There was, Denny knew, a practical problem with Sticks’s theory. Even on a good night in January, slick roads eased with salt, Denny would have had to be a mastermind to have figured out a way to drop off two kids at Bradford, get to the canoe haul-out and, what—kill his wife in under an hour, all to make it back in time for pickup?
“You know how to get there, though.”
“I know I didn’t kill my wife. I know you still haven’t told me what happened to her.”
“Your wife. She was . . . well . . . we thought it was the elements.” Sticks was more serious now. Maybe even a little kind. He looked Denny straight in the eye. He was searching—for humanity, or for clues, or maybe just for whatever it is that two people search for when the only thing they have in common is a dead person. “We’re trying to establish where you were. We’re trying to establish who might want todo somethingto a person like your wife. Following up on leads. Tying up loose ends.”
Sticks, for his part, needed an answer, and the easier answer was the better answer. Less work. A more logical conclusion. It was unlikely that he was going to go too far in search of a thing that didn’t make sense when the thing that did make sense was right here, a guy in Carhartt, maybe not brutish, but certainly brutish enough. A guy who worked with his hands. Callused. Strong enough to commit a crime, and maybe, like any guy, fiery enough to burst through at times.
This line of questioning, though, infuriated Denny, made himsee why Anna had always seen the worst in cops. He would have done anything for Anna, and he had spent the last years of their marriage trying to prove to her that he was worthy. People always said these things when people died, that they would trade places, that they would do anything to have the time back, and he had never really seen it, not until now. But he was useless. He thought of what Anna used to say, a line from a poem, and it hung there, thefoul rag and bone shop of the heart.It occurred to Denny that he didn’t know what that meant, and maybe good poetry wasn’t supposed to mean anything, it was only supposed to feel, and that was exactly the point: He was rag, he was bone, he was the foulest without her.
“Did anyone see you? At Bradford? Maybe you have a few eyewitnesses that you can recall that you can get over my way? That would be extremely helpful, you know.”
“My kids,” Denny said.They were so small, his kids. Like birds.“I dropped them off. The ski instructors.”
“Right, right,” Sticks said. “But what about anyone else. Where were you during the lesson? Did you stand out in the cold that whole time? What I’m saying is: That’s a long time to stand waiting on a January night. I wouldn’t do it myself, and I played hockey.” Sticks laughed, a short honk of a laugh, meaning, well, it wasn’t really funny.
“No. Maybe for a minute, I guess. I usually just sit in the lodge.”
“Usually? Or that night? Because I’m particularly interested in what you were doing on the night that your wife disappeared.”
“Usually. That night. I was trying to get in touch with Anna. I had a project I was working on. I was sending some emails.”
“Mmm.” Sticks didn’t seem happy with this answer. “So your wife, she doesn’t come home. Which is unusual for her, would you say?”
“Yes, it’s unusual, but since she went out, I wasn’t sure when she would be home. At first, it didn’t seem so unusual.” And really, ithadn’tbeen so unusual. She had gone out. She had been out for a little while. It had been late. He had texted her. He had been busywith the kids. Then, suddenly, it had been too late. He had texted Di. Di had offered her help. Morning had come. All of this happened in such a short period of time. A person is there and then she is not. No time to calculate when she has slipped out of the web of the universe. No time to calculate when you could have gone back and done something to prevent the biggest loss.
“And so you spend a few hours on email, or just, what, you can’t really recall?”
“I guess I can’t recall.”
“You know, we’ve been sitting around here for fifteen, twenty minutes now, and it occurs to me.” Sticks picked up the coffee, took a long draw.Must be cold by now,Denny thought to himself. “You still haven’t asked exactly how it is your wife . . . expired.” Expired. Another strange choice of words. Not unlike exposure. Denny thought of milk, left out too long. It is irreconcilable, his wife, the milk, the greige chamber in which he is now trapped, the metal chair and the smell of fake vanilla, all of it.
But hehadasked, and Sticks had ignored him. Denny knew it was a setup—another ploy to get him to react—but he fell right into it again, pictured Anna’s moon face and her shiny legs and the way she sort of sang the end of a syllable sometimes when she was happy, or the way the light seemed to come up from behind her in summer, how it trailed her, how it almost flowed from her, and from this pool of memories a flash of fire ignited.
“I did!” he raged, and was immediately sorry he had yelled. “I asked from the start! I asked for all of this information from the start! I came in here voluntarily, trying to help you, and now I’m being treated like a goddamned suspect.”
“Strangulation,” Sticks said, calmly and without being asked a second time. A way with words, this man. “Ligature marks around the neck, but we didn’t see those at first, what with the cold and everything. So, as you can see, we have ourselves this . . .”
“Situation,” Denny interrupted angrily. “You already said that.”
Another officer shuffled past the door, which Sticks hadn’t bothered to close. This was informal, after all. The officer stopped, did a double take. Sticks nodded.Sure, man, come in, join the party.“Mr. Plummer, this is . . .”
Denny closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose.This probably isn’t helping,he thought to himself. It was infuriating, the fact that he was here, answering questions from some bumbling idiot, when he had been stuck at Bradford with the kids when his wife disappeared. Even if you ignored the sheer impossibility of it—driving from Bradford to Ipswich to strangle Anna and back in time to pick the kids up from their ski lessons—there was no earthly reason for any of it. Denny’s marriage had not been in trouble. He and Anna had been co-conspirators. She had been a part of him. He might as well have lost a piece of his own body. That was how well he knew how to function in this world without her. And now, in this stained, cold, and ugly station, he was being accused of the worst kind of crime, the crime of degenerates and sociopaths who are willing to give up every single good thing they have in one moment of passion. Denny Plummer wasn’t that man. Denny Plummer hated men like that, and he hated the men who thought he might resemble men like that.
“I do have one more question, actually,” Denny said, forcing himself to be more calm, before the other officer could begin another line of questioning.
“Sure, what’s that?” Sticks said. “We’re happy to answer any questions you may have, of course, Mr. Plummer. We understand that you may have some . . . concerns here.”
“Am I being arrested?” Point of fact. He needed to get out of the station. He needed to get back to the house, where his things were. Where his wife had once been.
Sticks smiled. “Now why would we be arresting you, Mr. Plummer? Do you have something to confess?”
Denny stood up, planting both hands on the table. “I just gotthe feeling that this was going somewhere a little ugly, that’s all,” he said. “But if there’s nothing else, I think I’ll go now.”
“You’re free to do whatever you like, actually,” Sticks said. “You, sir, are free as a bird. I just wouldn’t go too far.”
“I can’t go wherever I want, then?”
