Cross - James Patterson [34]
“Not really.”
Okay, not a friend of Hatfield’s. I waited for her to say more, but nothing came. She just stood in the middle of the office, seeming to quietly appraise everything in the room.
“We can sit over here,” I prompted. She waited for me to sit first, so I did.
Kim finally sat down herself, perched tentatively on the forward edge of the chair. One of her hands fluttered nervously around the knot in her scarf. The other was clenched into a fist.
“I just need some help trying to understand someone,” she began. “Someone who gets angry sometimes.”
“Is this someone close to you?”
She stiffened. “I’m not giving you his name.”
“No,” I said. “The name isn’t important. But is this a family member?”
“Fiancé.”
I nodded. “How long have you two been engaged? Is that all right to ask?”
“Four years,” she said. “He wants me to lose some weight before we get married.”
Maybe it was force of habit, but I was already working up a profile on the fiancé. Everything was her fault in the relationship; he took no responsibility for his own actions; her weight was his escape hatch.
“Kim, when you say he gets angry a lot—can you tell me a little more about that?”
“Well, it’s just . . .” She stopped to think, although I’m sure it was embarrassment and not a lack of clarity that held her back. Then tears pearled at the corners of her eyes.
“Has he been physically violent with you?” I asked.
“No,” she said, a little too quickly. “Not violent. It’s just . . . Well, yes. I guess so.”
With one shaky breath, she seemed to give up on words. Instead, she untied the scarf around her neck and let it float down into her lap.
I hated what I saw. The welts were easy enough to make out. They ran like blurred stripes around her throat.
I’d seen those kinds of striated markings before. Usually they were on dead bodies.
Chapter 48
I HAD TO REMIND MYSELF—the murders are behind you now; this is just a therapy session.
“Kim, how did you get those marks on your neck? Tell me whatever you can.”
She winced as she tied the scarf back on. “If my cell phone rings, I have to answer it. He thinks I’m at my mother’s house,” she said.
A terrible look crossed her face, and I realized it was too early to ask her about specific incidences of abuse.
Still not looking at me, she unbuttoned the sleeve of her blouse. I wasn’t sure what she was doing until I saw the angry red sore above the wrist on her forearm. It was just beginning to heal.
“Is that a burn mark?” I asked.
“He smokes cigars,” she said.
I breathed in. She’d answered so matter-of-factly. “Have you called the police?”
She laughed bitterly. “No. I haven’t.”
Her hand went up to her mouth, and she looked away again. This man had obviously scared her into protecting him, no matter what.
A cell phone chirped inside her purse.
Without a word to me, she took out the phone, looked at the number, and answered.
“Hey, baby. What’s up?” Her voice was soft and easygoing, and totally convincing. “No,” she said. “Mom went out to get some milk. Of course I’m sure. I’ll tell her you said hi.”
It was fascinating to watch Kim’s face as she spoke. She wasn’t just acting for him. She was playing this part for herself. That’s how she was getting by, wasn’t it?
When she finally hung up, she looked at me with the most incongruous smile, as though no conversation had taken place at all. It lasted less than a few seconds. Then she broke up, all at once. A low moan turned into a sob that racked her body; she rocked forward, clutching herself around the middle.
“Th-this is too hard,” she choked out. “I’m sorry. I can’t do it. I can’t . . . be here.”
When the cell phone rang a second time, she jumped in her seat. These surveillance calls were the thing that made it hardest for her to be here—trying to juggle awareness and denial at the same time.
She wiped at her face as though her appearance mattered, then answered in the same soft voice as before.
“Hey, baby. No, I was washing my hands. Sorry, baby. It took me a second to get to the phone.”
I could