Beside me, Candice sucked in a small breath. I didn’t think she’d expected him to admit it so quickly.
“That morning we had an argument. It was an old argument, though, and Kendra was really pushing my buttons. All I wanted to do was get out of there before I lost it. But she kept trying to block me at the top of the stairs. She just didn’t get that you can’t push people like me.”
People like him? I wondered what that meant.
“Anyway, I sort of shoved her out of the way and left. I might’ve hurt her—I don’t know. I just had to get out of there. That’s why I forgot my phone that morning, and also why I didn’t go back for it.”
So far Tristan was telling us the truth, but he’d also revealed several other things that needed to be followed up on. “What was this ‘old argument’ about?” I asked.
Tristan sighed. “We’d been having problems,” he began. “They started about six months ago when I was working late, catching up on the books. My wife came to the office and chewed me out.”
“What for?” Candice asked.
Tristan licked his lips and stared at the tabletop.
“She found out that you cheated,” I said before he could answer. I’d seen the familiar triangle in my mind’s eye.
“I didn’t cheat!” he snapped, and Candice and I both raised our brows at his outburst. Tristan seemed to catch himself, because he held up both hands in a sort of surrender motion and said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! This whole thing has me really on edge and I haven’t slept in so long.”
Candice and I said nothing; we both simply waited him out. After he took a few deep breaths, he continued. “Kendra thought I had cheated. But I hadn’t. She heard that I’d slept with someone at my bachelor party, but she wouldn’t tell me who told her that. I swore up and down that I didn’t cheat on her. That I wouldn’t do that to her ever, but she didn’t believe me. She said that she was taking Colby and moving back in with her parents.”
“And then?” I pressed when Tristan paused again.
“And then I grabbed her,” he said softly, his face flushing with shame. “I grabbed her by the arms, shook her really hard, and shoved her into a wall.”
I tensed and I could also feel Candice’s posture stiffen too. Like her, I didn’t cotton to any man laying a hand on a woman…ever. Still, I did register Tristan’s expression. He was so filled with remorse and shame that his head was drooping and his eyes were shut tight against the memory.
“My dad was an alcoholic,” he whispered. “He used to hit my mom and all three of us kids on a regular basis, and one day, when I was about ten, my mom…she just left us. She left us with him and ran away with another guy to California. I didn’t see her again until my high school graduation.
“So I carried a lot of anger around inside me, and I had a temper as a kid. My high school football coach sorta took me under his wing and helped me deal with it, and in college I worked really hard to control it. I thought I had it licked too, you know? But that night when Kendra came to the office and said she was leaving me…I don’t know what happened. I just snapped.”
Tristan’s lower lip began to quiver and his eyes leaked a few tears. I will admit that I felt more than a little sympathy for him—I’d had an alcoholic father and an abusive mother as a kid too. I more than understood what kind of rage could build up inside a person with a background like that—but because I had also worked hard to control and cope with the emotion, I’d never snapped and lost total control. I wondered if it was maybe a little harder for Tristan to control his rage and those violent outbursts. If, by his own admission, he’d hurt his wife twice, it was reasonable to consider that he might have caused her harm yet a third and final time.
Still, I tried to reserve my judgment until I’d heard him out. “It was all a lie,” Tristan continued mournfully. “I never cheated on Kendra. I just wanted her to listen to me—to hear me out. Talk it through. That night I just panicked and I grabbed her and shook her. I never, ever meant to hurt her. I just wanted her to listen to me. I wanted her to stay.”
“But she didn’t leave you back then,” I said, thinking that if Kendra had gone to her parents’ house that night, surely they would have mentioned the incident to the police.
Tristan shook his head. “No,” he said. “She didn’t. I broke down when I realized that I’d hurt her and I begged her not to leave me. I told her I’d get help and also told her that I’d take a lie detector test to prove to her that I didn’t cheat on her if she’d accept it. The next day I entered anger management therapy, but Kendra never mentioned the cheating thing again, so I thought she believed me.”
“Was Kendra hurt?” Candice asked.
Tristan’s face flushed with shame again. “She had a few bruises. And I apologized over and over and over, but how can you ever be sorry enough for doing something like that to the woman you love?”
“Did she forgive you, Tristan?” I asked.
At first he nodded, but then he shook his head. “Yes? No?” he said. “At first, she seemed to. When I went into therapy, I thought it helped. She was really supportive and she said she was proud of me for going. But things were never the same between us. I felt her moving away from me, you know? We still lived under the same roof, but it was like she was only going through the motions with me. She wouldn’t let me touch her—we hadn’t been intimate for months—and I kept going to my therapy hoping that someday she’d trust me again, but I also had this really bad feeling that she was going to leave me again, and that morning…”
Tristan’s voice trailed off as he became overcome with emotion. We gave him a moment to collect himself, and at last he said, “That morning I thought that she was pushing my buttons on purpose. I felt like she was testing me to see if I’d snap again. She wouldn’t let me down the stairs, and she kept pushing me and pushing me and I could feel myself getting madder and madder.”
Tristan was silent again for a long moment before he added, “I failed the test. I shoved her out of the way and ran out of the house. I came home later that day expecting her and Colby to be gone—but it was only Kendra who was missing.”
“And you’re certain that Kendra didn’t just leave the house to get away from you—like your mom did to you and your siblings?” Candice asked boldly.
Tristan’s face crumbled with her words, and I felt another small wave of empathy for him. It was a long time before he could speak again. “That was mean,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
“Yes,” Candice agreed, “but we need to know the truth, Tristan. We can’t help you if you’re holding out on us.”
He nodded. “Kendra wasn’t my mother, Candice. All Kendra ever wanted to be was a mom, and she was the best mom in the world. She loved Colby more than anything. She might have left me, but she would never have left him.”
“Do the police know you’re in anger management, or about the argument you had that morning with her?” Candice asked next.
“No,” Tristan said. “At least not yet. But when they find out, it’s just gonna give them even more reasons to accuse me of foul play.”
“You said that you didn’t cheat on Kendra,” I said, trying to get back to something I’d noticed in the ether when he explained about that night at his office.
“I swear to God, I didn’t!”
I gave him a half smile. “I believe you.”
He appeared a little taken aback. “You do?”
“Yes. Like I said, I can see a lie a mile away. But here’s the thing, Tristan. Someone also told us you cheated on your wife.”
“Who?” he demanded.
“Jamie Gregory,” Candice said. “She said she saw you making out with Bailey Colquitt the night of your bachelor party.”
Tristan pulled his chin back and stared at us as if he couldn’t believe what we’d just told him. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Candice and I said in unison.
Tristan shook his head slowly back and forth. “It wasn’t like that. Bailey
cornered me outside the party when I was drunk off my ass. I barely remember it, except that she kissed me and tried to talk me into sleeping with her, and I pushed her away and went back inside. I’m not interested in that girl at all.”
Candice turned to me as if to ask if I thought Tristan was telling the truth. I nodded. “He’s not lying.”
Candice drummed her fingers on the table before asking, “What do you think happened to Kendra, Tristan?”
At this Kendra’s husband seemed to lose it again. His eyes watered, his lower lip trembled, and his nose began to run. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice so hoarse it was no louder than a whisper. “But I think someone came into our home and hurt her, because my wife wouldn’t leave our baby boy in the house alone. And if she could have come back for him, she would have by now.”
“Did Kendra have any enemies?” I asked.
“Kendra didn’t have an enemy in the world,” he said. When I stared doubtfully at him, he insisted, “I swear, there’s no one I know who would want to hurt her. She’s the sweetest, kindest person you’ve ever met. She’d give you the shirt off her back if you asked. Everybody who knows her loves her.”
But someone out there didn’t love Kendra. Someone out there hated her enough to kill her.
I wondered if Tristan knew about the man in the ball cap coming over to the house. “We can accept that you were faithful, Tristan,” I said, speaking slowly so that I could tread carefully here. “But did you ever suspect Kendra might’ve had an affair? Maybe to get back at you for the rumors or something?”
Tristan’s eyes dropped to the table again. “I want to say no, that Kendra would never, ever cheat on me, but in the past couple of months something changed. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was like the thought of being intimate with me repulsed her. She tensed up every time I touched her—and it wasn’t the way you tense when you think someone may hurt you; this was different. It was like I made her skin crawl. And I don’t know if she was seeing another guy or not. Maybe in the back of my mind I suspected, but I just wanted her to forgive me and stay with me, so I never mentioned it. I just left her alone, gave her as much space as I could, and hoped she’d come back to me.”
And then he lifted his gaze and seemed to catch something unspoken between Candice and me because he said, “Why? Do you guys know she was seeing another guy?”
Candice looked at me in a way that said she wanted to take the lead now. “We don’t know, Tristan,” she told him. “But we had heard from a witness that a white male between five feet eleven inches and six feet tall, wearing a baseball cap, was seen entering your home around eleven thirty the morning your wife went missing. Someone who had been seen near your house on a few other occasions, actually.”
Tristan’s jaw fell open and he looked like he’d been kicked in the gut. “Do they know who this guy is?”
“No.”
“Did they describe his car?”
“He came on foot,” my partner told him.
Tristan blinked several times and appeared dumbfounded. I could see he was thinking hard to identify who might’ve come to his home that morning.
“Does the man’s description sound familiar to you?” I asked.
Tristan shook his head. “No. None of our guy friends live in the neighborhood, and Kendra never mentioned anyone coming over to the house.” And then he seemed to think of something. “Our house is pretty close to the bus stop near the park,” he said. “And it’s only a half mile to the metro station too.”
“That’s good to know,” Candice told him, making a note in her binder. “Still, we might want to keep our focus to your specific neighborhood as these types of affairs are often closer than you think.”
Tristan swallowed hard and his shoulders sagged. I could tell he was trying to think through his list of neighbors, wondering if any of them might have been having an affair with his wife.
“Tristan, I have a request,” I said when an idea suddenly hit me.
“Okay,” he said, his voice flat and defeated.
“I’d like to go to your home again and walk around.”
“Why?” he asked, more curious than defensive.
“Sometimes I can get a pretty good feel for the residual energy left over after a violent act.”
Tristan blanched. “You mean, you’d be able to tell what might’ve happened to my wife in the house that day she went missing?”
“Yes.”
“Would you also be able to sense the argument I had with my wife at the top of the stairs?”
“If it was a heated argument, then yes.” I could see the hesitation and anxiety forming in his eyes, so I added, “Tristan, if something violent did happen to your wife later that day, and you weren’t the cause of it, I might be able to actually detect the difference between your energy and the perpetrator’s. That would go a long way with us,” I said, pointing back and forth between Candice and me. “Right now we want to believe you, but until I can feel out your home, there’s still some room for doubt as you no doubt can understand.”
Tristan seemed to consider my request for a moment. Finally he got up and said, “Let’s go.”
Chapter Twelve
Tristan parked his car in the drive behind the house and we pulled up behind him. Out front there was at least one news crew, but they’d let us enter the drive without blocking us or trying to take our picture, which was a relief. Still, we moved into the house quickly to get out from under prying eyes.
After unlocking the back door, Tristan held it open for us and we moved inside, coming into the familiar cozy kitchen. I set my purse down and looked at Tristan, who motioned with a wave of his arm that I was free to go anywhere I wanted. Leaning heavily on my cane, I moved past the kitchen into a hall with a bathroom off to the right and the dining room on the left. I paused at each spot but couldn’t pick up much other than the normal steady energy that fills most houses.
I continued down the hall, hearing Candice’s heels clicking in time with my cane. We moved into the living room, which was decorated in a light turquoise blue with pale yellow accents.
The living room was nestled off to my right, and to my left were the stairs. Directly opposite the main staircase was the front door, but the door was up two steps from the living room.
I moved to the living room first, holding out my free arm to act as an antenna for any residual energy there. I felt something near the sofa, which was positioned with its back to the front door. Moving to the spot directly behind the couch, I closed my eyes and focused. At the edge of my energy I could feel that something violent had taken place right behind where I stood. I opened my eyes and followed the thread away from the sofa and up the two steps to the front door, and in that eight-foot span between the door and the back of the couch, I knew exactly where Kendra had been attacked.
I glanced over at Candice and found both her and Tristan watching me closely. “She was attacked here and she fell or was pushed down to the floor over there,” I said, pointing to the area behind the sofa.
Tristan’s lips pressed together, and I found it hard to look at him. There appeared to be genuine pain in those eyes.
Turning my back to the door, I extended my arm out again, feeling around the ether, but I found it cumbersome to get a true feel for the little space while holding on to my cane. Setting the walking stick aside, I extended both arms out, closed my eyes, and let the energy settle around me. At first I had to sort through a lot of impressions of badges and lab coats (police and crime techs) and worked to go back just a teensy bit further.
And then I felt her; I felt Kendra’s energy. I could almost see her right after opening the door to her attacker, then moving away from him down the steps to lead him into the living room. She’d seemed surprised but not unhappy to see her visitor. And then, quite suddenly, there was a terrible, acutely sharp pain that went up and down my spine, and for an instant I couldn’t feel my limbs—my whole body felt paralyzed, which caused me to lose my ba
lance, and that sent me stumbling forward. My legs simply gave out, and I let go a small, frightened squeak as I started to pitch forward down the stairs. My arms were slow to move; in fact, in that second I didn’t feel like I could move them either, and just as my body was about to slam hard into the wood floor, I was grabbed by firm hands and held a mere foot off the ground. “You okay?” Tristan asked, and I realized he’d lunged forward to catch me and was now holding me in his arms.
“I’m…I’m…fine!” I said, a little breathless. I kept thinking about how bad that fall could’ve been. But then I was overcome by a small wave of dizziness. We hadn’t eaten lunch yet, and my blood sugar was dropping fast. “Okay, maybe I don’t feel so good after all,” I said when my forehead broke out in a cold sweat and I started to feel a touch queasy too.
“I’ll get some water,” Candice said from behind Tristan, and her heels clicked quickly out of the room.
Tristan shifted his hold to turn me around toward him and lift me all the way into his arms. “You look really pale. Maybe you better come sit down.”
I was about to insist that if he’d just hand me my cane I could walk to the sofa but was stopped when we both heard the sound of the front door lock being turned, and a second later it grated as it was pushed opened. Craning my neck to look behind me, I could see Kendra’s mother standing there in stunned surprise, holding a large canvas bag in her hands.
For a split second, no one moved or spoke. We all just stared at each other in shock until Mrs. Woodyard snapped, “What’s going on here?”
Tristan replied tersely, “What’re you doing entering my house without permission, Nancy?”
“I came to get some things for Colby,” she replied, looking at us with obvious suspicion.
Tristan set me down next to the banister, and I smoothed out my clothing and felt my cheeks grow hot. I was embarrassed even though the whole thing was quite innocent.