“Never,” she said sharply. “He’s very private.”
“Has he ever spoken of his wife before?”
“As I said, he’s very private,” Johanna said.
“Of course.” She was growing impatient with his questions, probably feeling like she’d said too much.Easy, tiger,he reminded himself, backing off. Knowing when to apply pressure and when to ease it were crucial to this job. And they were not his strong suit. He waited, letting the moment stretch out between them like chewing gum.
“But I have spoken to her on the phone once or twice.” The administrative assistant rushed to fill the void. People generally disliked silence—Reyes loved it. “And I met her once when she came to surprise him for lunch on their anniversary. I don’t think he liked it very much. He’s not really one for surprises. She never returned.”
“How do you mean?” Reyes asked her.
“Oh, well, he’s just very precise. Detail-oriented, you might say. He likes things a certain way. Some would call it controlling, but…”
“What would you call it?”
She sighed. “Orderly.”
“I see.” Reyes jotted the wordorderlydown in quotes.
“In the extreme,” she added.
Interesting…“What was she like, Johanna? Mrs. Davenport?”
“She was lovely,” the woman gushed.
He had to agree. Even now, he could smell the honeyed scent of her lotion and see her green eyes smiling at him, wide and glossy like glass marbles. He hadn’t been attracted to her in the biblical sense, but he’d found her magnetic. He felt, in that moment between them, as if he’d seen into her, and it was what he’d registered there that drew him—a pulpy brilliance within her, like flower petals made of light.
“A little shy, but that was understandable under the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?” Something about her niggled at Reyes, like a sensitive tooth, smarting to the touch. He found himself compelled to learn more about her, even if it didn’t seem relevant to the case. He justneededto know, had since that night. But she’d been so quick to dismiss him after, her smile fading like the moon at dawn, almost as if she were horrified by what she’d done. He never quite understood it, and his professionalism had kept him from checking up on her, instead relegating his curiosity to a specific sort of hero worship and pushing himself into stoic detachment after. She didn’t owe him anything. She’d already saved his life.
“Well, she was still healing,” the assistant told him. “A car accident. Her lip was pretty swollen from the airbag. It seemed to make speaking hard.”
Reyes dropped his pen. The man’s cold eyes flashed through him. He’d heard plenty of excuses like this, grown accustomed to them after witnessing his mother’s and sister’s experienceswith abusive men—an unexpected fall, a bike accident, the dog knocked them down… On and on they went. Lucia had gotten particularly creative, at one point claiming she was clearing off a high shelf when a pair of pliers had fallen and struck her in the face. He understood their fear, the need to cover up the truth at any cost. He’d seen the way they were punished if they let on, how little protection the law afforded them. It was survival. In a way, he admired his mother’s and sister’s fortitude. He couldn’t free his mother from the tall man’s tyranny as a boy, she had to do that for herself, but it’s what led him to become a cop. And he took the domestic violence calls they got very seriously. Even Will had to admit that Reyes had pushed him to take as much action as the law would allow them. Unfortunately, the law didn’t allow for much. And now his fears about Henry Davenport had been confirmed. Maybe not directly, but Reyes knew how to add. Controlling husband plus busted lip plus missing wife—pluswhat he’d seen on the bridge footage earlier—equaled a crime.
“Thank you,” he told Johanna. “Can I call again? If I have any other questions?”
“Yes,” she replied. “But only after six.”
He checked the clock on his dash—6:33P.M.“Of course,” he said. “I’ll remember that.”
He didn’t hang up right away. Instead, he waited, instinct telling him she was on the verge of breaking.
“Investigator?” she squeaked.
He smiled, grateful. Silence was the one card he could play that never failed him. “Yes?”
“You did say the fifteenth, didn’t you?”
“Yes, Johanna.”
She sighed. “I believe Mr. Davenport did arrive later than usual that day. Something about a tire.”
Did he now?Reyes took a breath, remembering the spare he’d seen on the Jaguar. It could check out, of course. Maybe he pulled over to change a flat. But it would be hard to confirm. And itcould just as easily be a clever disguise for his tardiness. He kept his voice steady. “How late?”
“Almost an hour,” she admitted, her voice growing very small. “Please don’t tell him I told you,” she breathed into the phone.
“Confidential, remember,” he reminded her before hanging up.
