The first showed a very young Patty Crawford facing the camera. She had a black eye that a prizefighter might have bragged about. Her cheeks were streaked with tears; her hair pulled back over one shoulder. She looked fearful that at any second there could be another attack.
“Oh, my,” she said, looking up. “Mitch did this to you?”
Tricia dabbed at her eyes with a tissue she’d retrieved from the bottom of her purse.
“Yes,” she said.
The next image was similar to the first, but not nearly as brutal. Emily hated that she’d even made a judgment about the severity of the injury. No injury was acceptable. It was clear that this was a different incident than the first photograph. Tricia’s hair was longer, and styled differently. Her gaze was less fearful, almost resigned.
Emily glanced up for a second, then picked up the next photograph. She found herself suppressing a gasp.
The final image was the most brutal. Tricia was naked from the waist up. It looked as if there was a large gash on her forehead. She had two softball-sized bruises across her rib cage. The framing of the photo was askew, as it had been in the other two, indicating more than likely that Tricia had taken the photos of herself.
“Dear God,” Emily said, “what did the police say?”
Tricia avoided Emily’s eyes. She kept her sightline fixed on the floor. Or the tissue in her hand.
“I didn’t tell. I couldn’t.”
“But the photos? You must have taken them to prove what had happened?”
“This is very difficult. I know now that none of this makes sense. But at the time I only took them so that in case he killed me, someone would know it wasn’t my fault. That he’d done this to me.”
She was sobbing now, and Emily got up and shut the door. She took the seat next to Tricia and put her hand on her shoulder.
“I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve this, Tricia.”
“That’s not why I’m crying. I’m so damned embarrassed and ashamed that I didn’t do anything. But I was so afraid of him. He told me over and over that if I told anyone what he’d done that he’d kill me and go have a big fat breakfast to celebrate. He told me that people would stop asking about me fifteen minutes after I’d been gone.”
“Tell me about the photos.”
“If I’d have been smart, there would have been more of them. He used me like a punching bag—and I’m not kidding—from the wedding night on. He said when I danced with a friend from high school that I looked like a whore. I should have known he was a control freak. Everyone else did.”
Emily knew that something within Tricia’s past had led her to choose a man like Mitch Crawford. Maybe her father had knocked around her mother. Maybe she’d been abused by a family member. It no longer took a psychologist to ferret out the reasons why some women made the poorest choices in a mate.
Emily tapped a finger on the worst of the images.
“I’ve seen photos like this and I’ve talked to the women who’ve lived through the worst kind of abuse, and I know that you’re like so many of them. You’re a survivor. You did the right thing by coming here today.”
Tricia twisted her Kleenex and balled up the sodden tissue.
“I got away from the bastard. All I can wonder is, you know, if I had said something, maybe Mandy wouldn’t, you know…”
“Wouldn’t what?”
“Be gone. Be dead.”
“What makes you think Mandy Crawford is dead?”
“OK. I don’t know that she’s dead, but I’ll never forget what Mitch told me after our divorce.” She stopped and eyed Emily. Her look was pleading and sad.
“What did he say to you?”
“He said, ‘I never make the same mistake twice.’”
“And you take that to mean?”
“At first, I thought it meant that he’d never get married. Now, I think he meant that if he ever found himself with a wife that didn’t bow to his every whim, he’d kill her. The man was not complicated, in the way that a pit bull isn’t complicated. They might look cute when they are puppies, but they grow up to rip the face off a ten-year-old. He’s like that. Everyone thought he was a charismatic do-gooder. He ran his dad’s lot in Portland like he was running for office.”
“But he wasn’t like that at home,” Emily said, more of a statement than a question.
“Oh, to be fair—and that’s how sick I think I still am, giving him the benefit of the doubt at all—but in the beginning we were happy. I thought that when he questioned what I was wearing, how friendly I was, or whatever, that he was just jealous. You know, that he cared about me.”
“Does anyone know about the photos?”
“You mean, does Mitch?”
“That’s right, that’s what I mean.”
“Of course he does. He gave me fifty thousand dollars to get out of his life and give him the photos and the negatives.”
“But you have copies.”
“That’s right. I was an abused wife. I wasn’t completely stupid.”
“Of course not,” Emily said. “You know that this will come out, now.”
“Yes. But I’m glad about it. Even if it means that he’ll sue me for the hush money. That’s what I think of it— hush money. I really don’t care. I don’t want to leave feeling like I sold myself for fifty thousand dollars. You see, Sheriff,” her emotions once more causing her words to fracture, “I have a daughter now. I don’t want what happened to me, to my mother, to happen to Abby. I’m over it, but I don’t know what residual damage might linger.”
Emily knew that the cycle was learned and often generational. Predators like Mitch Crawford went after women who fit a certain type. She had never thought of Mandy Crawford, on the rare occasions when she saw her, as a passive woman. She seemed so outgoing. So confident.
It had been a mask.
It occurred to Emily just then that both the Crawfords wore masks of a sort. He pretended to be the consummate charmer; she was the adoring wife.
But neither was true.
“Tricia, you know what you’ll have to do. If Mitch killed his wife, we might need you to testify.”
Emily’s words seemed to embolden Tricia. She leaned forward across the desk. She tapped a painted nail on the stack of photographs.
“I’ve been waiting for this for years. I’d like to pay back the SOB for all he’s done to me. I only hope,” she said, her demeanor softening, “that I’m not too late—that Mandy is still alive.”
Emily studied Tricia, now fully composed.
“Is there anything else?” she asked.
“Yeah. He was screwing the help at his office here in Cherrystone. I heard he got the girl pregnant. He’s such a pig.”
“Who told you that?”
Tricia looked down at the photos, letting her eyes linger on the gruesome images. “A friend,” she said. “I still have a few, you know.”
After Tricia left, Emily fanned out the photos on Jason’s desk. She told him about her story of being battered by Mitch and how she’d heard that he was up to his old tricks, sleeping around with the help.
“Holy crap!” he said. “Mitch Crawford did that? He’s going down.”
“I like it when you’re direct, Jason. But let’s see. I’m going to check on her story about Darla. Let’s see if she had Mitch’s baby.”
A phone call to the dealership confirmed it was Darla Montague’s day off and Emily drove over to the Cortina Apartments on Sycamore. She found Darla’s apartment right away—the car with the omnipresent car seat and a decal of breaching Orcas were obvious beacons. Darla had a SAVE THE WHALES poster, coffee mug, and pencil
