.”
CONVERSE RESIDENCE
January 19
Allison gave Eliana a twenty-dollar bill to give to Cassidy for cab fare and asked her to apologize and say that something had come up. Then Allison and Nicole drove to the Converses’ house.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Allison asked. She threw a quick glance at her friend.
“We never looked at the mom,” Nicole answered. “Not for a second. But now I’m thinking we made a big mistake.”
“But why would she kill her own daughter?”
Nicole shook her head. “The autopsy showed it was a blow to the throat. Maybe it was an accident.”
“What about the necklace? Why leave it at the vigil?”
“Maybe she realized later that she had taken it with her,” Nicole said, “and then couldn’t think of how to get rid of it.”
They pulled up beside the house. The media crowds were gone now. So was Valerie’s car. Wayne answered the door.
“Hello, Wayne,” Nicole said.
Jalape?o pushed himself forward and began nosing the two women’s hands.
“Is your wife home?”
He straightened up. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes haunted. “Why? Do you have news? Has Fairview confessed?”
“Is Valerie here?” Allison repeated.
“No—she took Whitney to school, but she should be back pretty soon.”
Nicole said, “Maybe we can talk to you for a second, then.”
“Of course.” He stepped back. “Come in.”
Once they were in the living room, Allison said, “Wayne, we were just over at Safe Harbor shelter.”
“Oh?” His face was carefully bland.
“Have you ever been there?”
“No, I don’t believe so.”
No longer anxious to talk to them, Wayne busied himself lining up the fan of magazines on the coffee table.
“Is that the name of the animal shelter that had Jalape?o?” At the sound of his name, the dog pushed against Wayne’s thigh, and Wayne stroked the dog’s ears.
With a sigh, Nicole said, “Wayne, just—just stop. You know what kind of shelter it is. One of the women who works there recognized you on TV. She said you had come in for help a couple of times, but you used a fake name. So we need to ask you, Wayne—has Valerie ever hurt you?” A beat. “Or hurt your girls?”
He tried to look bewildered. “What are you talking about?”
Nicole said, “Wayne, please. Why didn’t you tell us about your wife? About Valerie?”
He looked down at his hands, which were still now. “Look, let me tell you something. When I was growing up, there were a couple of rules: you never hit anyone smaller than you, and you never, ever hit a woman.”
Allison felt more confused. Was Wayne saying he had been the one who had been abusive?
“So say your wife throws a telephone at you and it hits you in the head, then what do you do? Call the police?”
He looked back up at them with reddened eyes. “Valerie told me if I did that, she would tell them that I was the one who hit her. Was I supposed to throw a phone back at her? I couldn’t do that. Try to talk it out with her? Have you ever tried to talk anything out with Valerie? File for divorce? She would have killed me.”
“Wayne,” Nicole said. “Wayne, do you think Valerie is capable of murder?”