“Why did you want a divorce?” Matt couldn’t imagine anyone wanted to be in a relationship with Oscar, but Heather had married him once.
“He lied.” She closed her eyes for a few seconds. When she opened them, they were misty and filled with bitterness, betrayal, and hurt. “All I wanted was a child. I did everything I could to get pregnant from the day we married, but it didn’t happen. After a couple of years, I started to get concerned. I went to a specialist, but they couldn’t find anything wrong with me. Oscar refused to participate in any sort of fertility testing or treatment.” She looked away, her eyes bright with angry, unshed tears. She bowed her head. “At first, I thought it was just pride. But eventually, I found out the real reason. I was cleaning out a filing cabinet and found some old medical records. Oscar had gotten a vasectomy a few months before our wedding. We had a huge argument and he admitted he’d never wanted children, and he lied about it for our entire marriage.”
“That’s an unbelievably horrible thing to do.” Bree’s tone implied even for Oscar.
Heather’s head snapped up. “I can prove it.” She rushed from the room. Matt heard a drawer opening and closing. A machine hummed and it sounded as if she was printing something. She returned a couple of minutes later and thrust a paper at Bree. “Here’s a copy of the vasectomy receipt.”
Bree took it and scanned the paper. “Thank you. You must have been angry.”
“You’re damned right I was angry.” Heather’s eyes flashed. “I kicked him out the same day. All those years he allowed me to hope, to plan, to try, when he knew it was all pointless. When he’d made sure it was pointless. How dare he do that to me? How could he be so cruel? Why did he marry me at all?”
Matt almost suggested Oscar had loved her and wanted her despite their differences, but you didn’t lie to the person you loved. Oscar’s behavior illustrated a complete disregard for her feelings.
“I’m sorry.” Bree’s voice rang with empathy. “Did he say why he did it?”
“He admitted that he hated kids, but he still wanted me.” Heather bit off the bitter words. “He knew how I felt long before we married. He even pretended to be sad when I couldn’t conceive.”
Matt wanted to commiserate but kept quiet. Heather might not want a male opinion on the matter.
“Can I copy this?” Bree held up the receipt.
“You can keep it,” Heather said.
“Thank you.” Bree folded the paper discreetly.
Heather sniffed and blinked. A single tear tracked down her face. She brushed it away with an angry gesture. “I promised myself I’d put it behind me, that I would never cry over it again, but some days . . . Some days I still feel the ache of what he stole from me. I’m too old to start again. I’m too old to find another husband and try to have kids. He took away any opportunity for me to have a family. I can’t get that back.”
“How did he handle the divorce?” Matt asked.
“He was mad.” Heather wiped another tear from her cheek. “For months, I was pulled over by other deputies at least once a week.”
“What excuse did they give?” Bree’s jaw tightened.
“Rolling through a stop sign. Speeding. Swerving. Erratic driving.” She shrugged. “None of it was true. My commute is only a couple of miles, and after the first two times, I was extra careful not to break any rules. They just wanted to harass me.” Her eyes narrowed. “They would all wear this smug smirk on their faces.”
Matt could picture it. The old sheriff had heartily approved of bullying. “Do you know of anyone else that had reason to be angry with Oscar?”
“No.” Heather plucked a tissue from a box on the end table. She blotted her eyes. “But I didn’t really know him at all, did I?”
Had anyone?
“I need to ask you where you were between eight p.m. Sunday and eight a.m. Monday,” Bree said.
“Here.” Heather looked around her living room. “The library is closed on Sundays, and I don’t really socialize much. I’ve tried to date a few times, but I just don’t trust anyone enough to get beyond the first meet.” She sighed. “I don’t know that I ever will.”
A few seconds of silence passed before Bree collected Heather’s cell number. “Thank you for your help.” She and Matt let themselves out.
Back in the SUV, he fastened his seat belt. His mind still whirled from Heather’s revelation. “He kept a big secret from his wife. I worked with Oscar for a decade, but it seems I didn’t really know anything about him either.”
“What he did went beyond keeping a secret. It was heartless, cruel, and selfish.”
“I wonder what other lies we’ll uncover as we dig into his life.”
Bree started the engine. “I have a feeling there will be more. But his isn’t the only life I want to dig into. Let’s find out everything we can about Heather. She claims to be putting his deception aside, but it’s clear she’s still plenty mad. She’s had years for that anger to stew.”
“Maybe she was angry enough to kill him.”
Bree agreed. “We have two potential suspects, and neither of them has an alibi.”
CHAPTER NINE
Bree mulled over the interview as she drove out of the parking lot. Oscar’s ex, Heather, had seemed controlled, but Bree had the sense that Oscar’s betrayal had burrowed deep. His lies had affected her whole life, had robbed her of the one thing she’d wanted.
And he’d done it purposefully.
Why? Why did he marry Heather? Their entire relationship had been built on a lie.
Would Heather be able to recover? Or would her rage be the kind that fed itself over time?
“Where to?” Matt asked.
“The ME’s office. I’d like to catch part of Oscar’s autopsy.”
“Would you really?” Matt’s tone suggested he didn’t concur.
“Yes.” Bree felt as if attending autopsies gave her a better understanding of a murder. Not all detectives agreed.
“It feels wrong because we knew Oscar, like we’re invading his privacy.”
“Unfortunately, solving his murder requires us to do just that.” Before the case was solved, they would know everything there was to know about Eugene Oscar. But were they too close to the victim?
“Fine.” Matt sighed. “But I’m not sure what we’re going to learn in this case that we couldn’t learn from a phone call. The cause of death seemed pretty evident, and we’re on the clock.”
Bree headed for the municipal complex. He was right. Their time was valuable. The first forty-eight hours of any investigation were typically the most fruitful.
Admittedly, her preference for attending autopsies was partially emotional. In order to stand for the dead, she felt obligated to view the damage caused by their killers, to understand what they suffered in a personal way that couldn’t be conveyed through medical terms written in a clinical report. She needed to see what they’d endured with her own eyes.
While Matt thought viewing Oscar’s autopsy was an intrusion, Bree thought skipping it would be disrespectful, as if she weren’t giving his case 100 percent.
Every truth was in the eyes of the beholder.
They parked and went inside. They checked in with the receptionist, who buzzed them into the back rooms. In the antechamber, they donned gowns, gloves, masks, booties, and face shields before entering the autopsy suite.
Oscar lay on a stainless-steel table, his chest splayed open. The scale next to the body looked like it could have come from the produce section of the grocery store. It was currently weighing Oscar’s heart.
The sharp scent of formalin accompanied the stink of decomp.
Dr. Jones looked up, both hands still buried in Oscar’s chest cavity. “There you are.”