“I don’t remember him that way,” I say to Susan. “At all.”
“People change,” Vaughn says. “And the guy was under a lot of stress because of his wife.”
I don’t say anything. I’ve heard a lot of guys say, But that’s not me. That’s not who I am. I was under a lot of stress. I don’t think stress makes a person “not me.” I think it brings out the “me” beneath the surface.
“Why not call?” Susan says, out of nowhere.
I look at her, not understanding.
“David says he decided he wanted to see Jennifer that night, so he just drove to her house,” she says. “Wouldn’t he have called first? To make sure she’d be there? And that she’d want to see him?”
Vaughn picks up on Susan’s line of thought. “He’d at least have called on the drive in, or when he got to the house and saw it was dark. But he didn’t say anything about trying to call Jennifer.”
Susan gives me a hard look. “He didn’t call before he left his house because he knew she wouldn’t answer. He didn’t call once he got to the house because he already knew what he was going to find.”
I look at Tommy to see what he thinks of this. But he doesn’t say anything. Just purses his lips and looks away.
After a minute, I stand up. “Susan, Vaughn, let’s each of us write a memo to the file. Put down everything we know, everything we think we know, and where we think it leads.” I turn to Tommy. “Come on,” I say. “We can talk about where you’re going to start.” I lead Tommy out of the conference room and down the hall to my office, where I close the door behind us.
“What was all that between you and David?” I ask as I sit behind my desk. “You looked like you wanted to tear each other’s throats out when we first walked in.”
“Just something I don’t like about him. I guess he feels the same way about me.”
“You think he did it?”
Tommy’s eyes grow dark. “What do you think?”
“What I think is that I don’t know whether David did it or not. Either way, we’re going to have a real fight on our hands. Devlin Walker’s handling the prosecution personally. Not just because it’s high profile, but because Jennifer Yamura had just blown open a big police-corruption investigation.”
“I don’t know why that investigation should have anything to do with the case against Hanson.” Tommy stands abruptly. “I’ll talk to the neighbors. See if anybody saw anything that could help us. Then I’ll put some feelers out through some badges I know. Maybe find out if the DA is planning on holding anything back from us.”
“Don’t forget about the call.”
Tommy looks at me.
“The 911 call that led the police to the house. The guy who called said he heard yelling and loud noises. Yamura would have already been dead for hours when he called. Someone wanted the police to show up and catch David. And that means the caller knew Yamura was dead and wanted David arrested for her murder. We have to find out who that caller was and why he is out to frame David.”
“I didn’t start this job yesterday,” Tommy says.
I watch Tommy leave the office. I think about his moodiness. His periodic disappearances. What he must be going through. I look down at the pictures on my desk. One is a picture of Piper on our wedding day. The second is of Gabrielle at five years old, dressed up for church on Easter.
The third picture is of Tommy and me and our parents. Tommy was eight and I was ten. The four of us are standing on the beach in Ocean City. Though I viewed our parents at the time as old, I see now how impossibly young John and Penny McFarland were. Young and attractive and optimistic.
In the picture, John and Penny tower over us. Tommy and I are both wearing swimsuits and flip-flops. I’m holding a plastic shovel. And Tommy is wearing the white cowboy hat he got for his birthday that year. He wore that hat everywhere.
Wearing a white hat makes you the good guy. That’s what Tommy thought. And being the good guy was a big thing to my brother. We occasionally got into fights when we played together because I wanted to be the good guy, too. But Tommy would have none of it. When we played, Tommy always had to be the cop, and I had to be the robber. He was the sheriff, and I had to be the outlaw. Only if I refused to play would Tommy relent and allow himself to be the bad guy. But then he would play halfheartedly.
My mind holds plenty of other snapshots of Tommy when we were kids. I see him as a toddler, in a playpen in the middle of our living room, throwing toys out and laughing as our mother scrambled to pick them up. I see Tommy at six riding his plastic Big Wheel down our driveway, a Band-Aid on one of his knees from an earlier mishap. I see him running down the stairs on Christmas morning, his arms out in front of him, ready to tear into the presents under the tree.
And I see Tommy on that fateful morning when he was ten and I was twelve, sitting at the breakfast table. Our mom, her blonde hair tied on top of her head with a rubber band, wearing a sleeveless white-collared shirt, khaki shorts, and low-cut sneakers, moving around in front of the stove. Dad sitting at the head of our small kitchen table, to Tommy’s left, reading his Saturday-morning newspaper, wearing jeans and a green T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of the company he worked for: Manheim Newbestos. I watch my mom serve my dad his breakfast—ham-and-cheese omelet, white toast, bacon—then turn back to the stove. After a moment, she turns toward the table again, with Tommy’s plate. Tommy’s face brightens at the stack of pancakes. Mom smiles back at him and keeps smiling as she sits suddenly on the floor and lies back until she’s flat on the linoleum. I see Tommy smiling down at her, about to laugh at the game she’s playing. I hear my dad call my mother’s name, first calmly, then not. I watch my dad shoot out of his chair and run around the table to my mother, who isn’t moving at all. Or smiling anymore, though her eyes are still open. I hear my dad repeating Mom’s name over and over. Then I hear Tommy begin to cry, and I look over at him and he’s weeping uncontrollably, not really knowing what’s going on but seeing how upset our dad is. Finally, through my mind’s eye, I see myself sitting across the table from Tommy—not moving, not crying, just sitting there, frozen, taking everything in—until I look out the kitchen window, see a bright yellow bird, and my eyes follow it away from the house, across the field, and up and up and up.