Piper and I live with our daughter, Gabrielle, about fifteen miles west of Philadelphia. Our house is a sixty-year-old stone Cape Cod on three-quarters of an acre on a quiet, tree-lined street. Piper fell in love with the house instantly when she first laid eyes on it four years ago. “It’s absolutely perfect,” she told me when we put in our bid. Then, the minute we took possession, she set out to change everything about it. In order of attack, Piper replaced all the wallpaper and lighting, tore up the carpeting and laid new hardwood floors, put in a new kitchen and upstairs and downstairs bathrooms, and finished the basement. The only things she hasn’t replaced are the windows and roof.
I pull my car up to the three-car garage built into our house and walk in the back door. I’m immediately set upon by Franklin, our two-hundred-pound Bernese mountain dog, the Main Line beast du jour. I place the Whole Foods bag on the granite counter and give Franklin the hugs and treats he’s come to expect when I get home from work. Turning back to the counter and the grocery bag, I notice a business card stapled to an invoice of some sort. I pick it up and see that it’s an estimate for a new cedar-shake roof: $30,000.
Jesus Christ.
Piper enters the kitchen. Her face is drawn, her eyes and nose are red. “I don’t feel well,” she says. “I’m not going to eat.” With that she passes by me, walks down the hall, and goes up the stairs.
I turn away from her. Given how I feel right now, it suits me that we’re not having dinner. I wander into the family room and sit numbly in front of the television. Reruns of Law and Order play themselves out on the tube, but I can barely see the images on the screen through the fog that envelops my mind. The eleven o’clock news comes on, then Jimmy Fallon, then Late Night with Seth Meyers. I sit zombielike on the couch until Carson Daly comes on at 1:30, then will myself off the sofa and make my way upstairs.
I pause and stand at the doorway of Gabrielle’s room. Her empty bed evokes a hollow ache inside me. I can feel her absence outside myself as well, an unnatural stillness that pervades the air, the walls, the floors—as though the whole house misses her. One of my favorite things is to read Gabby to sleep at night, then sit and watch her breathe. A Sick Day for Amos McGee is one of Gabby’s current favorites, as is The Day the Crayons Quit. The book I most enjoy reading to her is one I saved from my own childhood, the Dr. Seuss classic Green Eggs and Ham. Too often, I come home from work so late that Gabby is already asleep. When that’s the case, I read to her anyway. Piper’s always thought it odd, but I like to think that, even asleep, some part of Gabby’s mind can hear me and knows I’m with her.
I feel a presence at my side and look down to see Franklin standing next to me. He stares through the doorway to Gabby’s bed, then looks up at me. I lean down and pat his head. “Don’t worry, boy. She’ll be back tomorrow.”
Unlike some parents’ daughters.
Franklin and I turn and walk down the hall to the master bedroom. I follow him in and watch him curl up on the faux-fur rug at the foot of our bed. I brush my teeth, then undress in front of the bed, watching Piper the whole time. She’s curled up in a fetal position on her side of the California king she bought a few months earlier. She’s covered from head to toe, so I cannot see her face.
For the next hour and a half, I toss restlessly in a futile attempt to fall asleep. Across the bed, Piper shifts position as often as I do. She doesn’t answer when I ask if she’s awake, but I know the rhythms of her breathing and can tell she’s no more asleep than I.
Then the phone rings. The neon-blue light of the alarm clock reads 3:15.
Gabby! is all I can think.
I snatch up the phone and listen to the panicked voice on the other end of the line. “Slow down,” I tell the caller. But he can’t. After a few minutes, I interrupt. “All right, listen. I’ll be there as fast as I can. Just don’t say anything to the police. Anything at all.”
I hang up the phone and sit up on the edge of the bed, trying to process what I’ve just learned. Through the darkness, I hear Piper ask me who it was.
“It was David Hanson,” I say. “He’s been arrested for murder.”
I feel Piper stiffen. I turn to face her. She stares at me, her mouth open. I wait for her to ask the obvious question, and when she doesn’t, I answer anyway. “The victim is Jennifer Yamura. The reporter.”
2
FRIDAY, JUNE 1
It’s 5:15 a.m. when I walk into the police’s department’s Ninth District headquarters on the corner of Twenty-First and Hamilton Streets. The building is a squat three-story structure with a tan brick facade and a concrete fascia just below the roof line.
“Hey, Mick. Heard you were coming.” It’s Ted Brennan. He was a rookie officer when I left the district attorney’s office. Good kid. His dad, also a cop, out of the Sixth District, has about five years until retirement.
“How’s my guy?”
“Hanson? Sweating bullets.” He shrugs almost apologetically. “We got him dead to rights.”
Ted proceeds to tell me the circumstances of David’s arrest. “The 911 operator gets a call about 11:30. The caller says there’s shouting and loud noises in a house on the seventeen hundred block of Addison Street, near Rittenhouse Square. Dispatch sends a squad car with two officers to the scene. The lights are on so they know someone’s at home. They knock, but no one answers. They keep on knocking and ringing the bell. Still no answer, so one of the patrolmen stays at the front door while the second runs around back to Waverly, which is the alley between the houses on Addison and Pine. He finds your man running out the back of the house, tackles him, cuffs him. Partner comes around and walks into the house, where he finds—ta da!—one dead reporter.”
I inhale. “Weapon?”
“Basement stairs. Your client pushed her down, and she bashed her head in.”
I think for a minute. “Who’s been with him?”
“Tredesco and Cook.” Brennan smiles. “I’m sure they’re doing their best to make him feel at home.”
I’ve never met Cook, but I know John Tredesco. He’s cunning. He’d probably gone at David from eight different angles already, trying to catch him in a lie.
“Can I see him now?”
“Sure, but it’ll take a miracle worker to get this guy off.”
Brennan escorts me to the interrogation room. I pause in the hallway, look through the window. David is slouched in a seat behind a gray metal table, rubbing his forehead with his hand. His thick chestnut hair is a tangled mess. He taps his right foot nervously under the table. When the door opens and he sees me, David slowly lifts his athletic six-foot-three frame from the chair. The energy that normally powers his movement has been drained from him. His broad smile is long gone from his face, his blue eyes bloodshot.
“Four hours. That’s how long they made me wait to call you. And another two hours for you to show. I’m going out of my mind!”
I motion for David to sit back down. “Did they offer you a nonwaiver of rights? It’s a form that says you don’t want to speak to the police or waive your right to an attorney.”
“Yes. And I signed it. And I told them you were my lawyer and I wanted to speak to you. And they still made me wait four hours.”
“Did you say anything to them—anything at all?”
“Just that I wanted to call my lawyer. You. And I kept on saying it, and they ignored me and made me sit here in this room. Tried to trick me into answering questions.”