Love You More: A Novel

Purcell then explained that if I wanted to see my daughter alive again, I had to do exactly what he said.

No, I’d never seen Purcell before that morning, nor did I know of his reputation as a professional hit man, nor did I know why he had my husband at gunpoint or what had happened to Sophie. Yes, I’d known my husband had a gambling problem, but I did not realize it had grown so bad that an enforcer had been hired to deal with the problem.

After Purcell had shot Brian, I’d offered him fifty thousand dollars in return for more time before reporting his death. I’d explained I could freeze Brian’s body, then thaw it and call the cops on Sunday morning. I’d still do whatever Purcell wanted, I just needed twenty-four hours to prepare for Sophie’s return, as I’d be in jail for shooting my husband.

Purcell had accepted the deal, and I’d spent Saturday afternoon covering Brian’s body in snow, then retrieving the dog’s body from under the deck, and building a couple of incendiary devices. I tried to rig them to blow back so no one would get hurt.

Yes, I had planned my escape from jail. And no, I hadn’t felt it was safe to disclose to anyone, even to the Boston detectives, what was really going on. For one thing, I didn’t know who’d taken Sophie and I genuinely feared for her life. For another, I knew at least one fellow officer, Trooper Lyons, was involved. How could I know the taint didn’t extend to Boston cops? Or, as the case turned out, to a superior officer?

At the time, I was acting on instinct, carefully trying to do as I’d been instructed, while also realizing that if I didn’t escape and find my daughter myself, chances were she was as good as dead.

D.D. wanted to know who had given me a lift from the search and recovery site. I stared her straight in the eye and told her I’d hitchhiked. She wanted a description of the vehicle. Sadly, I didn’t remember.

But I’d ended up at my father’s garage, where I helped myself to a vehicle. He’d been passed out at the time, in no shape to agree or protest.

Once I had the Ford truck, I’d driven straight to western Mass. to confront Hamilton and rescue Sophie.

No, I didn’t know what happened to Shane that night, or how he came to be shot by Brian’s Glock .40. Though, if they’d retrieved the Glock .40 from the hit man’s house, didn’t that imply that Purcell had done the deed? Maybe someone viewed Shane as another loose end that needed to be wrapped up. Poor Shane. I hoped his wife and kids were doing okay.

D.D. scowled at me. Bobby said nothing at all. We had something in common, he and I. He knew exactly what I’d done. And I think he accepted that a woman who’d already killed three people probably wasn’t going to magically crack and confess, even if his partner used her angry voice.

I did shoot and kill Hamilton’s mistress, Bonita Marcoso. The woman had been assaulting my child. I had to use deadly force.

As for the lieutenant colonel … In killing him, Bobby Dodge had saved my life, I informed D.D. And I wanted to go on record with that. If not for the actions of state detective Bobby Dodge, Sophie and I both would probably be dead.

“Investigated and cleared,” Bobby informed me.

“As it should be. Thank you.”

He flushed a little, not liking the attention. Or maybe he simply didn’t want to be thanked for taking a life.

I don’t think about it much myself. I don’t see the point.

So there you have it, I wrapped up for D.D. My husband was not a wife beater or child abuser. Just a gambling addict who’d gotten in way over his head. And maybe I should’ve done more about that sooner. Cut him off. Kicked him out.

I hadn’t known about the credit cards he’d opened in Sophie’s name. I hadn’t known about his skimming of union funds. There was a lot I hadn’t known, but that didn’t make me culpable. Just made me a typical wife, wishing fruitlessly that my husband would walk away from the card tables and come home to me and my child instead.

“Sorry,” he’d told me, dying in our kitchen. “Tessa … love you more.”

I dream of him, you know. Not something I can tell Detective Warren. But I dream of my husband, except this time he is Good Brian, and he is holding my hand in his and Sophie is riding ahead of us on her bike. We walk. We talk. We are happy.

I wake up sobbing, which makes it just as well that I don’t sleep much anymore.

Want to know how much the lieutenant colonel made in the end? According to D.D., internal affairs recovered one hundred thousand dollars in his account. Ironically, a mere fraction of what he would’ve received in legitimate retirement benefits if he’d just done his job conscientiously, then taken up fishing in Florida.