know that Kelly made a lot of unsubstantiated, unproven, and all untrue allegations about me. But that was a long time ago.”
“Nine years,” Murphy was quick to say. “Kelly called you a drug user. Said you cheated on her. Abusive. Prone to violent outbursts.” Murphy had all that memorized as well.
“None of it was true.”
“But you stopped fighting her in court and agreed to give Kelly full custody of Jill,” Murphy said. “Why?”
Tom felt his anger beginning to rise. He calmed himself. Better to be cooperative than obstinate. “I thought it was hurting Jill,” he said, coaxing his blood pressure back to normal. “I decided it was better to compromise for my daughter’s sake. Anyway, I got the visitation rights I wanted.”
“Have you been harboring a lot of anger over this?”
Tom reddened. “I’m starting to get angry now,” he said.
“Do you know of anybody who might have wanted to hurt Kelly?”
“Kelly worked as a cocktail waitress and hostess at the Pinewood Ale House,” Tom said. “Her friends weren’t subscribing to
“Was she dating somebody?”
“Kelly was always dating somebody, at least according to Jill. But I don’t think she was involved in a serious relationship. Like I said, we didn’t talk about our lives. In fact, we didn’t really talk at all. Again, her choice, not mine.”
“Because she hated you.”
“Because she had issues with me,” Tom said. “We had our differences.”
“Why?”
Tom gave it some thought. “Well, I guess you could say that I didn’t turn out to be the man she thought I was,” he said.
“You guys began dating in high school, right?” Murphy asked.
“Sure,” Tom said. “We went out.”
“And then you were in the military with her?” Again, Murphy had brought up a fact about Tom’s life without needing a reference.
Tom shook his head. “She was army. I was navy.”
“But you two were stationed together, isn’t that right?”
“We both enlisted after high school,” Tom confirmed. “But I didn’t see Kelly for years after I joined up. I trained to become a SEAL and got deployed to Kuwait for the First Gulf War.”
“When’s the next time you saw her after high school?”
Tom thought for a beat or two. “Kelly was about halfway through her second six-year, so almost ten years,” he eventually said. “She was part of the First Armored Division Support Command assigned to the Wiesbaden Army Airfield in Germany. My SEAL unit was deployed to the same airfield for a series of training exercises.”
“And that’s where you two… reconnected? Germany?” Murphy said the word
“That’s when she became pregnant with Jill, if that’s what you’re asking. What the hell does this have to do with Kelly’s last twenty-four hours? I thought that’s what I came here to discuss. I feel like I’m being interrogated.”
“You can always leave,” Murphy suggested. “Lawyer up.” Murphy had just showed Tom his hand and didn’t seem to mind.
“The only lawyer I’m going to need is one who will help me regain custody of my daughter.”
“Is that why you broke into the house and attacked Kelly?”
“Hey, Murph. This interview is over,” Tom said. He stood up and put on his jacket.
“Sure thing. Of course. But, Tom, before you go, I need you think about something.”
“What’s that?”
“I’d like you to look at this situation from where I’m sitting.”
“And where’s that?”
“I’ve got a woman who appears to be the victim of a homicide, an ex-husband with good reason to hold a grudge, and a weak alibi. The ME has put Kelly’s time of death at between noon and three. Now, if you made that late-day Home Depot run like you said you did, well then, maybe even I would have a hard time pursuing you as a suspect. But if I were you, Tom, I’d be looking real hard for that receipt.”
Tom left without saying another word.
Chapter 5
Tom leaned up against the doorjamb to Jill’s bedroom and watched his daughter sift through a large box of photographs. In Tom’s mind, he saw it as the room of a six-year-old girl. That was the last time he’d been inside the house. It was nighttime, but Tom could see the pink painted walls were now faded. The framed picture of colorful fish and the one of a lush green field with a smiling sun and rainbow on the horizon were replaced with posters of the U.S. women’s national soccer team and half-dressed pop stars. The dollhouse he’d bought for Jill’s fifth birthday was still in the same corner of the room, but now it was buried beneath an avalanche of her clothes.
Tall and long limbed, Jill looked like any teenager might, dressed in dark jeans, a low-cut white T-shirt underneath a partially zipped gray Abercrombie and Fitch hooded sweatshirt. Her long brown hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, flattering her slender neck and showing off ears that were both studded with two sets of sparkling earrings. Tom figured the boys would call her cute, when what they really meant (but were not yet mature enough to say) was beautiful.
Jill closed one box of photographs and opened another. Jill’s eyes were red from crying, and Tom’s stomach was in knots. She needed a picture to display on a table beside her mother’s casket at the funeral and was having a hard time deciding.
Tom had taken care of most of the funeral arrangements himself. Kelly’s parents were dead. Her friends, he knew, were bar rats and riffraff who might or might not bother to show and pay their respects.
“What about this one?” Jill held up the picture, which Tom took to be her way of inviting him into the room.
Tom sat on the edge of the bed. Jill handed Tom a picture of Kelly sitting on the living room couch. Sun pouring through the window behind lit Kelly’s hair in an angelic way.
“When was that taken?” Tom asked, handing the picture back to Jill.
“A couple years ago at Easter,” Jill said. “Mom liked the way she looked in that dress.”
“Yeah, she looks great,” Tom agreed. “The older you get, the more of her I see in you. You’ve got her eyes.”
Jill gave him a pained expression and began to cry.
Every fiber of Tom’s being wanted to hug his daughter. Pull her into his arms and hold her tight. But he was afraid of how she’d react. Instead, he bent down, reached into the box, and pulled out Jill’s kindergarten class picture.
“Hey, I remember this,” he said. “You lost your first tooth the morning this was taken.”
“You remember that?”
“Of course I do,” Tom said. “I even remember the tooth fairy gave you five dollars for that tooth.”
Jill looked up at her father through reddened eyes. “You always get more for the first one,” she said, quoting to him the same explanation he had given her for that windfall payment. Jill’s lower lip quivered the way it always did whenever she fought back tears, but this was a battle she wasn’t about to win.
“Do you think she’s here?” Jill asked, looking about the room. “Watching us?”
Tom nodded and looked to an empty spot in the room where her spirit could be. “Yeah. I think she’s watching us.”
“I can’t stop thinking about what happened,” Jill said. “How scared she must have been.”
