“I’d like to talk with Gloria. Maybe Linda told her something she didn’t tell you or your wife.”
Gibson gave him a tired smile. “This has been very hard on Gloria as you could well expect, and my wife and I don’t want to upset her any further. I’ll talk to her. If she has any information, I’ll get back to you.”
Shannon nodded, took out a notepad and made a show of consulting it. “I understand Linda and your wife didn’t get along very well.”
“No, that’s not true.” He hesitated, put a hand up to his eyes and squeezed them with his thumb and ring finger. “Mr. Shannon, have you ever lost a child due to violence? You have no idea how difficult it is to cope with something like that.”
“I haven’t lost a child, but I have lost people close to me. I have some idea what you’re going through. Your wife, though, she made it pretty clear that she had no relationship with your daughter at the time of her death.”
“That’s Mindy’s way of dealing with it. Blowing up past fights and arguments as a way to emotionally protect herself. But trust me, my wife, in her own way, is in as much pain as I am over this.”
“She told me about Thanksgiving.”
Gibson’s head moved to the side as if he’d been slapped. “What did she say?” he asked, his voice pinched, not quite right.
“That your daughter made accusations against you and your wife. That things got ugly.”
“There were no accusations made,” he said slowly in the same pinched voice. “Linda was very good at pushing buttons, and that’s all that happened. When she wanted to she could have a cruel sense of humor.”
“Can I ask you what was said?”
He shook his head, his jaw pushed further out. “It’s not worth repeating.”
“How about telling me about Taylor Carver?”
“I didn’t like him.”
“Why not?”
“Among other things, he was an opportunist.” Gibson checked a clock on his desk and told Shannon he had to get back to work. “I’m afraid this couldn’t have been very productive for either of us.”
“No, it’s been helpful.” Shannon reached for his tape recorder, but stopped himself, and made a further show of studying his notepad. After flipping through several pages, he asked, “Did you know a Candace Murphy?”
Gibson said he didn’t, which made sense since Shannon had made up the name.
“She was a friend of Linda’s. According to Candace, Linda was going to confront you and your wife over Thanksgiving about sexual abuse issues.”
Something flickered in Gibson’s eyes. Then he noticed the tape recorder and in a shaky voice told Shannon that he was lying.
“I’m not lying. If you need me to, I’ll get an affidavit from her, but I’m hoping-”
“You are lying,” he said, his voice more confident. He stood up, muscles bunching along his shoulders. “Get out of here now or I’ll throw you out.”
Shannon hesitated, hoping that Gibson would try something like that. He had had that hunch ever since he talked with Gibson’s wife, but when he saw that momentary flicker in Gibson’s eyes and heard the shakiness in his voice, he knew his hunch was on target. As he collected his tape recorder, Gibson warned him that he would sue Shannon for every cent he had if he ever repeated any of his scurrilous garbage. Shannon shrugged, told him he had a few thousand in the bank, and for Gibson to go for it. Fred Gibson stood rubbing his knuckles, but didn’t move as Shannon left his office.
Shannon stopped at the receptionist on his way out and asked if she knew of a good place nearby to get a piece of pie. She gave him an odd look, and he repeated himself. “I haven’t eaten anything all day and I’m in the mood for a good piece of apple pie,” he told her. She gave him the name of a diner a few blocks away, then checking her watch, asked if he’d like some company. “I haven’t gone on my lunch break yet,” she said.
“I’ll have to ask for a rain check. I plan to be meeting a few people.”
Detective Don Chase reached across the table and stopped the tape Shannon was playing for him and Wilson. “This is nuts,” he said, his face reddening with exasperation. “I still don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here.”
Chase had one of those fireplug bodies; barely a neck, barrel-chested, and a thick trunk. Along with that he had a wide face that seemed stuck in a half scowl, half grin. He also had the same military-style buzz cut that Wilson had, which made Shannon wonder if the hair cuts were a departmental directive. There was something familiar about the guy that Shannon couldn’t quite put his finger on. Chase and Eric Wilson sat on one side of the booth while Shannon sat across from them. He held up a finger for Chase to wait while he chewed a bite of apple pie and vanilla ice cream, then said, “He sexually abused his daughter. I think that’s a good reason for your being here.”
“He sexually abused his daughter, huh? Where’s the evidence?”
“The mother sending the other daughter off to France. The way she acted, how she tries so damn hard to look like a teenager. The change in Fred Gibson’s voice when I asked him about Thanksgiving. How he nearly swallowed his tongue when I brought up sexual abuse.”
“You got to be shitting me.” Chase glanced over his shoulder, saw an elderly woman glowering at him. He lowered his voice. “You have Wilson drag me down here because of some circumstantial bullshit and a so-called change in inflection?”
Shannon couldn’t keep from smiling as it finally hit him why Chase seemed so familiar. He could’ve been Ed Poulet’s younger brother. Looked and acted like him. The one big difference was that Shannon instinctively liked this guy more than he ever liked Poulet. Chase asked him what the fuck he was grinning about.
“Nothing. You remind me of a guy I used to work with, that’s all.” Then more seriously, Shannon said, “He abused his daughter, probably both of them. That was what their Thanksgiving blowup was about. That’s why Linda brought Taylor Carver with her; so she’d have a witness to it.”
“And you know this how?”
“From my ten years as a police officer. I was always good at reading people, and there’s no doubt in my mind about any of this. Linda confronted her parents last Thanksgiving about the abuse.”
“Yeah, well, I know about your history as a police detective. That’s why you’ve got some credibility with me, and that’s why I’m here now. But shit, you’ve given me nothing.” He stopped himself in mid-scowl, looked away. “And if what you’re saying’s true, then what? They bump off their own daughter to keep her from making more accusations? This is fucking insane.”
“Chase, where are you from originally? You don’t have a New York or Philly accent, but you sure the fuck don’t talk like a Midwesterner.”
He grinned at that. “As much a Midwesterner as this clown,” he said, pointing a thumb at Wilson. “Born and raised in St. Louis. Getting back to my question you so adroitly sidestepped, are you trying to say they killed their own daughter?”
“I couldn’t tell you. At least not without knowing their whereabouts the time of the murder or if any unusual money transfers had been made. I’d also like to know what the phone records looked like between Linda and her parents. Maybe before her murder she had threatened to go public with the abuse. If they did kill their daughter, I wouldn’t know without further police investigation. But I’ll tell you, I’ve seen stranger things over the years, and just as sickening.”
“Yeah, well, this still sounds pretty farfetched to me.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But even if they had nothing to do with Linda’s murder you still have a child who was sexually abused by her father, and that demands an investigation.”
Chase gave Shannon a hard look and shook his head. “The only real witness to it is dead and buried,” he said. “Even if you’re right, there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it. Not without something concrete.”
“You could talk to the other daughter.”
“How would I do that? She’s locked away somewhere in France, and from the sound of it, she’s going to be staying there until she’s of age.”
“You could have the authorities there talk to her.”
“Oh, yeah, that would go over swimmingly. I can just imagine what the Cap would say if I asked him to do that
