Instead, she finds him sound asleep—-wearing his shoes—-on top of the white silk comforter.
The scream that’s been building inside her for months bubbles dangerously close to the surface.
“Are you kidding me? Are you freaking kidding me? You’re sleeping? In the middle of the day? After making a disgusting mess and leaving it there for someone else to clean up?”
He blinks, sitting up. “What are you doing home?”
“I live here! Remember? I live here!” She wishes he’d yell back, wishes he’d do something other than sit there and stare at her. “My God. Don’t you have anything to say?”
“What else do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know. ‘I’m sorry’ would be a good start.”
“For what?”
“For destroying the kitchen!” And our lives.
He has the nerve to dismiss that with a wave of his ringless left hand. “You’re a lunatic when it comes to stuff like that. You make us all crazy with your nitpicky neat--nicky—-”
“Us all? Who all?”
“Me. The girls. Sean, when he’s here. Even Luz.”
“That is not true! Don’t you dare tell me how my children feel about me unless you want to hear how they feel about you!”
“Go ahead. Tell me. How do they feel?”
Oh no. No way. She’s not going to drag the kids into this ugliness.
She shakes her head and leaves the room. As she descends the stairs, her throat aches fiercely with the effort of swallowing the scream.
Her eye falls on the wedding portrait in the Baccarat frame, angled a little too close to the table’s edge.
She reaches out to straighten it and gazes for a moment at herself as a young bride, eyes filled with confidence. Not tears, not hope, not misgiving, just confidence. She was so certain on that day about what their future would hold.
So wrong.
She can no longer hold back the scream. It erupts from her throat and she picks the crystal frame and hurtles it with all her might against the wall.
It explodes into glittering shards that seem to hang in the air for one long moment before raining onto the floor.
As the scream dies away, punctuated by Goliath’s alarmed barking, her cell phone rings in her pocket.
After chain--smoking three or four cigarettes in the falling snow while making twice that many phone calls, Steve Lindgren rides the elevator back up to the third floor.
“What’d you find, Jimmy?” he asks Hogan, who has an array of papers spread out on the kitchen counter. They contain various examples of Rick Walker’s handwriting: on a grocery list, medical insurance forms, and plenty of unemployment paperwork. Visible through a transparent evidence bag, the suicide note found next to the bathtub is laid out alongside the papers.
“I’m no handwriting expert, and I know you’re going to run this by one,” Jimmy says, “but this thing looks like a match to me. What do you think?”
Steve leans in closer to study it. Jimmy’s right.
“I think that’s Rick Walker’s handwriting. That’s what I think. But that doesn’t make this a suicide,” he adds, heading back into the hall. There, he spots the telltale blond ponytail of Mary Ellen Kramer from the medical examiner’s office. She’s standing in the bathroom doorway talking to one of the patrol officers.
They’ve worked together on a number of cases over the past -couple of years. He’s come to appreciate her professional opinion almost as much as the other guys on the force appreciate her good looks.
Not that Steve doesn’t appreciate a beautiful woman, but he’s been happily married longer than Mary Ellen’s even been alive.
“What’s the word?” he asks her.
“We’re past rigor mortis. This happened over thirty--six hours ago, but probably no more than forty--eight.”
“So . . . sometime late day Monday, Monday night?”
“That’s my guess. And the wounds are suspicious, just as you thought. Keep in mind that this is just my initial impression.”