Then, dinner completed, she would return to the shadows at the end of the hall, her daily allotment of energy all used up. I’d wash dishes. My father would watch TV. Nine p.m., lights out. Another day done for the Leoni family.
I learned early on not to invite over classmates. And I learned the importance of being quiet.
Now it was hot, it was July, and I had another endless day stretching out before me. Other kids were probably living it up at summer camp, or splashing away at some community pool. Or maybe, the really lucky ones, had happy, fun parents who took them to the beach.
I sat in a tree.
A girl appeared. Riding a hot pink scooter, blonde braids flapping beneath a deep purple helmet as she flew down the street. At the last moment, she glanced up and spotted my skinny legs. She screeched to a halt beneath me, peering up.
“My name is Juliana Sophia Howe,” she said. “I’m new to this neighborhood. You should come down and play with me.”
So I did.
Juliana Sophia Howe was also eight years old. Her parents had just moved to Framingham from Harvard, Mass. Her father was an accountant. Her mother stayed home and did things like tend the house and cut the crusts off peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
By mutual agreement, we always played at Juliana’s house. She had a bigger yard, with real grass. She had a Little Mermaid sprinkler head and a Little Mermaid slip and slide. We could play for hours, then her mother would serve us lemonade with pink curly straws and thick slices of red watermelon.
Juliana had an eleven-year-old brother, Thomas, who was a real “pain in the ass.” She also had fifteen cousins and tons of aunts and uncles. On the really hot days, her whole family would gather at her grandma’s house by the South Shore and they would go to the beach. Sometimes, she got to ride the carousel, and Juliana considered herself an expert on grabbing the brass ring, though she hadn’t actually gotten it yet—but she was close.
I didn’t have cousins, or aunts and uncles or a grandmother near the South Shore. Instead, I told Juliana how my parents had made a baby when I was four years old. Except the baby was born blue and the doctors had to bury him in the ground, and my mother had to come home from the hospital and move into her bedroom. Sometimes, she cried in the middle of the day. Sometimes, she cried in the middle of the night.
My father told me I was not to talk about it, but one day, I’d found a shoe box tucked behind my father’s bowling ball in the hall closet. In the box had been a little blue cap and a little blue blanket and a pair of little blue booties. There was also a picture of a perfectly white newborn baby boy with bright red lips. At the bottom of the picture, someone had written Joseph Andrew Leoni.
So I guess I had a little brother Joey, but he had died and my father had been working and my mother had been crying ever since.
Juliana thought about this. She decided we should have a proper mass for baby Joey, so she got out her rosary beads. She showed me how to loop the dark green beads around my fingers and say a little prayer. Next, we needed to sing a song, so we sang “Away in the Manger,” because it was about a baby and we sort of knew the words. Then it was time for the eulogy.
Juliana did the honors. She’d heard one before, at her grandfather’s funeral. She thanked the Lord for taking care of baby Joey. She said it was good he did not suffer. She said she was sure he was having a great time playing poker in heaven, and looking down upon us all.
Then, she took both of my hands in her own, and told me she was very sorry for my loss.
I started to cry, big noisy sobs that horrified me. But Juliana just patted my back. There, there, she said. Then she cried with me, and her mom came up to check on us because we were making such a racket. I thought Juliana would tell her mother everything. Instead, Juliana announced that we needed emergency chocolate chip cookies. So her mother went downstairs and made us a batch.
Juliana Sophia Howe was that kind of friend. You could cry on her shoulder and trust her to keep your secrets. You could play in her yard and count on her to give you her best toys. You could stay in her house and depend on her to share her family.
When I went into labor all alone, I pictured Juliana holding my hand. And when I finally held my daughter for the first time, I named her in honor of my childhood friend.
Juliana, unfortunately, doesn’t know any of these things.
She has not spoken to me in over ten years.
For while Juliana Sophia Howe was the best thing that ever happened to me, turned out, I was the worst thing that ever happened to her.
Sometimes, love is like that.
In the back of the ambulance, the female EMT administered intravenous fluids. She had produced a pan just in time for me to vomit again.
My cheek burned. My sinus cavities had filled with blood. I needed to hold it together. Mostly, I wanted to close my eyes and let the world slip away. The light hurt my eyes. The memories seared my brain.
“Tell me your name,” the EMT instructed, forcing me back to attention.
I opened my mouth. No words came out.
She offered me a sip of water, helped clean my cracked lips.
“Tessa Leoni,” I finally managed.
“What is today’s date, Tessa?”
For a second, I couldn’t answer. No numbers appeared in my head and I started to panic. All I could picture was Sophie’s empty bed.
“March thirteen,” I finally whispered.
“Two plus two?”
Another pause. “Four.”
Marla grunted, adjusting the line carrying clear fluids to the back of my hand. “Nice shiner,” she remarked.
I didn’t answer.
“Almost as pretty as the bruise covering half your ass. Husband like steel-toed boots?”
I didn’t answer, just pictured my daughter’s smiling face.
The ambulance slowed, maybe ready to turn into the emergency room. I could only hope.
Marla studied me a second longer. “I don’t get it,” she said abruptly. “You’re a cop. You’ve received special training, you’ve handled these kinds of calls yourself. Surely you of all people oughtta know …” She seemed to catch herself. “Well, guess that’s the way these things go, right? Domestic violence happens across all social groups. Even those who should know better.”
The ambulance came to a stop. Thirty seconds later, the back doors flew open and I rolled into daylight.
I didn’t look at Marla anymore. I kept my eyes on the gray March sky rushing past overhead.
Inside the hospital, there was a lot of activity at once. An emergency room nurse charged forward to meet us, ushering us into an exam room. There was paperwork to be filled out, including the omnipresent HEPA form advising me of my right to privacy. As the nurse assured me, my doctor would not discuss my case with anyone, not even other members of law enforcement, as that would violate doctor-patient confidentiality. What she did not say, but I already knew, was that my medical charts were considered neutral and could be subpoenaed by the DA. Meaning any statements I made to the doctor, which were recorded in those charts …
Always a loophole somewhere. Just ask a cop.
Paperwork completed, the nurse turned to the next matter at hand.
Last night, I had spent fifteen minutes donning my uniform. First, basic black panties, then a black sports bra, then a silk undershirt to keep the next layer—heavy body armor—from chafing my skin. I’d rolled on black dress socks, then my navy blue trousers with their electric blue accent stripes. Next I’d laced up my boots, because I’d already learned the hard way I couldn’t reach my feet once I’d donned my vest. So socks, trousers, boots, then back to the top half, adding my bulky vest, which I covered with a state police turtleneck in deference to the weather, then topped with my official light blue blouse. I had to adjust the vest under my turtleneck, then work to get three layers—silk undershirt, turtleneck, and blouse—tucked into my pants. Next I belted my slacks with a broad black belt to hold them in place. Then I got my gear.
&
nbsp; Twenty pound black leather duty belt, which I wrapped over my pants belt, and attached with four Velcro keepers. Next taking my Sig Sauer semiauto from the gun safe in the bedroom closet and inserting it into the holster on my right hip. Clipping my cellphone to the front of my duty belt, then attaching my police pager to the clip on my right shoulder. Checking my radio on my left hip, inspecting my two extra ammo clips, the steel baton, pepper spray, one pair of cuffs, and Taser. Then slipping three ink pens into the sewn inserts on my left shirtsleeve.
Finally, the pièce de résistance, my official state trooper hat.
I always paused to study my reflection in the mirror. A state trooper’s uniform is not just a look, but a feel. The weight of my duty belt pulling at my hips. The bulk of my body armor, flattening out my chest, broadening my shoulders. The tight band of my hat, pulled down low onto my forehead and casting an impenetrable shadow across my eyes.
Command presence. Never let them see you sweat, baby.
The nurse stripped my uniform from me. She removed my light blue blouse, my turtleneck, body armor, undershirt, bra. She pulled off my boots, unrolled my socks, unclasped my belt, and tugged my trousers down my legs, before doing the same with my underwear.
Each item was removed, then bagged and tagged as evidence in the case the Boston cops would be building against me.
Finally, the nurse removed my gold stud earrings, my watch, and my wedding band. Can’t wear jewelry for the CT scan I was told as she stripped me bare.
The nurse handed me a hospital gown, then bustled away with her evidence bags and my personal possessions. I didn’t move. Just lay there, feeling the loss of my uniform, the shame of my own nakedness.
I could hear a TV down the hall broadcasting my daughter’s name. Next would come an image of her school photo, snapped just this October. Sophie wore her favorite yellow ruffled top. She was turned slightly sideways, looking back at the camera with her big blue eyes, an excited smile on her face because she loved pictures and she especially wanted this photo, her first since she’d lost her top front tooth, and the tooth fairy had brought her a whole dollar which she couldn’t wait to spend.
My eyes burned. There is pain, then there was pain. All the words I could not speak. All the images I couldn’t get out of my head.
The nurse returned. She stuck my arms in the Johnny gown, then had me roll to the side so she could tie it in the back.
Two technicians arrived. They whisked me away to the CT scan, my gaze locked on the blur of ceiling tiles whizzing by overhead.
“Pregnant?” one asked.
“What?”
“Are you pregnant?”
“No.”
“Claustrophobic?”
“No.”
“Then this will be a breeze.”
I was wheeled into another sterile room, this one dominated by a large, donut-shaped machine. The technicians didn’t let me stand, but hoisted me from the gurney directly onto the table.
I was instructed to lie absolutely still while the donut-shaped X-ray moved around my head, taking cross sections of my skull. A computer would then combine the two-dimensional X-ray images to form a three-dimensional model.
In thirty minutes, the doctor would have a graphic image of my brain and my bones, including any swelling, bruising, or bleeding.
The technicians made it sound very easy.
Lying alone on the table, I wondered how deep the scanner could peer. I wondered if it could see all the things I saw every time I closed my eyes. Blood, appearing on the wall behind my husband, then streaking down to the kitchen floor. My husband’s eyes, widening in surprise as he looked down, seemed to actually notice the red stains blooming across his muscled chest.
Brian sliding down, down, down. Me, now standing over him, and watching the light dim in his eyes.
“I love you,” I had whispered to my husband, right before the light fled. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I love you.…”
There is pain, then there was pain.
The machine started to move. I closed my eyes and I allowed myself one last memory of my husband. His final words, as he died on our kitchen floor.
“Sorry,” Brian had gasped, three bullets in his torso. “Tessa … love you … more.”
7
With Brian Darby’s body removed, and Tessa Leoni whisked off to the hospital, the immediate practicalities of the homicide investigation began to wind down while the search for six-year-old Sophie Leoni ramped up.
With that in mind, D.D. summoned the taskforce officers to the white command van and began cracking the whip.
Witnesses. D.D. wanted a short list from all the uniformed officers of any and all neighbors worth a second interview. She then assigned six homicide detectives to begin those interviews ASAP. If someone was a credible witness or potential suspect, she wanted them identified and talking in the next three minutes.
Cameras. Boston was riddled with them. City installed them to monitor traffic. Businesses installed them for security. D.D. formed a three-man team whose job was to do nothing but identify all cameras in a two mile radius and skim through all video footage from the past twelve hours, starting with the video cameras closest to the house and working out.
Known associates. Friends, family, neighbors, teachers, babysitters, employers; if someone had ever set foot on the property, D.D. wanted their name on her desk in the next forty-five minutes. In particular, she wanted all teachers, playmates, and caretakers of Sophie Leoni rounded up and cranked through the wringer. Full background checks, a search of their homes if the detective could talk his way through the door. Officers needed to be eliminating friends and identifying foes and they needed to be doing it now, now, now.
Other people out there knew this family. Enemies from the husband’s job, felons snagged in Trooper Leoni’s patrols, maybe partners in torrid affairs, or longtime personal confidantes. Other people knew Brian Darby and Tessa Leoni. And one of those people might know what had happened to a six-year-old girl who’d last been seen sleeping in her own bed.
Time was not on their side. Get out, hit the streets, beat the clock, D.D. ordered her crew.
Then she shut up and sent them back to work.
The Boston detectives scrambled. The brass nodded. She and Bobby returned to the house.
D.D. trusted her fellow investigators to begin the enormous task of sifting through all the nuances of an entire family’s existence. What she wanted most for herself, however, was to live and breathe the victims’ final hours. She wanted to absorb the crime scene into her DNA. She wanted to inundate herself with the tiniest little domestic details, from paint choices to decorative knickknacks. She wanted to set and reset the scene a dozen different ways in her mind, and she wanted to populate it with a little girl, a merchant marine father, and a state trooper mother. This one house, these three lives, these past ten hours. Everything came down to that. A home, a family, a collision course of multiple lives with tragic consequences.
D.D. needed to see it, feel it, live it. Then she could dissect the family down to its deepest darkest truth, which in turn would bring her Sophie Leoni.
D.D.’s stomach flip-flopped queasily. She tried not to think about it as she and Bobby once again entered the bloodstained kitchen.
By mutual consent, they started upstairs, which featured two dormered bedrooms, separated by a full bath. The bedroom facing the street appeared to be the master, dominated by a queen-sized bed with a simple wooden headboard and dark blue comforter. Bedding immediately struck D.D. as more his than hers. Nothing else in the room changed her opinion.
The broad dresser, a beat-up oak, screamed of bachelor days. It was topped by an old thirty-six inch TV which was tuned to ESPN. Plain white walls, stark wood floors. Not so much a domestic retreat, as a way station, D.D. thought. A place to sleep, change clothes, then exit.
D.D. tried the closet. Three-fourths of it yielded sharply pressed men’s shirts, arranged by color. Then came half a dozen neatly hanging b
lue jeans. Then a mishmash of cotton slacks and tops, two state police uniforms, one dress uniform, and one orange flower-printed sundress.
“He took up more space in the closet,” D.D. reported to Bobby, who was examining the dresser.
“Men have been killed for less,” he agreed.
“Seriously. Check this out. Color-coded shirts, pressed blue jeans. Brian Darby was beyond anal-retentive and bordering on just plain freaky.”
“Brian Darby was also getting seriously huge. Look at this.” Bobby held up a framed eight-by-ten portrait with his gloved hands. D.D. finished inspecting the empty gun safe she’d found in the left-hand corner of the closet, then crossed to him.
The framed picture featured Tessa Leoni in the orange sundress with a white sweater, holding a small bouquet of tiger lilies. Brian Darby stood beside her in a brown sports jacket, a single tiger lily pinned to his collar. A little girl, presumably Sophie Leoni, stood in front of both of them, wearing a dark green velvet dress with a ring of lilies in her hair. All three were beaming at the camera, happy family celebrating a happy day.
“Wedding photo,” D.D. murmured.
“That would be my guess. Now look at Darby. Check out his shoulders.”
D.D. obediently checked out the former groom and now dead husband. Good-looking guy, she decided. Had a military/cop vibe going on with the buzz-cut blonde hair, chiseled chin, squared shoulders. But the impression was balanced by warm brown eyes, crinkling at the corners from the impact of his smile. He looked happy, relaxed. Not the kind of guy you’d immediately suspect of battering his wife—or, for that matter, ironing his blue jeans.
D.D. handed the picture back to Bobby. “I don’t get it. So he was happy on his wedding day. That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Nah. He was smaller on his wedding day. That Brian Darby is a fit one eighty. Bet he worked out, kept active. Dead Brian Darby, on the other hand …”
D.D. remembered what Bobby had told her earlier. “Big guy, you said. Two ten, two twenty, probably a weight lifter. So not that he got married and he got fat. You’re saying, he got married and he muscled up.”